REVIEW: NOIR IS THE NEW BLACK

3.41/5.0 Stars
Rating if the Book Were a Movie: PG-13

Creative Team 

Editor: Fabrice Sapolsky, TC Harris
Publisher: Fairsquare Comics

Ratings 

Story: 3.8
Interior Artwork: 3.6
Cover Artwork: 3.2
Dialogue: 3.4
Mechanics: 3.2
Editing: 3.3

About the Book:

This book is a collection of stories that center around events involving the black community, historical and fictional alike

Reviewer’s Notes:

Before we get into the heart of this review, let’s talk about the phrase “NOIR”.  The definition is “a genre of crime film or fiction characterized by cynicism, fatalism, and moral ambiguity.”

With that definition in mind, I will say this book was a pleasure to read.  I grew up watching both shows and movies that were both black and white, and in technicolor.

Noir is hard to pull off in the technicolor world if it is not done right.  I think that this collection of stories pull’s off the symbolism of the genre nicely.

Each story centers around the black community and how they are treated and reactive to the story at hand. If you want to know which ones are based on history and which are based on fiction, then I highly recommend that you pick this book up.  Even as I read this book, there were a few things that happened that I had to look up myself to truly understand the stories being told.

Each story immerses you into the world they are trying to create, making you want to know both the backstory as well as where the story will go from that point.  That in itself is part of what made reading this book a pleasure.

The cover art is pretty basic comparatively, simply showing a gentleman in a black suit tipping his hat, but while it is simple in style, it highlights a little bit about what NOIR means in the terms of presentation.

The interior artwork varies greatly from chapter to chapter, and for the story being told each chapter’s artwork fits nicely with the story being told. All of which shows the details of the story nicely, the pain and or pleasure of the characters involved and the time at which the story is being told, adding to the nice immersion that is created in the writing.

Overall this is a wonderful book for the genre it fits, and if you like me, you like this book and come across one of the stories that was based on history, you might actually learn something. One thing that the book definitely teaches is that we should treat each other better than we do.

As your curator of the Historical Documents of the Imagination I hope you enjoyed your visit! If you enjoyed my review of this story please support the creators of this story!

May the historical documents of the imagination always inspire! Thanks for reading!