The city changes people. At least, that’s what the people living in Snowtown like to think. Fell #9opens with what’s probably the closest thing you get to an intervention in the Snowtown Police Department as Lt. Beard tries to warn Detective Richard Fell about Fell’s alarming recklessness and disregard for the right way things should be done. Since Fell was transferred to Snowtown, he’s changed and the Lt. thinks it is not for the better. Fell says nothing during the meeting, looking away from his boss. Does he believe Beard? Does he think he’s changed since coming from “over the bridge?” Lucky for Fell that before he really has to face up to what Lt. Beard is trying to do, the news of a hostage situation comes through and Fell, who claims to have done a course on hostage negotiations before, jumps on the case and gets to avoid confronting his own issues. At the hostage scene, Fell “negotiates” through a closed door with the man who’s holding an aged couple hostage. For seven pages, Fell talks to a door. Sounds exciting doesn’t it?
The plot in Fell #9, while good, is no where near as interesting as what Warren Ellis and Ben Templesmith are trying to do in this issue. The plot and its resolution feel like one of Ellis’s “ripped from the headlines” plots that he’s been doing with this title, finding the strange, bizarre and sometimes downright repulsive news on the internet and injecting those happenings into Snowtown. On one hand, this method of finding stories has given Fell a sense of realism, knowing that the crimes that Richard Fell faces are not fictional and unrealistic. Some of the sick, depraved things that have happened in this series have happened and could be happening right now somewhere in this world. (Well, except for the nun in the Nixon mask who is strangely absent this issue.) On the other hand, I could read these stories on CNN.com, news.google.com, BBC.com and any number of other websites. At what point does the real-world plotting become meaningless when I can get these stories on my web browser?
Of course, there is an art to comics and an art to telling stories no matter where the idea came from. That’s where Ellis and Templesmith succeed with Fell; in the way that they have crafted this comic book. I cannot imagine many other writers or artists having the skill to entertainingly show seven pages of one man talking to a door. On one level, all we’re seeing is a negotiation. That’s the plot. But on the far more interesting level, Ellis and Templesmith are showing us Fell’s thought process. As he talks to the hostage taker, Fell “sees” him through the door. Actually what he sees is a stick figure in his own mind that represents the hostage taker. Is that how Fell sees people? As simple stick figures who are easy to figure out? Or does his own mind mind work at that simple level, reducing the most tense situations to simple childish drawings? It’s an interesting look into Fell’s mind and raises some questions about how he perceives the world around him.
Fell #9 is more about Richard Fell, who he is and what he is, than it is about some guy taking an old couple hostage. Ellis does not come right out and say “Here’s Detective Richard Fell. He was transferred to Snowtown because he didn’t get along with his superiors. He is slowly but definitely losing his grip on reality and the city is to blame.” That would be kind of boring, wouldn’t it? Instead, this issue gives us hints into Fell’s character. Why was he transferred to Snowtown? How is the city really affecting him? Ellis and Templesmith give hints to these questions all while Fell is talking to a man behind the door.
Templesmith’s artwork really has a temperature to it, doesn’t it? During the seven page negotiation stretch, Templesmith alternates between blue hued panels and orangish panels. It sets up a very hot and cold dichotomy during the sequence and shows an attention to color and mood that is hardly present in comics. Some panels are intense in their color while others have the orange and blue intermingled. It’s subtle but it is one of the things that manages to keep the reader off balance and from getting too comfortable reading Fell.
Fell #9
Written by: Warren Ellis
Illustrated by: Ben Templesmith
Lettered by: Chris Eliopoulos
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