Four Color Comics

Ruse, The Silent Partner (Issues 7-12)
Reviewed by: Joel Miron
Reviewer’s Grade: B+

“Whodunit?” is the question that defines the mystery story genre. Who shot the rich old man? Who stole the Pink Panther? Who squandered the national surplus? Each mystery story carries us through the delightful process of answering. We read these stories despite their unwavering similarity because human beings are deducting machines, and there is a fundamental pleasure in our application of logic to evidence in the pursuit of truth. Mystery stories dangle this pleasure just beyond our reach; for a couple of hundred pages we’re left awash in the mild unease of the chaotic unknown, “I have no idea who shot the old man! It could have been any of five different characters!” before order is restored and we are comforted with sensible explanations as to why it was Dick Cheney all along. “Ah,” our frontal lobes sigh with satisfaction. “I see it all so clearly now. How nice my brain feels now that the truth has been revealed.”

Of course, many mystery stories change quickly from “Whodunit?” to “How are we to catch the guy that we know did it?” This is the question of the moment in the second collection of CrossGeneration Comics’ Ruse: The Silent Partner. In the first volume (reviewed here) we are introduced to the Great Detective (Simon Archard, a much more clean-cut and, therefore, less interesting version of Holmes) his partner/assistant/Gal Friday (Emma Bishop, a much more fetching, conflicted, and more interesting version of Watson), and, in the last stories of the collection, their nemesis, Malcolm Lightbourne.

We know, therefore, whodunit. Even when Lightbourne isn’t explicitly responsible for the mayhem depicted (as in the entertaining chapters seven and eight), he lurks malevolently in the background, driving our heroes to grand and dizzying heights of musing and chin-stroking. What unfolds, then, is a long chase sequence and a gradual revelation as to Lightbourne’s relationship to the Great Detective.All this makes for a pretty good read. Lightbourne defies the tradition by refusing to play as Archard’s evil foil. Unlike the Moriarty-Holmes dichotomy, Lightbourne is more unhinged and erratic but also eminently practical in his approach to villainy. He lures Archard and Bishop into a Rube Goldberg trap and, when it only half-succeeds, he tries to shoot them with a gun. Refreshingly straightforward.

As in the first collection, Butch Guice’s artwork is consistently excellent, with each character and location presenting an eye-catching (though not uniformly beautiful) appearance. The facial expressions are evocative, and Guice is one of those rare artists who can draw characters with their mouths open and actually shaping words.
There is a certain amount of unfortunate folderol. Lightbourne is in pursuit of a quasi-mystical MacGuffin named, without redeeming irony, The Enigmatic Prism. Said Prism has a pretty ho-hum history considering the lavish care taken with so many of the comic’s details, and people pursue it with murderous single-mindedness because of its magical power to… cause people to pursue it with murderous single-mindedness. Sort of like western Asia in Risk (joke stolen from Eddy Izzard).

The central relationship between Ms. Bishop and Archard keeps us reading and chuckling through the occasional sticky points, but writer Mark Waid and Guice mishandle their climax as badly as in the last installment. When the villain is finally revealed and his villainy put on display, there is an inevitable feeling of anticlimax in nearly every mystery story. “Oh, it was… Dick Cheney all along. Well, he’s just a grumpy old goose, isn’t he?” In Ruse, the creators strive to push through this feeling of disappointment with a Grand Action Setpiece involving a great many pulleys, whooshing sprays of thundering water and, apparently, an empty wooden vat. I say apparently because, despite several rereadings, I was never able to really tell what was going on during this cataclysmic climax. Fortunately, another two chapters and a second and more manageable action scene bring the story arc to a satisfying conclusion.

Fourteen more chapters followed the issues in this collection before CrossGeneration Comics folded in 2003. Sadly, these possible gems were never collected into a tradepaperback. They are available now and again on ebay, so perhaps one day I’ll see what paths the series took before reaching what I assume was a rather abrupt end. For now, however, I enjoy the thought of Ms. Bishop and Archard’s pleasingly ambiguous relationship floating in suspension, unresolved, in that benign Limbo of comics whose time has passed, whose future may never come, but who provided a pleasurable afternoon’s diversion during their brief flickering life.