Reviews in Brief: Welcome to the Jungle by Jim Butcher and Ardian Syaf

A little bit of something sort of new: moving from manga to graphic novels again here, with a new work by Jim Butcher that marks his entry into comics. Welcome to the Jungle is a prequel of sorts to The Dresden Files, his series on the adventures of Harry Dresden, Chicago's only wizard for hire.

It looks open and shut: a murder outside the ape house at Lincoln Park Zoo, a blood trail leading back to the gorilla's enclosure, the victim the son-in-law of an alderman: the gorilla did it. Karrin Murphy, head of CPD's Special Investigations Unit -- the "spook squad" -- wonders why the gorilla only cleaned up part of the evidence and locked itself back in its cage. Needless to say, the gorilla didn't do it -- it's much worse than that.

Ardian Syaf's graphics are pretty damned good -- I like them, which is not the usual case for me with Western comics: the frames are lean enough, and he takes enough liberties with frame-follows-frame page layouts that I never lost interest, and he manages a clear narrative flow throughout. The colors, by Digikore Studios, are clear and rich, and just as sophisticated as the drawings. Character designs are good, although everyone seems to spend a lot of time frowning.

The story seemed a bit thin, but I'm used to the novels in the series; come to think of it, there's a fair amount of description in the stories, and after all, a picture is worth. . . . So, maybe I'll just not worry about that too much.

One plus: the cover gallery at the end, with alternate covers by Chris McGrath -- I'd love to see McGrath do a series. (The cover illustrated is by McGrath, as it happens. I'll see if I can dig up a sample of Syaf's art on this one.) In fact, I'm going to be on the lookout for examples of his work: his covers are very realistic but also kind of dream-scapes. Very nice.

Del Rey did this one.

Here's Syaf's cover for the first of the series.