The graphic novel Drive (Frequency Press) asks the familiar question, “How stupid does a person have to be to try and steal drugs from the mob?” This begs the follow-up question, “How stupid can a protagonist be and still maintain an adequate level of audience sympathy?” The answer to both in this case is, “Just stupid enough.”
Writer Nate Southard manages this overlap by keeping Drive’s plot simple and moving quickly. Things kick off when Brian, a Las Vegas cab driver of marginal intelligence and limited prospects, gets carjacked by a gun-toting thug trying to abscond with a duffle bag full of narcotics. A tense and deadly car chase later, the thug is dead and Brian is left with a wrecked cab and a quantity of valuable drugs.
Rattled by the experience and encouraged by his even stupider friend Dalton, Brian decides to see if they can unload the drugs quickly and make off with the profits. (Dalton is the kind of moron who thinks he’s a player. He “knows people.”) Brian’s girlfriend Shelby is understandably dubious about the idea, but she hasn’t got the force of personality to overrule the plan and get the stash off of her coffee table. Even as Dalton begins making inquiries, some crooked police officers are tracking Brian with their own designs on early retirement.
There’s a strong feeling of immediacy to the proceedings; Brian doesn’t really have time to think about his actions, and the near-death experience seems to have left him feeling like negative odds don’t apply to him. (This is an area when Southard could have played up the setting; the Vegas economy is all but built on fostering that belief.)
At the same time, Southard doesn’t really seem to expect anyone to root for his protagonist. It’s not a story where the reader breathlessly wonders how Brian is going to pull this caper off. It’s more a case of wondering how badly damaged he’s going to be in the attempt. That’s a much more sensible approach than to try and overlay some Robin Hood nobility on a guy with a mullet.
I can’t say I’m crazy about the doofus noir genre. I’m not really interested in lowlife culture, and I’m a very hard sell when it comes to noble scumbags. But Southard does a nice job crafting his story. He keeps things to scale, which helps a lot, and plot holes are kept to a minimum as a result (provided one assumes the people of Las Vegas are pretty committed to looking the other way). If nothing particularly genre-expanding is going on, nothing pointlessly outlandish is either. It’s a coherent, well-constructed narrative.
Art by Shawn Richter shows a lot of potential. He has a nice sense of composition and does good work with backgrounds. Some of the body language is a bit stiff, but character acting is generally effective. The storytelling is very clear.
In the interest of full disclosure, Drive came to me as a review copy from Southard. It’s not a book I would have picked up on my own, mostly because of the aforementioned disinterest in the genre. That said, I think it’s a well-executed story, and it leaves me wanting to see more of Southard’s work in other types of stories. He’s got a real grasp of storytelling mechanics and is able to invest those mechanics with a fair amount of style.