Black Monday Murders #5 Review

Written by: Jonathon Hickman

Art by: Tomm Coker & Michael Garland

Publisher: Image Comics

Praise Mammon, Black Monday Murders is back on store shelves! I’ve missed this comic something fierce, which is maybe stating the obvious since I voted it my #1 comic of 2016. 2017 is going to repeat history, I think, because the world building, pacing, and general unease Hickman, Coker, and Garland bring to the table are as top notch as they were last year.

The world of BMM is vast and strange in the best ways possible, and issue 5 attempts to wrangle things in a bit. After so much mystery, it’s good to have a few grounded places to hold onto, though really, what we get here only begets more questions. This is a comic where every action and sentence come with a heaping pile of implications.

The best part about BMM is that it has the page space to properly pace everything it needs to do. A conversation about black magic, blood money, and Judas can take six pages and feel natural. There’s room for awkward looks away, room to stir a cup of coffee and think before answering, room to be bewildered but not show it at first, and room to finally agree because in this world, facts are as strange as fiction.

It’s natural, but you know, in an unnatural way because magic.

There’s also room for even more mystery. The blank pages and prose documents continue to show up, with names redacted for confidentiality. As strange as these documents are, they really do add a sense of realism to everything going on. Even billionaires who can mind control through spells can’t let certain secrets out. They have rules. This world has rules.

On the Rothschild front, well, that drama is as dramatic as ever. Why might a Satan-worshipping billionaire who can perform magic hire a hit man? Who knows, but I want to find out!

(To be quite honest, there are a lot of wonderful and interesting things going on with our back-alley characters, some of which might not be as evil as previously thought while others are even more evil than previously thought. I’d write about them, but it’s late and I’m tired. Suffice to say, the latter half of this book is just as good as the front half, which in turn was just as good as the first four issues.)

As to art, Tomm Coker & Michael Garland are as great as always. Like with the writing, they have room to let their art breathe and speak for itself. This comic demands you pay close attention, but it’s always for the best.

Plus, their super-saturated color scheme is awesome. Everything is so hazy and depressing! I say that in an excited way!

This book is great. It’s just tippytop. I’m going to bed now.