Greyshirt: Indigo Sunset (Greyshirt, 1)

Decent but Disjointed

This book collects six stories ostensibly starring Greyshirt, a kind of old time hero originally created for the Tomorrow Stories anthology. However, the stories are really about two generations of gangsters who run around Indigo City and the mysterious creature who lives in the abandoned emerald mines which riddle the city's underground. However, Greyshirt only appears momentarily in each to dash in and foil the crime, the real focus is on Frankie Lafayette and Johnny Apollo, who we first meet as kids, and then follow as they grow older and more criminally enterprising. It's all kind of campy and old-fashioned stuff, with a dark edge to it. While the writing is fairly clever, with small setups that pay off big several episodes later, it's all a little bit hectic. The stories jump around a bunch in time, most are actually set in the past, and there are mock newspaper spreads at the end of each episode which convey a bunch of useful information in their jokey articles. The book suffers from a lack of focus, as it veers back and forth between the two thug kids, the previous generation of hood, the sci-fi/horror monster, a plotline concerning a movie being made from the two kids' lives, another involving a pop artist, and then later, a pair of suave thieves are introduced. Greyshirt gets totally lost in the shuffle, as does any sense of coherency and maintenance of tone. The book feels like a playground, where the creator and his friends kind of run amok. It's not bad, just not that great, and the cleverest material is actually the little cartoons in the faux newspaper mock-up!