Playback: By Raymond Chandler adapted by Ted Benoit and Francois Ayroles
Arcade Publishing
Hardcover Graphic Novel $27.95
Mystery and crime novelist Raymond Chandler was once approached about writing a newspaper comic strip. "I wouldn’t know how to do it, and if I did I wouldn’t want to," the cantankerously crusty crime novelist retorted. Graphic novel Playback adapts Chandler’s never-produced screenplay of the same name, a murder mystery set in Vancouver shortly after World War II; it shows Chandler perhaps missed a calling when he rejected the offer.
Chandler’s original 1948 screenplay for the movie Playback was presumed lost until its rediscovery in Universal Studios’ archives in 1985. Playback already exists as a novel. Chandler took the script for Playback and adapted it into his last, and least popular, book in the Philip Marlowe series. In 2005, Ted Benoit and Francois Ayroles took the original movie script for Playback and adapted it into a graphic novel. The graphic novel is now available in English for the first time.
The script for Playback is classic Chandler, exposing the highs and lows of the human heart in the raw light of a hard-boiled crime story. There are plenty of trench coats, butts, murders alongside old-fashioned pulp-style nastiness, but what is missing is a narrator. In Chandler’s Marlowe novels, Marlowe moves through the criminal world and social elite taking the reader with him on his journey, but Playback the screenplay (and graphic novel) isn’t a Marlowe story (he’s not in the graphic novel at all) and it lacks the direction of one. By the third act, the plot is bogged down by its own dejected heroine; Betty Mayfield’s permanent air of dour defeat proves more tiring than tragic. After hanging around her for a while she’d be one dame no one would rush to help out of a jam.
Mayfield, the story’s femme fatale (or is she?) tries to outrun her troubles at home in the United States by sneaking away at night and trekking up to Vancouver. On her way there she meets gigolo and boozehound Larry Mitchell, who tries to seduce her while offering to get her a room at the Grand Hotel because she doesn’t have much dough. It is at the hotel we meet the motley crew of inhabitants and miscreants roaming the halls in Chandler’s trademark style.
The sudden discovery of a stiff’s plugged body on Betty’s balcony is reminiscent to how her husband was knocked off (and the reason for her flight after getting out of the hoosegow), and is enough to get a grim war hero-turned-lawman, the monocle-wearing, Inspector Killaine involved to sort out the truth. Several plot points seem quite forced: Killaine’s unexplained and sudden love for Betty, and Betty’s personality; we have a hard time believing the glum and humourless woman is the irresistible looker she’s meant to be.
Artist Ayroles employs a stiff, angular block-like style that keeps the tone ice-cold and Chandler’s meandering plot moving swiftly enough to hold your interest. North American comic fans who mainly read comics from DC Comics or Marvel Comics may have a hard time with the art because it is not as realistic or detailed as Neal Adams or Bryan Hitch would produce, nor is it as kinetic as Norm Breyfogle or Alan Davis. Fans of independent publishers will appreciate the art because of its unique lines and lack of colour.
The artwork is reminiscent of the Sin City graphic novel by Frank Miller. Like Sin City, the entire book is stark black and white with no shades of grey, but Ayroles lacks Miller’s storytelling techniques and artistic ability to make each person look distinct. Where Miller really shines in the black and white arena is his ability to show movement. Each Miller novel could be followed without dialogue by the progression of panels. The static poses in Playback’s panels don’t give the book any sense of movement. It ends up being a satisfyingly dark work that fits the sinister nature of Chandler’s tale.
Playback somewhat relies on the characters’ reflections on the past. Their playbacks, so to speak, are a narrative device which, though commonplace today, fit in well with the pulp style of crime noir writing. Unfortunately the playbacks aren’t used enough to fill in the blanks. For the most part, Chandler chose to tell the tale in chronological order.
Obviously a labour of love from Ayroles and Benoit, Playback isn’t Chandler’s best work; it probably wouldn’t have languished in movie production hell and then disappeared for 40 years had it been one of his best. The characters are all interesting and the whodunit aspect is solid all the way through as the clues are slowly pieced together throughout the book. Playback is an interesting look at what might have been had Chandler decided to take up a career as a comic strip writer.
Hardcover Graphic Novel $27.95
Mystery and crime novelist Raymond Chandler was once approached about writing a newspaper comic strip. "I wouldn’t know how to do it, and if I did I wouldn’t want to," the cantankerously crusty crime novelist retorted. Graphic novel Playback adapts Chandler’s never-produced screenplay of the same name, a murder mystery set in Vancouver shortly after World War II; it shows Chandler perhaps missed a calling when he rejected the offer.
Chandler’s original 1948 screenplay for the movie Playback was presumed lost until its rediscovery in Universal Studios’ archives in 1985. Playback already exists as a novel. Chandler took the script for Playback and adapted it into his last, and least popular, book in the Philip Marlowe series. In 2005, Ted Benoit and Francois Ayroles took the original movie script for Playback and adapted it into a graphic novel. The graphic novel is now available in English for the first time.
The script for Playback is classic Chandler, exposing the highs and lows of the human heart in the raw light of a hard-boiled crime story. There are plenty of trench coats, butts, murders alongside old-fashioned pulp-style nastiness, but what is missing is a narrator. In Chandler’s Marlowe novels, Marlowe moves through the criminal world and social elite taking the reader with him on his journey, but Playback the screenplay (and graphic novel) isn’t a Marlowe story (he’s not in the graphic novel at all) and it lacks the direction of one. By the third act, the plot is bogged down by its own dejected heroine; Betty Mayfield’s permanent air of dour defeat proves more tiring than tragic. After hanging around her for a while she’d be one dame no one would rush to help out of a jam.
Mayfield, the story’s femme fatale (or is she?) tries to outrun her troubles at home in the United States by sneaking away at night and trekking up to Vancouver. On her way there she meets gigolo and boozehound Larry Mitchell, who tries to seduce her while offering to get her a room at the Grand Hotel because she doesn’t have much dough. It is at the hotel we meet the motley crew of inhabitants and miscreants roaming the halls in Chandler’s trademark style.
The sudden discovery of a stiff’s plugged body on Betty’s balcony is reminiscent to how her husband was knocked off (and the reason for her flight after getting out of the hoosegow), and is enough to get a grim war hero-turned-lawman, the monocle-wearing, Inspector Killaine involved to sort out the truth. Several plot points seem quite forced: Killaine’s unexplained and sudden love for Betty, and Betty’s personality; we have a hard time believing the glum and humourless woman is the irresistible looker she’s meant to be.
Artist Ayroles employs a stiff, angular block-like style that keeps the tone ice-cold and Chandler’s meandering plot moving swiftly enough to hold your interest. North American comic fans who mainly read comics from DC Comics or Marvel Comics may have a hard time with the art because it is not as realistic or detailed as Neal Adams or Bryan Hitch would produce, nor is it as kinetic as Norm Breyfogle or Alan Davis. Fans of independent publishers will appreciate the art because of its unique lines and lack of colour.
The artwork is reminiscent of the Sin City graphic novel by Frank Miller. Like Sin City, the entire book is stark black and white with no shades of grey, but Ayroles lacks Miller’s storytelling techniques and artistic ability to make each person look distinct. Where Miller really shines in the black and white arena is his ability to show movement. Each Miller novel could be followed without dialogue by the progression of panels. The static poses in Playback’s panels don’t give the book any sense of movement. It ends up being a satisfyingly dark work that fits the sinister nature of Chandler’s tale.
Playback somewhat relies on the characters’ reflections on the past. Their playbacks, so to speak, are a narrative device which, though commonplace today, fit in well with the pulp style of crime noir writing. Unfortunately the playbacks aren’t used enough to fill in the blanks. For the most part, Chandler chose to tell the tale in chronological order.
Obviously a labour of love from Ayroles and Benoit, Playback isn’t Chandler’s best work; it probably wouldn’t have languished in movie production hell and then disappeared for 40 years had it been one of his best. The characters are all interesting and the whodunit aspect is solid all the way through as the clues are slowly pieced together throughout the book. Playback is an interesting look at what might have been had Chandler decided to take up a career as a comic strip writer.
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