In the first book of The Black Monday Murders we found out that an American rich dude was murdered by a Russian rich dude; in the second book of The Black Monday Murders, the investigating detective finds out what the reader already knows: that an American rich dude was indeed killed by a Russian rich dude. Jonathan fucking Hickman…
There is one new piece of information to add to the story which is that one of the financial crashes wasn’t caused by Mammon (though what that means at this point is anyone’s guess) but that shouldn’t be it for AN ENTIRE BOOK! What an absolute waste of time this one was.
Hickman is almost always style over substance and nowhere is that more apparent than in The Black Monday Murders. In addition to the comics pages, there are entire pages of nothing but dots, title pages, a contents page, a character list, reports, maps, newspaper reports, journal entries, quotes, logos, diagrams, how tos - all of it superfluous to the story!
Like the aforementioned dross, the characters’ dialogue is much less lofty and cool than it thinks it is and only serves to underline the superficial nature of this series. The only thing worse was any scene with Detective Dumas and Dr Gaddis, aka Mr Exposition, which are tediously extensive info dumps about the most boring drivel. Good luck staying awake through that nonsense!
Tomm Coker’s art remains the only good thing about this title. The lair underneath the Fed looked great, as did the character designs of the god.
There is something to the concept behind The Black Monday Murders so it’s a shame that Hickman’s dragging his heels this early in the story instead of actually developing it. As it is, he’s disappeared up his own bum with this pseudo-intellectual snorefest and I can’t be bothered to continue indulging him. The Black Monday Murders Volume 2 is a rubbish book that’s bankrupted what little interest I had invested in the series.