Plot: Gangster story that comes off more as a con than a pro.

Comments: Dock Walloper is about a prohibition era gangster with a big right hand, and that's no metaphor. John "The Hand" Smith has an oversized right paw. Now it stands to reason that such an outstanding physical attribute would serve as a metaphor about something in the story. The best I can come up with is about reach exceeding grasp… Come to think of it, that IS an apt metaphor, but as a metaphor for Ed Burn's gangster comic. Little makes sense here for a plot or story arc. The arc of a gangster story involves a rise and fall structure, but that's not here to any real degree. In the intervening issue (#3) John becomes a media hero and earns the animosity of his boss' second in command.

The issue opens with a botched hit on Smith. Smith and his life long friend Bootsie's (the black guy) natural reaction is to high tail it out of town… oh, after a "Last Big Score." In case you didn't realize, "The Last Big Score" is probably the most over used cliché in the genre. It wouldn't be so bad if Smith had a plan other than stealing a big opium shipment for his "big score." But that's it really and, by the way, his boss and number 2 know about the job because Smith told them about it. This doesn't even cross Smith's mind when doing the heist, which is strange because it occurs to me. When Gentleman Jim (the Number 2) shows up at the opium heist, it's a big surprise to Smith, if not to me, or anyone else with a smattering of intelligence. An interesting wrinkle in the crime genre (particularly the Heist types) is getting out of a jam with guile, smarts and surprise twist. John just punches his way through the goons but that's not enough. John's ass is saved by Bootsie's gal Ring-a-Ling who, being Chinese, is a kung fu master aside from being a prostitute. Bootsie takes a bullet (but it's just one of those good guy hits in the shoulder) and they escape. At this point any rational character would leave till things cooled off a bit, but not John! He heads right back in to have sex his boss' moll. There is a minor "motivation" when John finds out that his boss killed his father years ago, but it was an accident, not intentional, and John doesn't really seem affected by the news anyway. Cora, the moll, tells Smith that all she really wants is to cash out and get a little place to call her own, after she somehow gets revenge on Madden for killing her father. This is another of the most overused clichés you can have in a crime story, but Dock Walloper seems intent on hitting them all. Naturally, Madden knows about Cora and John and kills her in a burst of jealousy. It should be noted that when Madden kills Cora the art slips into black and white with a few items in color (one being blood red), sound familiar? It's a jarring style shift, and making a visual reference to "Sin City" really only points out how this crime comic doesn't measure up. Frank Miller, for all his bombast, understood what makes crime melodrama tick; Ed Burns only has a slight grasp of the surface. It could be chalked up to inexperience, but Jimmy Palmiotti is also on board and he should know better. Another problem with the story is that the pacing lurches from stilted dialogue to increasingly over the top action sequences. John and Bootsie are attacked at their Coney Island hideout… well, on the boardwalk. Somehow Bootsie finds himself on the tracks of the roller coaster running from a carload of thugs. Then he amazingly grabs a shovel that was on the tracks, leaps off the tracks and decapitates one of the thugs. Action sequences should have a sense of internal logic (or at least a sense of coherency); if they do, you can get as crazy as you want to (check out the last coupla issues of Midnighter for an example of insane action that never stops making sense no matter how outlandish). If they don't, you get shovels on the tallest peak of a roller coaster (what could anybody be digging for on top of a roller coaster?). The issue ends with John, Bootsie and whomever driving off a bridge plunging down into oblivion. Now there is an apt metaphor for this comic.

Final Word: Essentially, in this issue nobody acts with an ounce of common sense, a key survival trait in the regular world little less the criminal one. The characters basically feel interchangeable; the only thing that distinguishes John from the others is his big right hand. You care little for any of them for that reason. Also, when the script realizes it has nothing to say, a host of goons appear and we jump into an action sequence. I still like the art somewhat, but it's not enough to salvage the near incoherent mess this book has become. The characters in a crime story have to be cunning and have smarts; Even with their fatal flaws and violent behavior, there has to be something in them that the audience can relate to. The only thing John "The Hand" Smith has possessed in Dock Walloper is blind luck. That kind of luck runs out eventually. I have no plans to be there when it does.

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