As a quick refresher, Locke is a detective in what looks like Los Angeles, laying low in the aftermath of killing his crime syndicate-leader father who was using his childhood sweetheart / mother of his child as a drug courier in the school where she worked as a teacher. This world is pretty grim. But it’s okay, Locke’s childhood plush panther Spencer is there to help him through it. His troubled childhood is typically rendered in a Calvin and Hobbes pastiche. That childhood led to Locke being a person informed by his trauma, but his visualization of Spencer as a 7-foot tall anthropomorphic panther helps him navigate his duties as a detective, and also appears to his similarly traumatized daughter, Hero. Hero has been taken from Locke following the violent conclusion of the previous arc.

Spencer & Locke 2 #1 wastes little time in establishing Locke’s antagonist this time around in Roach Riley. There is immediate paralleling in the narrative between Locke and Riley. Riley’s past is also presented via highly referential comic strips, with Beetle Bailey being the comic referenced. Just like how Locke’s stylistic flashbacks highlight some of the unspoken sadness Bill Waterson imbued with Calvin, these Roach Riley flashbacks call into question how gross the central conceit of Beetle Bailey as a light military boot camp comedy really is. Within moments of meeting Riley, he murders a city councilman, with an implication a few pages later that this is his second murder of a public official.

Locke is called to privately investigate this matter, with the implication that if he does he will be reunited with his daughter. He refuses, because skirting the law like this is exactly why he is having a hard time getting custody of his daughter in the first place. Spencer protests, and before Locke realizes it they are already at the crime scene.

Spencer, during the first arc, seemed to be a primarily comforting entity to Locke. In fact, his appearance to Hero more or less confirms that. Spencer & Locke 2 #1 twists that idea in an interesting way. Series writer David Pepose manages to show that dynamic as something darker and more intrinsic to Locke’s problems, but does so in a way that is gracefully in-line with how he wrote the two previously.

Spencer during the first arc seemed more like a comforting entity to Locke, but Spencer & Locke 2 #1 shows a darker side to this dynamic. Spencer might keep Locke safe, but to an extent he encourages some of Locke’s more violent tendencies. He wants the two of them to investigate the councilman’s death, and the implication is that it isn’t necessarily to get Hero back. He wants to hunt.  It’s during Spencer and Locke’s argument that the two wind up at the crime scene despite the latter having no recollection of it. His dissociation is a nice touch and reinforces just how much of a manifestation of Locke’s inner life the panther is.

Pepose also seems keen to the fact that the immediate assumption is that Roach Riley is just an alter ego for Locke, given the similarities between the two, the fact that they both see Spencer, and Santiago Jr.’s depiction of the villain. This is immediately dispelled as Roach Riley gets arrested and is clearly shown as a separate individual. It’s a nice narrative touch that shows readers immediately that they don’t need to worry about a cheap Fight Club situation.

Just as Pepose’s writing has gotten more sprawling and ambitious in the sequel, artist Jorge Sanitago Jr. delivers an equally strong performance. Spencer & Locke’s first series had a distinct and visually pleasing style, but Santiago Jr. really doubles down on the noir and the environment of the story. The angles are more noticeable, the shadows more pronounced, and the facial expressions of everybody more varied. Delightfully, the blues and purples that littered the pages of the previous arc are in full display here. One interesting consequence of this color choice is just how unique Roach Riley looks by comparison. Spencer is a 7-foot talking panther, but his color scheme makes him look like a part of this world in a way that Roach Riley’s ugly military green does not.

As far as highly anticipated returns go, they don’t land much better than Spencer & Locke 2. You’re going to want to add this to your pull lists. It does a good enough job of on-boarding new readers that you don’t need to worry too much about the context of the previous 4 issues, though they do help in appreciating the subtle developments that this new series makes. When a creative team is at their best and a book is this good cover to cover, comics can be really great.

Spencer & Locke #4 comes out July 19th, 2017.

Spencer & Locke #4 provides an emotional conclusion to the four-issue series and one thing is for certain — Augustus Locke will most definitely be harmed. The David Pepose-written and Jorge Santiago Jr.-drawn series has been the most consistent comic of the year and is a shoe-in for top three comics of 2017. With this final issue, the team, along with colorist Jasen Smith, deliver a satisfying conclusion with a second act that’s among the best comic moments of the year.

After the best Waterson-inspired cold open of the entire series, Locke and his anthropomorphized and by now largely explained panther Spencer pick up with their hunt for Locke’s father, Augustus Locke, in connection to the murder of Locke’s childhood sweetheart. The scenes that occupy the first two thirds of the book, and especially the middle third, are the peak of a series that continues to surprise and impress, even when its fourth issue already has high expectations. Thematically and tonally this issue has a lot in common with arguably Cowboy Bebop’s best episode “Ballad of Fallen Angels”. Like that episode, this comic balances excitingly between moody noir and action that wouldn’t seem out of place in a John Wu film. Pepose’s weaving of narration with dialogue and action is nothing short of masterful throughout the comic, and Santiago Jr. and Smith’s art is at the best that it has been for the entire series. The best art comes in the form of a splash of a wounded Locke walking into what seems to be a suicide mission and an individual panel of Hero, Sophie Jenkins’ daughter, holding stuffed-animal Spencer in one hand, a gun in the other, with a calm look on her blood-splattered face. The panel, despite being devoid of Locke and of an anthropomorphized Spencer, is probably the single most indicative of the atmosphere that has permeated the series.  

The series has never had a reliable narrator as Pepose has put us squarely in Locke’s POV from the first page. This biased perspective reaches a subtle peak as the comic concludes. Locke, fresh from murdering his drug lord father, finds himself confronting Principal Scabtree over the murder of Sophie Jenkins. There’s a lot to unpack in this resolution. For one, Sophie is no longer the embodiment of purity in Locke’s world. She was in cahoots with his father to sell drugs at the school where she worked. Locke, who has killed his mother, has just killed his father. The text implies that both parents deserved this fate, although the psychological toll on Locke is apparent. He gets away with both murders in a legal sense, but the mental damage he endures from it makes it clear that this is not necessarily ideal. He never turns himself in. He does, however, find it appropriate to apprehend Principal Scabtree for the murder of someone who was dealing drugs to children. There is an uneasy tone to the last few pages that seems to indicate that this is an intentional dissonance — with Scabtree’s condemnation that Locke is a “self-righteous prick” and that she was “doing what needed to be done” almost feeling justified to the reader. With the tone that Spencer & Locke has been imbued with since the first pages of Spencer & Locke #1, there was never going to be a conventionally happy ending to this story. In short, nothing could fix Locke. The ending does see Locke being, for lack of a better word, fine, and that’s enough for the kid who opens the issue with the heart wrenching “Everything hurts, Spencer. Everything hurts so much.”

Good comic series can be enjoyed on either an intellectual or an emotional level, with great comics being able to do both. It’s rare that a comic can do both so well and with such a laser-guided focus. The biggest drawback to this series has, from the onset, been the four-issue constraint. A lot of ground was covered in these four issues, and I don’t think readers are going to be ready to move on once they’ve finished this stellar conclusion.   

Spencer & Locke #4 – 4.5/5

If you’ve been following either the comic or the NRW reviews, you’ll know that we left off with Locke barely surviving a car crash before being apprehended by an ominous dialogue spouting figure and separated from Spencer his comfort item/panther partner. Spencer & Locke #3 utilizes the Bill Watterson-inspired cold open that the previous two issues have made standard for the series. These openings have become progressively more disconcerting as the series goes. This is partly due to the clash of the lighter art style with the narrative heaviness, but perhaps more due to the fact that the reader is becoming conditioned to see that there were no good old days for Locke, and that, perhaps, the hellish noir world in which he lives is kinder to him when his only human connection is stuffed panther. This opening shows Locke killing his mother in self-defense in an upsetting sequence. One other common thread of these flashbacks is the frequency with which they portray Locke’s pivotal moments with women. For a character that does not come off as a misogynist, and who has over the course of #2 and #3 solidified that his desire to help the few women in his life is at times his primary motivation, it is interesting that his history is littered with so much trauma surrounding women.

Anyway, on to the really fun stuff. A few reviews back, I mentioned how Spencer as an anthropomorphic detective partner panther is a natural progression of the imagination that made him the Hobbes-esque figure in Locke’s past. Locke, much like Calvin before him, incorporates several elements of pulp science fiction into his imaginative play, calling himself Rocketman Reynolds when he does. The way that Pepose reintroduces this aspect of the character into the present is nothing short of glorious. After being captured, he is subjected to a strong dose of heroin, amphetamines, and psychotropics, and if you listen very closely, you can hear Jorge Santiago Jr. and Jasen Smith cracking their knuckles. They’re about to have some fun.

The bulk of the comic rapidly cuts between Locke’s aggressively weird psychosis, the real world impact of what he’s doing, and the flashback introduced in the open. He sees the world around him as a hostile distant planet, and the people trying to attack him as monsters. As he commits more acts of violence, he’s taken back to when he killed his mother. The art team absolutely nails two splash pages in the middle of the comic, the first of which is a collage of the violence that Locke is committing and the second being a beautiful page turn to Locke’s drug addled imagining of Sophia. All of which is perfectly paced and given a real sense of urgency due to the constant presence of Locke’s heart rate.

There is real ambiguity to the ending that would have felt cheap were this the last issue of the series. Since there is one more left, that makes the ending interesting and most likely worth revisiting once the entire series is finished. If you haven’t been reading Spencer & Locke, you’re really missing out on what is easily one of the best series of the year, and definitely missing out on the best single issue.

Spencer & Locke #3

5 / 5

One of the best components of the debut issue of Spencer & Locke was the artistic shift between a grittier contemporary comic art style and the clearly Calvin & Hobbes-influenced Sunday paper strip aesthetic. Rather than being a spontaneous artistic flourish, it had an unsettling effect that really reinforced the kinds of behaviors that made protagonist Locke who he is in the present. Within a few pages, Spencer & Locke #2 does an exemplary job of using the same stylistic shift in a brand new context, using the Watterson style as a cold open. Instead of highlighting the moderately unhinged aspects of Locke’s personality, this open goes a long way in giving the character whose only confidant is a plushy doll a great deal of humanity, enough so that the character is likable and sympathetic as he beats the hell out of the former bully and forced informant Stanley. The scene is a microcosm of the relationship between heart and brutality that writer David Pepose uniquely excels in and which artist Jorge Santiago Jr. consistently reinforces. 

The comic picks up with Locke’s continued investigation into the murder of childhood sweetheart Sophie Jenkins, referred to in narration as “my girl”. In my review of the first issue, I mentioned how Locke never grew out of stuffed plushy panther Spencer as a comfort item. In a lot of ways, his tight grasp on Sophie’s memory serves the same function. It’s a remnant of a simpler, Watterson-drawn time, albeit one that flashbacks are revealing to be increasingly dysfunctional. Upon breaking into the boss’s suite of the Red Rose gentleman’s club, Spencer evaporates at the re-introduction of Ramona, Locke’s sexually abusive babysitter. To be clear, Pepose is playing with some highly flammable content in both this scene and the cold open. Writing about sexual abuse, especially in the case of minors, can very easily become offensive or cause a reader to just nope out of the rest of the series. The comic handles the scene of Locke experiencing PTSD with uneasy grace, showing it side-by-side with Sophie’s daughter Hero being kidnapped and screaming for help. The narration of Locke exclaiming “The kid!” and cutting off Ramona’s unwanted advances mirrors the opening scene of his abuse so perfectly that it genuinely feels like David Pepose is showing off. Ramona is still Ramona, but now Locke is the boyfriend, and Hero is the kid who desperately needs saving. Jorge Santiago’s illustration and framing of Ramona in what is initially a seductive, femme fatale light is an interesting choice in the context of this scene. The tropes of the genre gear the reader to expect sexual tension out of the scene and for there to be a, for lack of a better word, shipping of the cynical anti-hero and damaged femme fatale. Making the latter a sexual predator and making the former the victim is really interesting and takes noir in a thematic direction that it has never been before, which in 2017 is no small feat. 

Spencer & Locke fan art by Sean Von Gorman, how could I not share this? 

Santiago lets loose with noir aesthetic in this issue, reveling in the under-discussed noir staple of Dutch angles. They never become overbearing or nausea-inducing with overuse, but rather reinforce the foreboding and oppressive atmosphere. His style is more cartoon oriented than realistic, which serves the comic well. The panels where he’s given room and doesn’t have to worry about accommodating dialogue or narration are particularly gorgeous, with the page of Locke’s car flipping over a panicked Hero being the best in the issue. Jasen Smith’s color work is equally effective in reinforcing the mood of the comic. Smith’s use of blues and reds in particular throughout the issue give it a visual sense of flow that makes subversions of that palette, like when Locke shoots Ramona, extremely effective. 

A lot of the marketing and reviews for Spencer & Locke include phrases like “for fans of Sin City and Calvin & Hobbes“, and while that is certainly fair, Spencer & Locke #2 establishes the title as something that is not just a blend of its influences, and puts it on the track for future comic titles being described as “for fans of Spencer & Locke“. This is easily one of the best comics of the year and is definitely a comic worth seeking out and jumping into. 

Spencer & Locke #2
4.5 / 5

Noir is a tricky thing, particularly as a genre for comic books. On one hand, it depends very much on a series of tropes to act as signposts to help readers understand that a story is operating within the language and structure of a noir story. The unfortunate downside is that it often leaves a very limited amount of ground for a story to cover that hasn’t been covered by prior entries to the genre, and it has a tendency of leaving artists with a narrow frame to work within. The debut issue of Action Lab Entertainment’s Spencer & Locke avoids the limits of noir conventions by either savagely throwing something unexpected at the reader or by weaponizing those conventions against the genre itself. In doing so, it accomplishes something that very few works of art can claim, being both immediately ambitious and immediately accessible.

There’s a fan theory that Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes grows up to be the protagonist of Fight Club. That’s obviously ridiculous, as we all know Calvin would never be that into IKEA end tables. What he would grow into, however, is Locke,  Spencer & Locke‘s main protagonist, as this issue shows a boy with extremely active imagination fully grown as a detective with his stuffed-panther-imaginary-friend Spencer still by his side in a surreal way. What comes off as creative and lighthearted as a boy is shown as something darker and more melancholic as an adult. This is a man who hasn’t grown out of his comfort item. Spencer & Locke #1 makes no direct answer to why its hero had and has such an intense need for a coping mechanism but scatters hints throughout its two dozen pages. 

That really highlights one of the best aspects of David Pepose’s writing in this book. There is a real awareness of when narrative elements should be subtle and when they should be, for lack of a better word, loud. In fact, as far as narrative flow is concerned, this is stronger than most of the titles coming from the best Marvel and DC have to offer. There’s a cinematic quality to the writing and the way that the scenes unfold. It manages to bounce from captivating mystery to dread to comedy to action to heart, something with which noir as a genre is consistently struggling. For a comic where one half of titular characters are stuffed panthers with a button for one eye, it is an intensely human affair. Pepose knows these character from the onset, so watching them wade through an increasingly deepening mystery is satisfying.

Stylistically, the comic fluctuates between it’s two most obvious inspirations: Frank Miller’s Sin City and Bill Watterson’s Calvin & Hobbes. While in the present, artist Jorge Santiago deviates from the traditionally pulpy noir comic style enough that this series has a completely distinctive look. It’s impossible for it to be lost in the shuffle with other comics. Santiago helps keep the story in the difficult tonal space of being part bleak and part hopeful. When he renders scenes from the past, the Watterson inspiration is apparent. The tone is never lost in these aesthetic shuffles, and it pushes a comic that was already very good into the realm of being something quite special. This stylistic scattershot leads to one of the most memorable fight sequences at the climax of the book. 

All of this comes together for a comic where everything feels in its right place. The exemplary storytelling and outstanding artwork make this a must-read that even casual comic fans will find gripping. It never pulls any punches but makes sure the reader knows that things are only going to get more intense in the subsequent issues. Spencer & Locke #1 comes out April 12th digitally and in print. You can find your local comic shop here (http://www.comicshoplocator.com/Home/1/1/57/575) and ask them to carry the book if they aren’t planning on carrying it already. 

Spencer & Locke #1

5/5