Guy Davis & Gary Reed's Honour Among Punks

Guy Davis & Gary Reed's Honour Among Punks:

The Complete Baker Street Graphic Novel

When I started this review I had 10 cigarettes left. I wrote with the jittery knowledge that I can't allow cigarette breaks. As I posted I have one left. I've been saving the review of this collection because Baker Street makes me ridiculously happy. I would have difficulty listing my top fifty favorite books let alone ranking them but Baker Street would easily be at the top of that list. 

The stories are set in a vaguely steampunk alternate London, allowing for the collision of something authentically Victorian in Conan Doyle with the punk ethics and aesthetics of the book's protagonists Sharon and Sam.  It is through the eyes of the Susan, an American medical student, that we are brought into the world of Sharon.  Quickly we learn that Sharon splits her time between the role of the great consulting detective by day and as keeper of the peace between the rival punk gangs at night,

The two runs of Baker Street where published and collected by Reed's company Caliber Comics.  Caliber merits a review of its own.  Caliber rode the late 80s black and white comic book explosions, publishing Brian Michael Bendis' Jinx and Goldfish, David Mack Kabuki and J O'Barr's The Crow. 

At the time Guy Davis was a self-taught illustrator in his early twenties.  One of the truly wonderful things about this collocation is that you can see his early development.  There is a notable shift from the first two issues of the Honour Among Punks storyline to the third issue.  In the third and fourth issues he  embraces the wild line work and intense compositions that have made him famous.  In the second storyline, Children Of The Night, his work is fully mature an as vibrant and proffesional as the work he has done for DC and Marvel.  

 

Davis is mostly working with Dark Horse these days.  His work with Mike Mignola on B.P.R.D. in the world of Hellboy has been amazing.  Dark Horse has all been publishing The Marquis which is shipping up to be Davis' magnum opus.  You can track his progress and some awesome Marquis fan art on his blog.