CROSS BONE STYLE: Review of Akira Hiramoto, Me and the Devil Blues (poss. volume 1): In this manga Robert Johnson sells his soul to the Devil at the crossroads. The first half of this book explores the terrible consequences for himself and those around him. The second half hooks him up somehow with Clyde of Bonnie-and, and takes Clyde’s POV for the most part as we simmer in miserable anticipation of what will happen to Johnson.

The first thing to say is that this book has what Stephen King calls the “gotta”: I gotta keep reading. The art is beautiful and makes everyone look real; both Johnson and Clyde remind me of the misheard lyric, “Everybody’s crazy ’bout a shot-dead man.” I loved the character designs for all of the black characters in the almost-all-black opening half. The more openly horrific scenes are generally done as splash pages, with a furry charcoal style I’m not entirely sure I like but which does definitely convey a sense of broken boundaries, blurred identities, and unknown horrors out in the dark.

The pacing is amazing. There’s a long sequence in the second half, which if you described it to me I would consider a boring distraction, in which Johnson is captured for lynching and so the POV switches almost entirely to Clyde as he experiences a tiny Southern town which is like… let’s say if Preacher were actually good. (Seriously, I’ve never understood the appeal of Preacher as much as I did when reading this section. Even the Cormac McCarthy white-whale antagonist is scary! I didn’t think I could still find a horror comic where Southern gothic actually worked.)

So anyway, watch the pacing throughout this long, drawn-out horrorshow. Watch how Hiramoto alternates between closeups of a sweating Clyde and background shots of the bar. Watch how a simple “Ah,” on page 462, becomes a sign that the blind white man wants to get inside Clyde’s head and destroy his will. Watch the unbearable tension as page 465 builds toward page 469. Every “camera angle” and every heart-stopping panel border is meant to build the menace… and it works. This is genuinely one of the most frightening comics I’ve ever read, even though the “small town evil” trope usually doesn’t work for me. This one made it work.

I won’t tell you what happens next. I will say that this is the first volume of a series, and I need that series! I will say that there’s a supernatural-horror development which I initially thought was a bit silly, but by the end of the second half I thought was frightening and poignant. This is the real thing. This is the deepest blues.