Criminal Macabre: No Peace For Dead Men
One-Shot
Written by Steve Niles
Art by Christopher Mitten
Colors by Michelle Madsen
Dark Horse Comics
Release Date: September 14, 2011
Cover Price: $3.99

Full disclosure: I’m a big Steve Niles fan. I loved 30 Days of Night and Wake The Dead, as well as his work on Batman, Spawn, and JSA. His reinvention of one of my favorite characters in the DC universe in The Creeper: Welcome to Creepsville is still one of my comic treasures. So I have to say I was worried when I heard about his Criminal Macabre project. The supernatural private dick angle has been played before, and masterfully so with Hellblazer.

That being said, I’ve always been pleasantly surprised with Criminal Macabre. While Cal McDonald does have certain classic noir elements that would remind you of John Constantine, in place of Constantine’s Cockney con artist and wiseass is a bitter, depressed, and extremely violent detective with little in the way of pathos.