Chin Music #1 Review

By Zac Boone on Wednesday, May 8th, 2013

Writer Steve Niles and artist Tony Harris bring you Chin Music, a brand new mystic noir series full of gangsters and magic. Here’s the official description of issue #1 from Image:

Shaw is a man on the run and lost in time. Fleeing ancient enemies, Shaw finds himself in prohibition-era Chicago surrounded by gangers and demons alike and caught between law enforcement and the local supernatural underground. CHIN MUSIC is a tale of mysticism and violence like nothing you’ve experienced before.

I’m hesitant to critique Niles’ story too strongly with this first issue, because it feels a lot like a prologue to the larger tale. Not that much happens, or is revealed, although a lot is hinted. The event that serves as the basis for the entire story going forward (as far as I understand) doesn’t happen until the very end of the issue. All this is good, because it suggests Niles has a clear plan and means for this series to be around for a while. And yet, it doesn’t give us a lot to go on with this first issue.

Tony Harris’ art is positively gorgeous. It’s mostly the Art Deco (with a touch of Art Nouveau) panel frames, which are particularly topical, thanks to the endless commercials for The Great Gatsby. That said, the backgrounds and color palette are very atmospheric, and the characters are, by turns, sinister, gruesome, or simply very human.

Oddly enough, as beautiful as Harris’ panels are (Seriously, just let your eyes wander over the page. Don’t even read the damn thing.) they do cause problems for the story, although Niles is at fault to. His emphasis on slow build, interspersed with sudden action, makes it difficult to follow the story. Similarly, Harris’ focus on form over function means that the flow of events can be difficult to decipher. All this contributes to the feeling that this is merely a prologue and that what we’re seeing now will be explained in future issues.