City of Dust, Steve Niles' new series from Radical Comics, has some very nice-looking art and - in contrast to other Radical offerings I've seen - appears to have been edited for grammar and spelling. The dialogue is natural-sounding and the characters clearly defined, as one would expect from as accomplished a writer as Niles. Unfortunately, when you've said that, you've said just about everything nice there is to say about this book.
The story introduced in the first issue is of loner cop Phil Khrome, who jet-packs around his beat in a dystopian future city where books and religion are illegal. Trying to get a handle on the rules of the society is somewhat difficult though; Niles doesn't seem too clear on them himself, and despite some bedroom philosophizing by Khrome and his 'lady-friend,' I really couldn't tell you what passes for right and wrong in this society.
The problem is that Niles wants his religion-free, thought-controlled world to be a backdrop rather than an active part of his characters' lives. A basic premise he puts forth is that it is illegal - punishable by death - to pollute children's minds by telling them stories that aren't true. His own father was sentenced to life in prison for telling him the fable of the rabbit and the hare. Is this even remotely plausible? Metaphors are an intrinsic part of language and are critical to learning. It's ridiculous to suggest that people would continue to function normally in a world where an entire category of metaphors has been outlawed. The only way to make that premise feasible would be to assume mass autism, or a borg-like hive mind, or some other form of thinking that is inherently different from the way our linguistic minds function now.
In fact, not only does Niles have an unsupportable premise for his science fiction story, he isn't even consistent about it. In one scene we see a statue of "Henry Ajax, father of modern society and creator of dreams and drone"; in another, a statue of blind justice adorns the exterior of the police station. So the idea is that it's illegal to tell children that a tortoise raced a hare, but perfectly acceptable to claim that a man is the father of society or that justice is a woman? Nonsense. In the world Niles puts forth, those statues would have been the first casualties of the societal cleansing. Not to mention that Khrome doesn't react when his 'girlfriend' suggests that his imprisoned father knows he loves him. Sounds awfully close to faith, if you ask me.
I referred at the top to the fact that the characters are clearly defined. Really, though, the books suffers from the added problem that they're all one-dimensional stereotypes. The tough cop who questions the law! The whore with a heart of gold! The rich couple who think poor people smell bad! The balding police captain with a mustache! The hot police chick who could have any man on the force but chooses the one who isn't interested! Ugh.
Too bad such nice art is wasted on this.
