Overview

"Private investigator Frank Armstrong barely scrapes by in the Los Angeles underbelly until ""the big one"" hits his desk. Locate and retrieve the daughter of a drug kingpin, and he can finally afford more than the one-dollar meatloaf. Unfortunately, the job offer arrives just as the symptoms of his fatal, late-stage brain tumor intensify. Frank must find the target and keep her safe while time collapses, family turns into foe, and the specter of his murdered wife resurfaces in the eyes of a mobster's daughter."

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9781620103265

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BOOKLIST -- Self-characterized sad sack of shit Frank Armstrong is an off-the-books PI, semi-retired. In his favored beanery one day, a strong-arm materializes in Frank's booth with a job offer: find the boss' daughter, who stole from him to elope with her boyfriend. Then Frank's bad headache suddenly knocks extra hard, scaring even the muscle across from him. Soon enough, he's in the hospital with a metastasizing brain tumor. But the daughter looks just like the wife he lost 20 years ago, blown away by her father as Frank fears this girl will be. With the girl's help, he crashes out of the hospital and keeps her moving for her own safety while he figures out how to put her completely out of danger. Meanwhile, the tumor has Frank thinking the girl is his wife and scrambles his sense of past and present. Fialkov's near-perfect noir script, brim-full of violence and pain, is superbly realized by Tuazon's detailed yet sketchy black-and-white drawing, which depicts Frank's seesawing between hard-ass gumshoe and whimpering old man so convincingly it's scary. PUBLISHERS WEEKLY -- The first comic created for Amazon Kindle turns out to be more than just an experimental curiosity. When Frank Armstrong, an elderly failed PI, is hired to find a drug boss's daughter, he sees a chance to redeem himself for failing to prevent his own wife's murder decades ago. Unfortunately, Frank's inoperable brain tumor means that his senses betray him so that he doesn't always know what year he's living in or whether he's walking down the gritty L.A. streets or lying flat on his back in a hospital bed. He's obviously dying; the question is whether he can pull himself together long enough to win moral salvation. Fialkov's hard-boiled script shows Frank's desperate toughness, though it's somewhat unbelievable to discover that he's been walking around with a compound fracture of his left femur. Tuazon's crude-looking black and white art is also effective, switching from fine line and wash to scrappy brush work as Frank's consciousness fluctuates. There's nothing subtle about Tumor, but it's successful noir storytelling. SEATTLE PI -- Fialkov's Tumor is simply a brilliant comic. You'll find yourself getting sucked into Frank's twisted world where death isn't the worst thing he's going to have to face. The way it pairs Frank's past with the present makes for a really gripping read, and by the end you may just think Frank isn't such a bad guy. Throw in some nice artwork from Tuazon that really hammers home the similarities in the past and the present, and you can see why it's dominated the Kindle charts.

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