Life In The Tombs
We all know life’s a gamble, but what about death? For the residents of Harper City, the grave is anything but a sure bet.
Harper City is a dark metropolis split by a river whose vigorous current separates the living from the dead, or undead as is the case here. Harper City has a burgeoning population of rotting undesirables who are ghettoized on the river’s far side in a neighborhood known as The Tombs.
Deep in The Tombs lies a reclusive PI in his own social sarcophagus. He had been a cop, but death voided his pension. Detective Dead is anyone’s zombie and he scrapes by taking whatever work the denizens of The Tombs throw his way, until the shadow of a living woman darkens the door of his office.
This is the set & setting of Aaron Tolopilo’s Detective Dead, an original graphic album now live on Kickstarter. I am beyond stoked to bring you the exclusive 40 page preview at the end of this review. In Detective Dead, we are presented with a sprawling world populated by intricate characters and, true to the noir genre, Aaron punctuates this narrative with bullet holes.
Most stories involving undead armies raised through witchcraft end with the death of the necromancer. In Detective Dead, this is where the story begins. Released from the witch’s power, a legion of revenant thralls were free to make their own choices. At least on paper. In a subtle sleight of hand, Aaron passes control of this undead population from the hands of a necromancer to bureaucratic committees. The Harper City Council rezoned the metropolis, making it illegal for any undead member of society to reside outside a borough on the farside of the river. The city’s new epicenter of squalor and decay came to be known colloquially as The Tombs.
Turns out an industrialized society has plenty of uses for zombies. Most find employment performing mindless manual labor but not every resident of The Tombs can be brought to heel. Some amass resources, and subjugate their neighbors - becoming economic lich lords within The Tombs. Still others lay claim to the lives of the living through criminal activity - an inversion of the necromantic hierarchy I find fascinating.
Aaron explores this compelling world through a cast of unforgettable characters. We meet decrepit surgeons, undead stitchers, dockside hands, lowlife thugs, hightone socialites, mobster kingpins turned to ZOMBIE mobster kingpins, pure hearts and twisted minds. Though this list goes on, there is one person in particular that arrested my attention: Delilah Marimon.
She is both a social power-broker and art collector. She is introduced early as the protective mother of Jane Marimon, the woman seeking Detective Dead’s aid in The Tombs. As the story unfolds, the narrative’s two central themes, gambling & witchcraft, circle around this mother tighter and tighter - like a dance on a black sabbath or a contested hand of poker at the highroller’s table.
When Delilah was young she fell for a talented artist, Laurence. She spurned her family's wealth for love, but love was not enough.
Delilah started to gamble. As with any addictive practice, what began as a hopeful dalliance, spiraled into a dance with the devil.
It was a dance she was fated to lose, until her luck changed. Her husband’s untimely death made the value of his paintings immense. She parlayed this stroke of good fortune into security.
She now wields power as an art-broker and taste maker within Harper City’s social elite.
She knows the game, she knows the players and she is sitting on a pile of chips.
Her unassailable position is challenged when a mysterious revenant begins murdering her staff and stalking her daughter, Jane. Before Delilah can intervene, Jane goes rogue, seeking the aid of Detective Dead. Together they discover that Laurence Marimon’s death was not an accident. Delilah scrambles to regain control of a game she has gotten used to winning.
The agency of her child, and how Delilah responds, highlights the second prominent theme in the piece: witchcraft.
Witches have a long and storied history throughout the world. Different roles, rules and abilities are ascribed to them depending on the culture you are investigating.
The wicked queen from Walt Disney’s Snow White (1937)
Within the folklore that grew up in and around New England, a witch is a woman who trades her natural function (i.e. childbirth and caregiving) to The Devil to gain him as a patron. The woman who enters this pact strikes her name from The Book of Life, exchanging an eternity of damnation for the command of unnatural power while her spirit remains within its mortal coil.
The witch’s cottage from Robert Egger’s The VVitch (2016)
Delilah’s backstory is riddled with pact-bound imagery, and though she was able to amass a power rivaling that of her first patron, her daughter’s decisions place Delilah in a position where she must make a terrible choice: protect her daughter or protect her interests.
Will Delilah choose Jane or will she sacrifice her child and become the witch?
Shit dude! I’m not gonna tell you! You gotta read the book & you can actually start right now: Aaron has generously allowed Gutter Zine an exclusive preview of Detective Dead. Take a taste…
That is how our story opens, but how’s it gonna end? You have the opportunity to bring home your own copy of Detective Dead! Back it right now on Kickstarter! Hit that link.
I already have and I know you will too. Do the thing. Support the artist. Create the culture.
I’ll catch ya next month on the 3rd,
JT⚡
