William Lindsay Gresham's 1946 novel Nightmare Alley is rightly considered a masterpiece of noir, with its depiction of a carnival hustler who expands his con-man routine into a spiritualist scam to ensnare and cheat rubes of the upperclass, where's there's real money to be made. His portrait of Stanton Carlisle's rise and terrible fall is wonderfully depraved, giving the reader a fly-on-the-wall sense of watching an accident happen in slow motion, while revealing the shadier aspects of carny life with microscopic precision.

Spain Rodriguez, one of the better known artists from the early days of underground comics, spent several years working on this adaptation of the novel, which was to have been originally published in the mid-'90s. It finally makes its debut here.

I wanted to like this adaptation a lot more than I did. There's an unfortunate flatness and a tiring narrative consistency to the art. Spain's human figures have always had a posed, wooden quality to them, and while this style has worked for such creations as Trashman, it doesn't for this tale. It's not the genre tropes, but the characters themselves that make this particular story involving, and none of the characters ever spring to life on the page, though rendered with exacting detail. Carlisle, for example, seems to have two expressions when he's not working his scams -- a sneer or a snarl. The women are never desirable in the least (parents who wish their sons to avoid onanism should offer them Spain nudes), and every character has at least a hint of ugliness. While that might sound fitting for this novel, it becomes wearying, like watching a movie in which every actor is a Diane Arbus subject.

There's very little sense of movement throughout, and with few exceptions, Spain seldom varies a standard four panel per page layout. Instead of using the medium to visually expand the story, the story seems pushed into a predetermined format. Dialogue balloons often take up a third or even an entire half of the panel, and what should be the various climaxes of the tale end up as just more incidents. Even the ending, which should be both quiet and chilling, is only quiet and fails to impress. There is a sleazy sordidness about the whole, but the lack of highs and lows make for a less than involving and rather tedious reading experience.

If you're a big fan of Spain's work, by all means give this a try. But if you're new to his art, this isn't the place to start. The same principle goes for the original novel. If you haven't read Nightmare Alley, go straight to the Gresham source.

- Rambles
written by Chet Williamson
published 15 November 2003