by Jared Gardner

In an intriguing and ultimately misguided act of generosity, Cross Bronx’s creator, Michael Avon Oeming, uses the back pages of the first three issues of the four-issue series to share rejection letters from early in his career. The impulse is sweet: the desire to show his readers, many of whom he rightly assumes to be aspiring comics artists themselves, that with perseverance and a willingness to listen to criticism, one can really succeed in this challenging business. The problem is, for anyone not inclined to love Oeming’s work (and there are many of us), the rejection letters serve as a kind of cold shower for any attempt to get past what remain his limitations as an artist (let alone, as Cross Bronx makes clear, as a writer). Most of the rejection letters are well over a decade old, but many of them still sound worth listening to: the lack of variety in his line weight, the weaknesses in draftsmanship, a certain carelessness that masks itself as rigorous economy of style. While these assessments were originally leveled at Oeming’s art, it now might be time for him to take them to heart in his writing if he plans many more productions like Cross Bronx. Here, the lack of tonal variety, the carelessness with plotting and character development, and the lack of texture or nuance in the story keep this visually dynamic miniseries from ever getting off the ground.

When I returned to comics after a few years away in the dusty shelves of old magazines, one of the first titles that captured my imagination and kept me coming back for more was Powers, Brian Michael Bendis’ and Michael Avon Oeming’s brilliant neo-noir about detectives whose beat is “powers”—those who have them and those who want to kill them. I will admit that I had some trouble getting used to Oeming’s art, which seemed loose and cartoony, but he riffed so perfectly on Bendis’s screwball screenplay patter that he ultimately won me over. Several years later, it is impossible for me to imagine Powers, which remains one of my favorite ongoing series, drawn by anyone else or in any other style. Despite the fact that Bendis and Oeming claim co-credit for Powers, it is clear to any longtime reader of Bendis’s work who is writing the scripts here. And the team-up works: Bendis’s wit is matched by the energy and spontaneity of Oeming’s lines, and Bendis’s tendency to overwrite is balanced by Oeming’s explicitly underdrawn style.

In Cross Bronx, however, Oeming is the head honcho, teaming up on writer credits with Ivan Brandon of NYC Mech fame. But little of Brandon’s light touch is felt in these pages, except in some of the (very few) moments of banter and everyday conversation. From the start, every minute of this dour supernatural NYPD Blue tale is dominated by apocalyptic talk radio conversations, mystical babble from Santaria priestesses, and an endless drone of self-loathing from our lapsed-Catholic hero, Detective Rafael Aponte.

The premise is well-worn gothic material straight out of Poe. A girl has been brutally raped and left in a permanent coma by a gang in the Bronx. Someone is  tracking down her attackers and killing them and everyone they know. We know from the start that her grieving mother (a practioner of the Darkest Arts) and her late father (a loyal cop whose gun is somehow being used in the killings) are involved, and we can only hope that by the end we will find out how. We don’t, of course, any more than we find out how Poe’s Ligeia returns from the dead. But ultimately, we care so much less. Because unlike the narrator of Poe’s story, an opium-addicted aesthete obsessing over his dead wife while avoiding the gaze of his new fair-haired bride, we are given almost no intimate access to Detective Aponte or the other characters in the drama (and thus so little reason to care).     

       
This is one of those books that reminds me why we created guttergeek in the first place. To hear the industry buzz, Cross Bronx is the best crime comic since 100 Bullets. But to compare this book to 100 Bullets, or Stray Bullets, or the best crime work of Bendis’s early career is to point out the shallowness of the text at hand. The spookiness is all just gothic special effects, the detective work the laziest plagiarism of early 90s crime shows. And the crimes? Well, not only do we never really care about our protagonist, the miserable Det. Aponte, but we can’t really care about the suffering of either the grieving mother (a grotesque old crone) or the vengeful ghost-girl’s many victims. I can’t in all honesty say I even cared when kids started getting killed, and it takes a real level of wooden writing to fail to wring any melodrama out of the deaths of children (a formula that has kept ER going many years after it should have been put out of its misery). The only thing that really worked in the book was the moths, which really are very creepy bugs. Of course, we don’t really know what the moths are doing, or even exactly what they represent. But the same can be said for the human actors in this drama, as well, and they are not nearly as creepy. If we are to be burdened with further chapters in this series (unlikely, since it looks more like a quick shot at a development deal than anything else), we would suggest featuring the moths. Maybe exclusively.

Don’t believe the hype. Cross Bronx is just not very good. Oeming is not a terribly talented writer. (Pick up his earlier, aborted, Six if you need further evidence) And you know, now that we look at it more closely in the light of day, he really can’t draw all that well, either.