“The first page is great. Horrifying, but great.
And then I was confused as all fuck for a while.
The thing is, the story bounces all around a timeline. From the time bodies start appearing in the woods until the time Gary Ridgeway is caught and questioned. Things smooth out about half way through, maybe a little further, but I kept getting lost in trying to figure out where we were in time.
It’s not good enough to put a date in. It’s a comic book! Give me a half dozen good, visual cues. The great thing about a comic book, you can be obvious about this stuff without crazy dialogue that never happened. “Hey, this Michael Jackson, who is currently a child, is going to be a big star as an adult, I reckon.” No, you can just show me some things that anchor me in the time periods. A specific car. Have the character dress in the same, slightly weird tie. Something.
I know, I can be a lazy and stupid reader sometimes. Sue me.
But I do feel like everybody is always trying to mess with a timeline rather than telling a story straight from the beginning to the end.
This story, the idea behind this book, is excellent. And I can see why they made the choice to jump through time. The detective character is haunted by the Green River Killer and it’s lorded over his life, his whole life. But hell, I think the story loses something really important when I feel like I have to stop and say, “Okay, what year is it? And during that year, in the narrative, we’re…let me consult my timeline.””