Eye on Comics

Ruffians #s 1 & 2

by Don MacPherson

Ruffians is a book about hitmen, the regular guys they can be and the nasty things they do. The thing is that the hitmen look as though they're characters from Ben Edlund's The Tick, but they talk as though they're from Frank Miller's Sin City. I can't tell if the creator's use of cartoon animal characters is meant to satirize the hard-boiled genre or if it's just a wrong-headed attempt at crime noir storytelling. It doesn't succeed in either vein, so I suppose it's a moot point. The art is rough and a bit amateurish. Canini clearly has a problem with perspective and anatomy. He needs to develop as an artist much more or hire one with whom he can collaborate in the future. The real shame of it is that this story of murder among murderers is mildly intriguing, but the oddities of the story and art get in the way. Also odd is the fact that the publisher offers a traditional black-and-white comic book for the first issue and a 16-page, cheap, newsprint-only format for the second. It's priced accordingly, yes, but it also boasts none of the appeal of a traditional comic or even a mini-comic. 2/10