Tumor

Reviews / Votes

BOOKLIST -- "Self-characterized "sad sack of shit"
Frank Armstrong is an off-the-books PI, semi-retired. In his favored beanery one
day, a strong-arm materializes in Frank's booth with a job offer: find the boss'
daughter, who stole from him to elope with her boyfriend. Then Frank's bad
headache suddenly knocks extra hard, scaring even the muscle across from him.
Soon enough, he's in the hospital with a metastasizing brain tumor. But the
daughter looks just like the wife he lost 20 years ago, blown away by her father
as Frank fears this girl will be. With the girl's help, he crashes out of the
hospital and keeps her moving for her own safety while he figures out how to put
her completely out of danger. Meanwhile, the tumor has Frank thinking the girl
is his wife and scrambles his sense of past and present. Fialkov's near-perfect
noir script, brim-full of violence and pain, is superbly realized by Tuazon's
detailed yet sketchy black-and-white drawing, which depicts Frank's seesawing
between hard-ass gumshoe and whimpering old man so convincingly it's scary."






PUBLISHERS WEEKLY -- "The first comic created for
Amazon Kindle turns out to be more than just an experimental curiosity. When
Frank Armstrong, an elderly failed PI, is hired to find a drug boss's daughter,
he sees a chance to redeem himself for failing to prevent his own wife's murder
decades ago. Unfortunately, Frank's inoperable brain tumor means that his senses
betray him so that he doesn't always know what year he's living in or whether
he's walking down the gritty L.A. streets or lying flat on his back in a
hospital bed. He's obviously dying; the question is whether he can pull himself
together long enough to win moral salvation. Fialkov's hard-boiled script shows
Frank's desperate toughness, though it's somewhat unbelievable to discover that
he's been walking around with a compound fracture of his left femur. Tuazon's
crude-looking black and white art is also effective, switching from fine line
and wash to scrappy brush work as Frank's consciousness fluctuates. There's
nothing subtle about Tumor, but it's successful noir storytelling."
SEATTLE PI -- "Fialkov's Tumor is simply a brilliant
comic. You'll find yourself getting sucked into Frank's twisted world where
death isn't the worst thing he's going to have to face. The way it pairs Frank's
past with the present makes for a really gripping read, and by the end you may
just think Frank isn't such a bad guy. Throw in some nice artwork from Tuazon
that really hammers home the similarities in the past and the present, and you
can see why it's dominated the Kindle charts."