DARK CORRIDOR: The title of the series is an umbrella term, like "The Twilight Zone." While the first serial is focused in on the citizens of Red Circle and the crimes they commit, the series can go anywhere, genre-wise.
CRIME: Fans of David Lapham's STRAY BULLETS or Sean Phillips & Ed Brubaker's CRIMINAL should pay close attention to DARK CORRIDOR. If STRAY BULLETS scratches your itch for grounded, street-level crime drama, and CRIMINAL gives you all the thrills of a Michael Mann film on paper, DARK CORRIDOR sits somewhere between the two, louche like Elliott Gould in The Long Goodbye but menacing and determined like Christopher Walken in King of New York.
ART: Tommaso has an expert grasp of setting a scene. The houses, city streets, and run-down studio apartments feel lived-in and real. Everything has character. Random cars parked on the street are dented and dinged, speed boats cruise in the water, and landing planes scream by in the distance. Red City feels real because you recognize everything that goes into it, and that, in turn, makes the murder at the center of the story even more believable.
STORYTELLING: Part of the beauty of comics is that anything goes, and Tommaso knows it. Flashbacks are rendered right alongside present-day scenes, with context providing not just clues for what's happening but also further building up the city of Red Circle. This is a comic you want to read slowly, and then again when you finish. The reader has just as much information on what's going on as the characters in this first issue do, but there's plenty to help you guess what's next.
TRUST NO ONE: You're going to make an assumption on page one, shortly before it's debunked by the story. Keep that in mind as you read. In a city full of criminals and killers, who can you really trust? In a story about a city just like that...what can you assume is true?
