Night Business

Night Business #1-4

by Benjamin Marra

Simultáneamente a la edición americana, a cargo de Fantagraphics Books en Estados Unidos, llega a nuestro país el quinto título en castellano de Benjamin Marra, Night Business. '1983...la ciudad...por la noche...'. Así empieza. Y todo lo que nos evoca tiene cabida: bandas callejeras, luces de neón, bailarinas, drogas y justicia callejera. Un mix de Giallo, Charles Bronson y Tarantino. Un híbrido de homenaje y sutil ironía sobre los tópicos de esos años. Gráficamente también evoca a los autores de la época, remitiendo a Paul Gulacy en sus páginas más elaboradas y a Ken Landgraf en las más relajadas

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Graphic Novels Comics

236 pages, Paperback

First published October 20, 2017

About the author

Benjamin Marra (born 1977 in Halifax, Nova Scotia) is a Grammy-nominated American illustrator and comic book artist. His work has been mostly self-published under his own imprint, Traditional Comics, and mainly consists of black and white comics, printed on low-quality paper for a relatively low price.

Reviews

[davidjguru · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well, this work made by Benjamin Marra is a cult construction (another one) with a frenzied rhythm, a fast-paced taste for action, and also (it's clear) with a certain vocation for wild and excessive violence. He is the Tarantino of the comics, the Carpenter of the cartoons and the Kirby of the dirty places of the city. Benjamin Marra is the god of color and the cult priest of the old action cinema and without a doubt, Night Business will be a pulp big classic. Congratulations.

[Jordan West · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5; some kind of apotheosis of retro-sleaze, this book has the same relationship to '80's B (and lower) level genre films that Sin City does with classic noir - a decidedly guilty pleasure, but with engaging art, and a surprise dash of gnostic mythology thrown in.

[Adrián Ciutat · Rating 4 out of 5]

Autsider Cómics es una de las mejores editoriales de tebeos locos en español, quizá la mejor. Bizarrismo, feismo, calité y andergraun bien entendido son los requisitos que piden en sus ofertas de trabajo. Descacharrante la labor de su embajadora en la red de redes @secretariabuenorra_autsaider, siempre con el mamarrachismo soez y la carcajada sonora en la punta de la tecla. Uno puede notar en sus propias carnes el hamor y la pasión que ponen en cada uno de sus lanzamientos, ya sea en forma de cachitos de ciertopelo u hologramas en movimiento en plan magic tazo. Para el tebeo que nos ocupa se han cascado un videojuego arcade para frikeo y disfrute de sus fieles, además de una playlist propuesta por el autor.
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‘Night Business’ es el ¿sexto? cómic que editan de @benjamin_marra, es decir, que ya era yonqui de su mierda y lo iba a comprar con los ojos cerrados y la tarjeta entre los dientes. Pero es que además es la hostia puta. Continúa uno de los tebeos que aparecía en ‘Sangre Americana’, en el cual bailarinas nocturnas son asesinadas en callejones por un tipo enmascarado. Partiendo de ahí se hace su propio ‘Sin City’, su propio ‘From Hell’ y su propio tebeo de superhéroes sin superhéroes, creando una trama perfectamente tejida con elementos que siempre vienen a cuento como drogas, sexo, torturas, alguna banda callejera, hostias como panes y sectas.
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Seguro que hay alguna peli que tus colegas dicen que es una mierda pero cuando estás abandonado y deprimido en casa te la pones y te lo pasas de vicio. Eso son un poco los tebeos de Marra. Y de Autsider en general.
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Ma-ra-vi-lla.

[Rick Ray · Rating 3 out of 5]

Night Business is a continuation of Benjamin Marra's unique brand of sleazy noir that is equal parts grim and entertaining. The story borrows elements from an array of '80s trash culture elements and thriller tropes to cultivate an incredibly violent story about serial killers, cults, strippers, vigilantes and pimps. There's a ton happening across the ten-part story, but it's entertaining from start to finish. Though the story itself mostly relies on cardboard cut-outs for characters, it's the uniqueness of the constructed world of Night Business that stands out. Marra employs the a sheen of '80s sleaze over a world that seems more trapped in the 1950's era of pre-Code crime comics. It's a wonderful marriage for sure which makes up for the generic thriller plot and lackluster cast of characters. Similar design choices worked really well for Marra's later comic, Terror Assaulter: O.M.W.O.T..

It's not a perfect comic, but the sheer excess of Marra's pulp world in Night Business makes this a fun read. It's delightfully trashy and it'll definitely scratch the itch for a certain brand of '80s nostalgia.

[Vicente Ribes · Rating 3 out of 5]

Benjamin Marra está como una cabra. Aquí sigue con su particular mezcla de ultraviolencia y sexo en un cómic donde un misterioso asesino encapuchado está matando a bailarinas de striptease. En este mundo de los bajos fondos dos heroes apareceran: un bruto hormonado y una bailarina que al ser atacada desarrollo poderes. Ambos entre combates descacharrantes y sesiones de metesaca descubrirán que quien está detrás de los asesinatos es una secta de locos.

[Bouman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Benjamin Marra se vuelca en realizar la mejor de las historias en el que no falta nada para homenajear esas películas de héroes de acción de los años 80, además de la violencia callejera, el sexo y las drogas de la época. Y es quedarse corto porque son muchos los ingredientes que contienen en sus páginas y quedan por ...more

[Ruz El · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another block of sleaze from Marra. not for the faint of heart, but god damn, do I love his stuff. A Slasher is attacking strippers, one man can stop him, and there's a death cult. It's bonkers and entertaining. You can tell that Marra just loves this stuff, you can see it in his art as bit get loose as the action goes wild. eagerly awaiting my next dose.

[rndgmoat · Rating 4 out of 5]

Night Business is a balls to the wall pastiche of the grimiest corners of 1980s pulp fiction. Inspired by much of the low-brow, glorious trash that now clogs up Amazon Prime's streaming section as well as the films of Abel Ferrara, the masculinist fantasies of cheap paperback men's novels sold at your local army surplus store, and the plots of about a dozen rape/revenge flicks, this is probably one of the hardest-hitting graphic novels I've read in a while. What starts as your basic serial killer story gradually transitions into a bizarro horror comic, while still hewing strictly to 80s action overkill conventions. The book is filled with sex, horrific violence, rape, torture, mutilation, and on and on. As a male reader who is still trying to detox from so many adolescent influences, it's the ultimate guilty pleasure read (and I mean this in the truest sense).

You can make the case that all of this misogyny and misanthropy is ironic (I mean, check out the author's photo) but if you're reading this book, just be honest with yourself--you're here to see heads get exploded by a badass stripper turned assassin with machine guns mounted to her bike while her drugged out lover/gangland enforcer/stripper talent agent literally throws a mohawked baddie off a NY highrise roof for her to shoot down like a clay pigeon using a bazooka.

I feel like bad person for recommending this but it really needs to be experienced.

[Pete · Rating 4 out of 5]

70s & 80s grind house style. Very graphic. Every new plot element had me reminiscing on Death Wish or some other crazy thing from that genre. Gonzo.

[Rex Hurst · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is not all it seems on the surface. At first it looks like just an over-the-top uber-violent action tale, a homage to low budget 80s action film, similar to the ones Cannon used to put out. Yet as it goes on, and the killings and violence just go on and on and on, it takes on the form of parody, but that’s only if you look at it a little deeper than you should. This is one of the stronger points of the book. You can take it as parody, or just enjoy a violent slasher story.

A knife-wielding killer is on the loose, committing extreme acts of violence on strippers and hookers. Only one man has a will powerful enough to stop this psychopath: Johnny Timothy. This is a jaundiced view of society. The city of this story seems devoid of any people who aren't strippers, hookers, rapists, gang members, vigilantes, sex cultists, or thug enforcers. It is a world filled with tough guys and big tits and the streets are riddled with gun-wielding rapists just looking for a woman walking alone. One man takes to the streets to avenge a dead girl, which all wraps together into a surprising ending. Not the one you might think.

Unlike the author’s previous book, Terror Assaulter, the art does not play to the ridiculousness of the story. In this book, the art is the greatest detriment. Lots of stiff limbs, weird dialogue, and almost-good art. It kind of reminds me of the action sequences I used to draw in the margins of my middle-school notebook. This lack of sophistication really shone out when it came to differentiating between two of the main characters. They were drawn so similarly, that I sometimes got one mixed up with the other. But I still enjoyed the novel.

[Zack! Empire · Rating 3 out of 5]

A pretty rough and raw story of sex and violence. It certainly reminds me of the gutter trash Macho Men movies I watched in 1980's. The story manages to push the boundaries of that kind of story, without becoming a parody of itself. I think it mostly has to do with bizarre plot of the book. It's not stereotypical villains, or heroes. It certainly honors the form without falling into lazy cliches.
The two problems I have with it are the same problems I had with Benjamin's other work: His art changes to much, going from super stylized to almost sketchbook, and everything in between. It made me wonder if he lost interest in the series while he was publishing the single issues, but got excited again when it was going to published as a completed work by Fantagraphics. The beginning and ending are the tightest in terms of art.
The book is printed on super glossy paper, which I have never liked. You have to hold it just right so it doesn't catch the light.
It ends in a way that a future volume is certainly possible, and I would probably read it, but I think this book is just going to be sitting on the shelf now that I've finished it.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Definitely strange. Beautiful. Violent. Intriguing. Halfway through thought: this author seems like he has some weird ass fantasies but is also kind of a feminist and he's trying to reconcile those things in this book... and then I flipped to the back to see if there was a photo. I was not disappointed. I will be looking for more by Marra.

[Justin Decloux · Rating 4 out of 5]

Benjamin Marra's graphic novel NIGHT BUSINESS is like Abel Ferrara's kung-fu serial killer opus FEAR CITY with the sleaze turned up too 11: Ballerina vigilantes, Evil Cults, roided out heroes whose blood boil for justice, and a hilarious amount of exploding heads.

[Alan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Benjamin Marra, not for all, but for those of us who enjoy his work. Fucking great.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Classic Marra; strippers, gangsters, a cult, and a motorcycle riding, stripper/vigilante. I love the roughness of Marra's art which compliments the roughness of his stories.

[La Central · Rating 3 out of 5]

Todos somos contingentes, pero Marra es necesario. Nos encontramos en el cenit de un largo proceso de dignificación y popularización del tebeo –perdón, novela gráfica–, con exposiciones en museos, cómics en todas las librerías y superhéroes dominando los cines; una situación impensable hace unos años y que indudablemente ha tenido consecuencias positivas, especialmente en lo concerniente al reconocimiento y la capacidad de subsistencia de los autores. Alcanzado este punto, bienvenidos sean macarras como Marra para dinamitarlo todo.

Night Business, obra fundacional del corpus «marriano» (cuyo inicio ya editó Autsaider en Sangre americana), ejemplifica la voluntad de Marra de «hacer los cómics que nos robaron»; un tebeo pulp de entretenimiento adulto que no pudo realmente existir –podrían encontrarse antecedentes en los trabajos de los hermanos Hernández, el Slash Maraud de su admirado Paul Gulacy o el 2000AD británico– debido al código de autocensura del cómic mainstream y a las pretensiones de trascendencia y seriedad del indie. Es por ello que, solo en este momento de aceptación del cómic como medio, es posible –y necesario– que autores como Marra nos ofrezcan un nuevo tipo de entretenimiento desde la sensibilidad y libertad propias del cómic independiente.

[Zeke · Rating 1 out of 5]

Perversion and misogyny at its worst. Ugly drawings accompany an ugly story. If you are expecting an homage to sleazy 80s action movies you don’t get it; instead you get a disturbed story about ritualistic rape fantasies and women being brutally mutilated. It’s like a graphic novel version of Lucio Fulci’s The New York Ripper, only somehow more freakishly grotesque and nasty without any redeemable values — at least William Lustig’s Maniac sought to make a statement through its obscene violence, but Night Business is a pool of blood with no depth. I should have known this was not going to be up my alley when the author’s photo was a collage of him wearing nothing but sunglasses, an unzipped leather jacket, and a black thong. I returned the book, and requested an exorcist to cleanse everything it touched… including myself.

[Ramon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting, sometimes very fun, pastiche of '80s trash cinema, but never really elevates itself beyond its inspiration.

[Christian · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think it was well done and there is an audience for this. It's just not me.

[Chad Brock · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Moon Captain · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ehhhhh It's no Kamen Rider

[no elle · Rating 1 out of 5]

yikes lol

[Juan Fuentes · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sinceramente no sé que sentido tiene en 2017 hacer un cómic de los 80 sin aportar prácticamente nada. Entretenido y poco más.

[Bill · Rating 2 out of 5]

Started reading this at the library and got it out to finish it. Nothing special IMO. I won't be reading any more Benjamin Marra.

[Fantods · Rating 2 out of 5]

best part was the author bio, tbh

[Daniel Mossop · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very violent, very faced paced appears gonzo in nature but then seems to have an actual overall plot but it’s hectic. Art is pretty neat.

[Peťo · Rating 5 out of 5]

MAN, this was perfect! Well-balanced underground mixture of 80s action blockbusters, giallo, strippers & gore. Writing perfectly fits the story. Hardcover itself is an art object.

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

So stupid it's brilliant.

[Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are 2 kinds of people: people who would rate Night Business 5 stars and people who should have never picked it up.

[Fraser Burnett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not as quotable as Terror Assaulter, O.M.W.O.T., let's just say "But what is?"
Looking forward to someone doing an OST for this grimy, cosmic, eighties-video throwback. SHHK!