Review time! with ‘Gray’

“My scream got lost in a paper cup; you think there’s a heaven where some screams have gone”

Gray is split into two volumes, the first of which came out in 2021 and which I thought I reviewed here at the blog, but apparently didn’t. Oh well – the second volume came out this year, so now I can review the entire thing! It’s written by Arvind Ethan David, penciler by Eugenia Koumaki, inked by Diana Greenhalgh, colored by Joana Lafuente, lettered by Robbie Robbins and Tayor Esposito, and edited by Brittany Chapman, Lisa Deng, and Greenhalgh. Clover Press published it, and we’re going to take a look at it!

A few months ago, I saw a comment by one of the female creators on this book – I can’t remember if it was the penciler, inker, or colorist – on someone else’s Facebook post about the disappointment about Gray (I can’t find it, of course, because it’s a comment by someone whose name I can’t remember on someone else’s Facebook post!) – I’m very much paraphrasing, but this person said that COVID messed with the book, obviously, because Clover – maybe? – didn’t do much press about it when volume 1 came out, and there seemed to be some issues with either credit or payment of the non-writers working on the book? Anyway, the gist seems to be that not many people got the first volume, there weren’t many reviews about it, and the length of time between volumes definitely hurt. Comics will break your heart, people!

David is a producer (his most high-profile job on IMDb is the Dirk Gently series, which was pretty good), and one presumes he wrote this as a way to turn it into a movie, which … blech. But, hey, it’s a comic, so at least there’s that! David updates The Picture of Dorian Gray for modern times and turns it into a feminist manifesto, which isn’t a bad way to go, I suppose. The original novel is cruel, certainly, but full of Wildean wit, none of which survives into this incarnation (to be fair, Wilde was probably one of the wittiest people who ever lived, so not coming up to his standards is fairly understandable). David gives us a cop drama to a degree (because that plays better in movies), as Detectives Hank Wutan (yes, really) and Augustus Bracknell are investigating some assaults against very successful and obnoxiously douchey frat-bro types, who are seduced by hot women, who then rob and violate them. It becomes more of an issue when Claus (Klaus?) Arnheim, a literal baron but also a wildly rich businessman, is kidnapped from his home. What have Hank and Augustus stumbled into?!?!?

Well, it turns out that our hero, Dorian Gray, is concerned about violence toward women. She is kidnapping a bunch of men who are obviously misogynistic, but as Hank (more than Bracknell – Hank is the younger, hotter detective, so someone like Michael B. Jordan will play him in the movie, while Augustus is older and, more importantly, gay) investigates, he begins to wonder why she’s kidnapping these particular men. Of course, there’s a reason, and while it’s fairly dull, I shan’t spoil it. In the second volume, we learn everything, and it’s … fine. Predictable, but fine. Gray is “immortal,” so to speak, there is a portrait of her that keeps her alive, so that’s the same, but … David doesn’t really do too much that’s altogether interesting here. Gray doesn’t have to be “immortal” for what she’s doing, so that part of the story is essentially meaningless. It’s not surprising that a writer misses the point of an older piece of literature, but perhaps David does know the point of The Picture of Dorian Gray – moral decay masked by beauty – but doesn’t care – he just wants to appropriate the name and tell his own story. I mean, fine, but why? This is a fairly simple action story with some attempt at social commentary, and it doesn’t really need Wilde’s name or the novel attached to it in any way. I can’t imagine a studio making the movie simply because you say to them, “This is a modern updating of Wilde’s novel.” I mean, Wilde can’t have that much cachet these days, can he?

It’s not a terrible book by any means. Claus Arnheim is a far more formidable person than we first suspect, and the way he toys with his captors is pretty interesting … although it does seem that the captors are fairly stupid about how they keep him captive. Dorian’s points are good, and the scheme she comes up with to hide her true intentions is clever, if a bit obvious. I doubt if things would happen in the “real” world like they do in this book, but it’s nice to think they would. Dorian herself is a fairly interesting character, which is nice. David does fall into probably the two worst sex clichés you can fall into, but the way he writes the verbal jousting and flirting between Dorian and Hank is pretty nicely done. And the book looks nice, too. Koumaki and Greenhalgh do nice work together – the art is clean and sleek, and the characters interact well with each other. Koumaki doesn’t do too much that’s crazy and unique, but there are a few pages where the layouts work really well to reflect the characters’ states of mind, which is interesting. The scenes set in the past, too, are done with a bit less precision, as if the haze of memory is obscuring them. The coloring is very nice, too – even when the scenes are at night, Lafuente makes sure not to muddy up the lines, so that we can see everything, and she uses shading and luminous effects very well. The scenes set in the past are colored a bit more mutely, which is clever, and she colors the portraits we see of Dorian wildly and almost savagely, which fits what we know about the reason for their existence. While the art isn’t dazzling, it is quite nice-looking, and that certainly helps.

I don’t love Gray, but I don’t hate it, either. It’s entertaining but forgettable, unfortunately, because the idea of women trying to right the wrongs done to them over the centuries, and especially in modern America, is not a bad topic at all, and David does try to come up with an interesting way to do that. Unfortunately, either he’s not good enough or the strictures of the format were too much for him, and Gray is just an action thriller, which isn’t the worst thing in the world for it to be, but that still doesn’t make it a great comic. It’s fine. I do feel bad if the creators besides David were hurt financially because of COVID and Clover’s inability or unwillingness to promote this, because that sucks. But I still can’t recommend it more than just to say that it’s fine. Which it is. You can find both volumes on Amazon – here’s the link to volume 1!

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆