Vertigo Crime Books in Order

Vertigo Crime was built for graphic novels that leaned toward noir, not capes. Jason Starr's entry in that line, The Chill, fits the mission well and then adds a weird old darkness of its own. On the surface, it begins like a serial killer book. It is summer in New York, the murders are ritualized and increasingly sadistic, and the police keep circling a mysterious young woman named Arlana.

The problem is that every witness describes her differently.

That is where the book stops feeling like a standard manhunt and starts moving into stranger ground. The one person who thinks he can make sense of it is Martin Cleary, an Irish cop from Boston who is already worn down before the case fully opens up. He carries a secret from his past, and the story slowly suggests that the explanation for the killings may reach much farther back than one contemporary psychopath.

What makes The Chill interesting is the balance. Starr never abandons the procedural pull of the plot. There are clues, interviews, pressure from the authorities, and the usual misery that comes with hunting a killer in a city that never really calms down. But over that structure he layers Irish myth, old guilt, and the sense that Martin is not just investigating something, he is being drawn back into it.

The mood does a lot of work here. New York should feel hot and crowded, yet the book gives off a cold undertow, as if the case is lowering the temperature around everyone who touches it. That makes it a strong fit for the Vertigo Crime banner, which liked crime stories that were a little dirtier, stranger, or more psychologically bent than standard line work.

If you want a straight detective puzzle, this is not quite that. If you want noir with a supernatural shiver running through it, The Chill is the better pitch. Martin Cleary is not chasing a clean answer. He is chasing something that may have been waiting for him all along.