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Brooklyn is a nice place to live, but you wouldn’t want to die there.

Back in the 1960’s, films like ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ and ‘The Wild Bunch’ ushered cinema into a new and unashamed world of extremely graphic violence, and it changed Hollywood forever. Violence is nothing new to comics, but never has it been better utilized than by Garth Ennis. He’s one of the new pioneers of comics and violence. He can make it truly horrific, with his run on Hellblazer or his War Stories series, he can make it truly extreme with his run on The Punisher or Preacher, and he can make it truly hilarious like in The Boys. But when he and Jimmy Palmiotti got together and decided to make a grim and gritty and realistic crime story with Back to Brooklyn, he’s kinda toning it down, making the violence not quite as graphic, but still more resonant than most.

The first issue of this mini begins with the man who looks to be our main character Bob Saetta is in a room in New York‘s One Police Plaza. Bob is the Number Two man of the Saetta crime family out of Brooklyn, and he sits there ready to give the cops and feds everything. Why? We don’t know that yet, but what we do know that all he seems to want out of the deal is that is wife and child are protected. Cops are about to get to the motel where they’re staying, but he gets a call from his son, who promptly puts Bob’s brother Paulie on the phone. Paulie is the Number One guy in the family and he tells his brother not to say a word. Unfortunately, it’s too late for the six cops who were stationed at the motel because they’re already dead. So Bob’s deal changes: He wants one weekend to go back to Brooklyn and get his family and then he’ll return to face the music. The FBI and the cops realize that having a big win against a powerful crime family is necessary in the current political climate, so they take his new deal, and Bob is released with no tails, no backup, no nothing. Just his brains and his balls. And with his brother and the mob he controls, it really seems like he’s going to need both.

First off, this is a pretty short issue. And that’s not really a criticism. It’s tight, with solid Ennis dialogue, who has always had an ear for gritty street talk. It’s well-paced, the characters are defined enough for the time being. And of course there’s bursts of violence and twisted humor, particularly in the scene with Paulie and his particular brand of horizontal refreshment. And the art by Mihailo Vukelic is really well done. It’s dark and gritty, but no heavy lines of definition, and his use of muted color also works well. But most of all, I just love the plot of this comic. I’m always a fan of good crime tales, but this one with its twist of giving our anti-hero only 72 hours out of police custody to run a gauntlet of mobsters, killers and other various scum is a welcome idea. It’s not particularly new, but it gives us a powerful sense of urgency that a lot of other crime tales lack. It’s always good to see a comic doing something fresh, and fresh is one of Ennis’s specialties. Props must also go to Palmiotti for being the co-creator here, but as per usual, Ennis is the real talent here.

Back to Brooklyn probably isn’t going to be on par with a crime title like Criminal, but I have a feeling that before it’s over, it might get pretty close.

Back to Brooklyn #1
Story by Garth Ennis and Jimmy Palmiotti
Written by Garth Ennis
Art by Mihailo Vukelic
Letters by Simon Bowland

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