Where the Body Was
One of the reasons the “Best of 2023” podcast took so long to arrive this year was because of this graphic novel. It took a while to make its way to me from the source that I ordered it from and I didn’t want to start on the list until I had time to read it. Coming from writer Ed Brubaker and artist Sean Phillips, one of the best and most consistent creative teams in comics, I was already looking forward to it after their previous collaboration “Night Fever” had arrived.
Where that story had a very familiar premise that was greatly enlivened by its details, “Where the Body Was” promised something different. A look at a suburban community in early-80’s California and how it’s affected when a dead body turns up on the street, it sounded like the perfect intersection of crime and character drama that the two specialize in. With a new twist courtesy of its setup.
It involves several people who live in the community where the body is found. There’s Tommy and Katrina, two adults – but young ones – who are kind of in love, but with things complicated by drugs, burglary, and their own emotions. Man With a Badge Palmer Sneed loves whipping it out to enforce public decency as he sees fit while enjoying side benefits like the passionate affair he’s in with Toni, the wife of Ted, a psychiatrist. Ted is also treating homeless Vietnam veteran Ranko who’s also friends with aspiring superhero Lila who’s determined to keep the peace in the community in her own way.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with the way the characters and their stories are presented here. In fact, the idea that a murder could bring them together and cause them to collide in interesting ways is really quite promising. Except that by the time the murder actually happens in the story most of these threads have already revealed themselves to be kind of half-baked in their execution. Rather than feeling like parts of a whole, they all struck me as ideas that Brubaker couldn’t get to work for full-length stories but didn’t want to discard. So we’re left with what feels like a collection of warmed-over leftovers rather than the first-class meal I was expecting.
Nowhere is that more evident than in the story’s big climax where the lives of all the characters finally collide in one room. What’s meant to feel like a galaxy-brain level of setup where all of their lives were fated to converge in this one moment because of this murder comes off like Grade-A Soap Opera material. More silly than dramatic, yet still enjoyable in the sheer level of ridiculous coincidence that’s on display in this one scene. This wouldn’t have been much of a problem if it wasn’t for the fact that Brubaker and Phillips have shown over the years that they’re better than this when it comes to generating real drama on the page.
What they continue to be good at here are the little details that draw you in. Things like showing the decades of regret that seep into Tomi’s life after the fact over two pages. Revealing the moment Tommy finally gets it late at night while trying to protect his wife. Or just about any scene involving Palmer as we see him go from angry young man to someone who can carry himself with his newfound power. His story is easily the most fully-formed of all the ones on display here and the one that feels like it could’ve been spun off into its own graphic novel.
Phillips does his level best to sell the mundanity of suburbia on display here and he does as good as job as you’d expect here. The problem is that he’s not really given many chances to show off stylistically or dramatically here. He’s good with the little stuff, showing characters at different points in their lives and having them recognizable as such, but I wish he’d been given more leeway to do fun stuff like the whodunit reveal which kicks off the epilogue. More things like that would’ve been a better showcase for his skills rather than one more example of showing us how well Phillips can do human drama.
“Where the Body Was” isn’t a bad graphic novel, but it is the least of the current run of Brubaker/Phillips original graphic novels that they’ve produced so far. I’ll also admit that this is the victim of high expectations on my end coming off how good the premise sounded following the relatively unoriginal “Night Fever.” Yet that graphic novel surprised me in how invested I became in its protagonist’s journey through the French underworld in a way that none of the respective story threads here did. It’s not that I don’t think Brubaker & Phillips shouldn’t try to experiment – and they’re continuing to do so as their next OGN is going to be “Houses of the Unholy” about the Satanic Panic in the 80’s – I just hope that they do better next time.