She’s getting ready for her TV debut … and so am I

Stumptown Vol. 1 hardcover (The Case of the Girl Who Took her Shampoo (But Left her Mini)
Oni Press
Creators: Greg Rucka, Matthew Southworth, Lee Loughridge and Rico Renzi
Release date: March 2011

In case you haven’t yet heard, Greg Rucka’s and Matthew Southworth’s creation Stumptown is headed to ABC as a television pilot sometime this next season. The pilot will star Cobie Smulders as the main protagonist, Portland, Oregon, private investigator Dex Parios.

I don’t have any experience with Southworth’s art, at least not that I can recall, but Rucka is one of my favorite writers. I have followed his comics work on titles like Gotham Central, Batman, Adventures of Superman, Wonder Woman and Queen and Country, even following that last series into some of his prose work. He is well known as a writer who can easily handle strong female characters. I can’t argue with that assessment, but I think he handles most of the characters he writes with skill and an ear for dialogue and consistent characterization.

I purchased this first volume of Stumptown a couple years ago with a few other independent graphic novels Rucka authored with the intent of trying them out. They went on that ever-growing “sometime” pile and stayed there. That is, until the announcement of the new pilot made me decide to move this particular hardcover to the top of the stack. It did not disappoint.

Dex is a typical P.I. in the vein of Jim Rockford of television’s “The Rockford Files”; she has a good heart, a lot of brains, a quick wit and really crappy luck. That crappy luck extends to the gambling table, where Dex has racked up quite a debt to the house at the beginning of this story. The owner of the casino, Sue-Lynne Suppa, agrees to forgive Dex’s debt if Dex will find Sue-Lynne's missing granddaughter. This first hardcover includes all four issues of the initial Stumptown series as Dex tries to track down the missing 18-year-old despite opposition from several sides. Players in opposition to Dex seem to know immediately the case Dex is investigating before she has any chance to uncover who or why someone might want to harm the missing girl. Rucka weaves an engaging whodunit that takes readers along for the ride as Dex tries to finally make sense of the forces lined up against her.

Southworth’s art is dark and moody, which suits a title like this one, without being “muddy” like some dark comics can tend to get. Loughridge’s and Renzi’s colors help with the atmosphere, as well. They keep the color palette simple and sparse, except when a few carefully placed bright colors are needed to emphasize a dramatic panel or two.

If you haven’t tried Stumptown and like P.I. fiction, I heartily recommend this volume. I plan to seek out the subsequent three volumes in the very near future, and I also plan to give “Stumptown” a watch on television when it debuts.