It has admittedly been a few years since I last reviewed work from Jamie Kinroy at Broken Frontier. Back in 2022 I covered Spit Dog, a two-feature comic with the lead story set in a 15th century German inn. The location for Kinroy’s latest one-shot, Night Shift, could not be more different; a contemporary urban mystery with a crime noir vibe that has something more in the way of a human interest story at its heart.
When he wakes up one morning to find that his mother is missing, eight-year-old Cowboy Jones enlists tough guy private investigator Smiffy Fishman to help him track down his displaced parent. The PI’s “all-nighter” to discover the truth behind the woman’s disappearance will lead him to the city’s seedy night life, inevitable conflict with its shadier residents, and an eventual unexpected revelation…
Where Spit Dog was full of promise but also indicative of a newer creator learning their craft, Night Shift is evidence of an artist becoming far more confident in their visual storytelling. Gone are the overcrammed panel layouts of the pages of the former. Instead in Night Shift Kinroy’s pacing and shifts in perspective allow him to build a sense of dramatic tension and on occasion quiet introspection with a greater range of emotional clarity. What’s rather sweet here is how Kinroy seems to be taking us in one narrative direction, building up to something dark and foreboding, but then pulls the rug out from under the audience’s expectations with a far more subtle and understated denouement. It’s more an underplayed character study than moody thriller, even though it positions itself as the latter through much of its page count.
Kinroy’s art represents an unlikely blend of the loose and the detailed with varying grey tones adding to mood and atmosphere, and little details for the reader to look out for that hint at and elucidate the bigger picture, ensuring a greater level of reader connection and interactivity. Night Shift entices us with its obvious genre influences before quietly subverting them with charm and appeal. It’s also pleasing to see Jamie Kinroy’s control of the form developing and evolving with time.
Jamie Kinroy (W/A) • Morbid Comics, £6.00
Review by Andy Oliver
