Detectives, Inc: A Terror of Dying Dreams - a Review

Gene Colan, a talented artist whose work in the comic book industry spanned six decades, passed away on June 23, 2011. Colan will most likely be remembered for his incredible runs drawing Tomb of Dracula, Daredevil and Iron Man for Marvel Comics. I wanted to take the opportunity to examine a less known, but undoubtedly brilliant, graphic novel Colan illustrated, working with writer Don McGregor. The following review was originally written ten years ago, and it has been updated & revised.

Detectives, Inc: A Terror Of Dying Dreams

Writer: Don McGregor; Pencils: Gene Colan

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Detectives, Inc: A Terror Of Dying Dreams, a graphic novel by Don McGregor and Gene Colan, was originally published by Eclipse Comics in 1985. A noir mystery, the book featured McGregor's two private investigators Bob Rainier and Ted Denning (the pair made their debut in Detectives, Inc: A Remembrance of Threatening Green, drawn by Marshall Rogers, another artist who is unfortunately no longer with us). A Terror of Dying Dreams was reprinted in 1999 by Image Comics. In 2009, the two Detectives, Inc graphic novels were collected together in a lavish hardcover volume by IDW Publishing.

A Terror of Dying Dreams opens simultaneously on the three protagonists: Bob Rainier, Ted Denning, and Dierdre Sevens. Each is poised at a threshold. For Rainier, it is the gaudy entrance to a Times Square strip club. For Denning, it is an elevator in a hospital. For Stevens, it is the front door of an old friend's house. By opening the story in this manner, McGregor does a marvelous job of juxtaposing the trio's individual circumstances, at the same time setting the stage for an examination of each character.

Rainier, divorced and gloomy, sulks along the alleyways of adult entertainment, vainly attempting to convince himself that he can easy his loneliness. Denning rides the elevator to a waiting room, where he meets with his father, and the two discuss old times, all the while waiting for news of Denning's ailing mother. And Sevens, a social worker, comes to pay a visit on Leila, a friend who asks for advice, but is unwilling to leave an abusive marriage.

The paths of the three protagonists soon intersect. Rainier and Denning are partners in a private detective agency. Dierdre Sevens hires the pair to follow Leila's brutal husband Doug. Dierdre hopes to get evidence of Doug in a compromising situation, something that she might use to finally convince Leila to leave him. Rainier and Denning go to work, with Dierdre in tow, and they soon find evidence that Doug is having an affair. Of course, as with the best of detective fiction, this apparently simple case ends up leading them into a much larger scandal. And with that comes plenty of twists and danger.

Don McGregor is probably best known for his work on Killraven and Black Panther at Marvel in the 1970s. His interpretation of the later character had a significant influence on subsequent writers' depictions of T'Challa. While I certainly liked McGregor's plotting on those classic Black Panther stories, at times I did find his scripting to be somewhat ponderous.

Fortunately, I did not have any such problems with A Terror of Dying Dreams. I think that McGregor's heavy prose is much better suited to this genre. Mystery and detective fiction has always relied on strong narration and description to establish a particular atmosphere, as well as to delve into the characters, their backgrounds, and how they relate to each other and the world in which they exist. As I noted at the opening of this review, this is exactly what McGregor does with Rainier, Denning, and Sevens at the story's opening and throughout the rest of the story. A Terror of Dying Dreams is as much about these three individuals as it is about the solving of a mystery. McGregor's introspective writing superbly portrays these characters, and establishes the realities they live in. While still occasionally heavy, for the most part McGregor's narration is strikingly appropriate.

Gene Colan's work on A Terror of Dying Dreams is superb. His art style, with its unconventional layouts and extensive use of shadows, was perfectly suited for a story such as this. On occasion, I have found Colan's work to be rather jarring, at least as far as some of the superhero stories he drew. His style was perhaps a bit ill-suited to that genre, and was more appropriate for mystery, suspense, and horror. The fact that Colan was so successful with Daredevil over the years was no doubt due to that character's firm grounding in reality, set amidst the grim urban locales of Hell's Kitchen in Manhattan. Likewise, Colan's work on Doctor Strange was memorable, with his haunting, moody depictions of unearthly, supernatural phenomena.

Colan was probably a difficult artist to ink, due to his very distinctive style, as well as his aforementioned use of shadows and darkness. Of the numerous inkers who tackled Colan's pencils over the years, I think perhaps there were only two whose efforts meshed smoothly and naturally with his work, namely Tom Palmer and Al Williamson. More significantly, the dark, shadowy nature of Colan's pencils probably made his stories a challenge to color, and I suspect that some colorists unwittingly end up obliterating the fine detail of Colan's work. In recent years, it has been something of a revelation seeing many of his stories reprinted in black & white within various Marvel Essentials collections.

The art in A Terror of Dying Dreams is reproduced directly from Colan's uninked pencils, and the book is black & white. The result is crisp and stunning. Colan's work has never looked better. Visible is the intricate detail of his work, the subtle gradations of shadow and lighting that he utilizes. The emotions of McGregor's characters are vividly brought to life by Colan's illustration of their facial expressions and fluid body language. The many and varied settings, from the time-faded boardwalks of Brighton Beach to the glitz of midtown Manhattan, the seedy trappings of Times Square, and the suburban gentility of Dobbs Ferry, are brought to life by Colan's talent. The scenes of action and danger are dramatically rendered, all the while retaining a definite realism and believability.

This was the type of genre that Colan excelled in. It is a pity that he seldom had opportunities to work on tales of noir-ish mystery, due to the almost total dominance of superhero stories in comics from the 1960s onward. At least the last decade or so has seen that monopoly begin to falter, with more diversity coming to the medium of sequential illustration. That allowed Colan to work on a number of excellent, varied stories in the final years of his life. Although from a somewhat earlier period, his collaboration with Don McGregor on A Terror of Dying Dreams fits in with that later body of work. The graphic novel allows us a look at Colan's skill and talent at work on a different type of story, and in a format that allows for the full impact and detail of his art to be experienced.

Sequential illustration is ideally the synthesis of words and images. In A Terror of Dying Dreams, that synthesis is nearly flawless. McGregor's writing and Colan's art complement each other. The majority of McGregor's script is dialogue. Those narrative passages that he does write are usually at the beginning of each chapter, set alongside or between captionless establishing shots by Colan. McGregor clearly had confidence in Colan, trusting that the art and the dialogue will work together to communicate what is taking place. He does not clutter up the panels with captions that state what the reader can plainly see. A Terror of Dying Dreams is an outstanding example of what can happen when a talented writer and a skilled artist work together, combining their efforts and recognizing each other's strengths. The result is a balance between story and art, with neither overwhelming the other, but instead becoming that ideal synthesis, where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

And, simply put, A Terror of Dying Dreams is an enjoyable, intelligently written graphic novel with superb artwork. I definitely recommend it. The book is one of the highlights of both Don McGregor and Gene Colan's careers. It certainly stands as a testament to Colan's artistic brilliance.