Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Angel City: Town without Pity
WORK NOTES: illus by Megan Levens
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
https://www.themarysue.com/introducing-angel-city/#0 * https://www.bleedingcool.com/2016/11/04/janet-harvey-would-like-angel-city-to-spread-its-wings/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Female.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer and video game creator.
WRITINGS
Author of Angel City comic book. Has written comics for DC, Image, IDW, and Tokyopop. Author of film and television scripts, including feature film Scene Queen (also director), 2016.
SIDELIGHTS
Janet Harvey is author of the graphic novel Angel City: Town without Pity, illustrated by Megan Levens, which collects the six issues of their comic book Angel City. The story is set in Los Angeles in 1939 and centers on Dolores Dare, who had ambitions to become a movie star but ended up working as a cocktail waitress and an enforcer for a crime boss. Her best friend, Frances Faye, is murdered, her body dumped in a trash bin behind the Chinese Theatre. The police do not seem interested in finding Frances’s killer, so Dolores takes on the task, dealing with mobsters, corrupt cops, and unethical studio executives in her quest. The supporting characters include Dolores’s friend Joe Yoshimoto, a Japanese-American photographer for a scandal magazine who joins in her detective work, and some real-life figures, such as studio official Eddie Mannix, who specialized in getting stars our of trouble; Brenda Allen, a prominent madam; mobster Bugsy Siegel; publisher and movie producer William Randolph Hearst; and Aggie Underwood, the first female crime reporter in Los Angeles.
Harvey’s tale was inspired partly by the murder of Elizabeth Short, who became known as the “Black Dahlia” and whose killer was never identified. “There’s, like, a whole true crime section you could build out of books that claim to reveal ‘the truth’ about the unsolved Black Dahlia murder,” Harvey told Carolyn Cox at the Mary Sue Website. “But one of the most compelling theories, to me anyway, is the idea that it was mob-related.” She found further inspiration in crime fiction, such as the novels of James Ellroy, and classic Hollywood movies, particularly the film noir genre. “One of the editors at Oni called Angel City ‘Ellroy with a feminist twist,’ and I take that as a humongous compliment,” she told Cox. “You’ll also see a lot of influence here from classic Hollywood noir, and gangster movies of the 30s.” Those films often featured strong, tough women, Harvey noted, and that informs the character of Dolores.
Several reviewers admired Harvey’s tough heroine and the story’s take on Los Angeles noir. “Dolores may be a jaded, former actress who’s dating a gangster, but she’s also his enforcer,” related Marisa Carpico, writing online at Pop Break. “It’s a choice that not only bucks convention, but assures the audience Dolores won’t end up as just a damsel in distress.” The tale, she added, is “well-written and researched.” On the Women Write about Comics Website, Annie Blitzen reported: “Angel City doesn’t turn the noir genre on its head the way its press suggests. Rather, it forces open the door and claims a place within that genre for the groups traditionally marginalized by the tradition. It’s a tightly-paced, exciting tale that gratifies and frustrates exactly the way noir should.” Another online critic, A.J. Jones at Outright Geekery, noted: “Harvey gets in a surprising amount of depth and detail for a limited-run series, and to great effect, e.g., she really made me fall in love with Dolores.” On Geek.com, Insha Fitzpatrick observed: “Angel City: Town Without Pity is everything a crime thriller lover would delight in. This comic keeps you guessing until the very last moments.” Fitzpatrick likened it to noir and neo-noir films such as Double Indemnity, The Third Man, and Chinatown, Additional praise came from Foreword Reviews contributor Peter Dabbene, who commented: “Harvey’s ear for dialogue is excellent, using 1930s slang like ‘rubes,’ ‘holy smokes,’ and ‘dollface’ without overdoing it. Levens does a great job depicting Los Angeles during the Golden Age of Hollywood.” A Publishers Weekly critic summed up Angel City by saying: “This is Hollywood mystery at its most classic.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Foreword Reviews, July-August 2017, Peter Dabbene, review of Angel City: Town Without Pity.
Publishers Weekly, June 26, 2017, review of Angel City, p. 165.
ONLINE
Bleeding Cool, https://www.bleedingcool.com/ (November 4, 2016), Rich Johnston, “Janet Harvey Would Like Angel City to Spread Its Wings.”
Comicsverse, https://comicsverse.com/ (August 1, 2017), Nadia Alamah, “SDCC 2017 Interview: Janet Harvey Talks Angel City: Town Without Pity.”
Geek.com, https://www.geek.com. (August 16, 2017), Insha Fitzpatrick, review of Angel City.
Mary Sue, https://www.themarysue.com/ (March 28, 2016), Carolyn Cox, “The Mary Sue Exclusive Interview: Introducing Oni Press’ Angel City.“
Internet Movie Database, http://www.imdb.com/ (April 8, 2018), brief biography and list of credits.
Janet Harvey Website, http://janetharvey.squarespace.com (April 8, 2018).
Outright Geekery, http://www.outrightgeekery.com/ (January 6, 2018), A.J. Jones, review of Angel City.
Pop Break, https://thepopbreak.com/ (August 21, 2017), Marisa Carpico, review of Angel City.
Tech, https://thetech.com/ (April 20, 2017), Ivy Li, review of Angel City.
Women Write about Comics, http://womenwriteaboutcomics.com/ (October 11, 2017), Annie Blitzen, “Angel City: Starlets and Crime.”
SDCC 2017 Interview: Janet Harvey Talks ANGEL CITY: TOWN WITHOUT PITY
By Nadia Alamah Posted: August 1, 2017
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In our escapades at SDCC, we caught Janet Harvey, writer of ANGEL CITY! She kindly allowed us to interview her at her signing booth with Oni Press for a few minutes! Harvey has previously worked as a game writer, notably on the DC Universe Online MMORPG, and has written comics for DC, Image, IDW, and Tokyopop.
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CV: Would you like to tell us about ANGEL CITY and tell us where it’s at currently?
JH: Yeah! Well ANGEL CITY is a six-issue miniseries from ONI [Press] that just finished its run. We’re collecting it, and the trade paperback called ANGEL CITY: TOWN WITHOUT PITY is coming out August 16th—and will be in bookstores!
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CV: And what is featured in this super cool collection?
JH: Well, it’s the story of Dolores Dare, who’s a gangster mall/cocktail waitress who becomes a vigilante. Her best friend is murdered and found in the dumpster behind the Chinese Theater. It’s all set in LA in the 30s, and her best friend is killed, and so she goes to find out who killed her. She comes up against the mob and the studios and this corrupt web of Hollywood power that is trying to keep the story silent.
So that’s basically the story-line, and she kind of grows herself through the process of trying to find out what happened to her best friend.
READ: Want more of SDCC 2017 coverage? Check out this interview with Bill Sienkiewicz!
CV: How did the idea for ANGEL CITY come to you?
JH: So there’s a lot of parallels with the Black Dahlia Murder. I’m a big True Crime fan, so I was into a lot of the seedier Hollywood stories and James Ellroy’s books and stuff like that. I was reading about that—that was a big inspiration for the story-line and the crime. I also am a big fan of BLACK CANARY, and I think the genesis of the character came from me thinking, well what if there was actually somebody in fishnets who was a cocktail waitress who started fighting crime? And that was what led to this other story.
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CV: What about creating this character appealed to you? How did it challenge you?
JH: Well I love Dolores, and she’s got a dark side to her. She really has some internal struggles that she’s going through, and she’s very cynical in some ways. She’s a person who’s kind of been kicked around by life a little bit and has lost hope. So she kind of has to get her hope back and her self-confidence back, and that’s part of her journey.
And she kicks a lot of butt, but that does not determine her. She’s not just a strong woman who beats people up. She actually has a temper, she kinda flies off the handle, and that’s not always portrayed as a good thing. So a lot is going on with that.
READ: Check out this review of ANGEL-CATBIRD VOL. 2!
CV: Is there anything else you’d like to add?
JH: The book comes out in August, so look for it in bookstores August 16th!
Quoted in Sidelights: “There’s, like, a whole true crime section you could build out of books that claim to reveal ‘the truth’ about the unsolved Black Dahlia murder. But one of the most compelling theories, to me anyway, is the idea that it was mob-related.”
“One of the editors at Oni called Angel City ‘Ellroy with a feminist twist,’ and I take that as a humongous compliment, You’ll also see a lot of influence here from classic Hollywood noir, and gangster movies of the 30s.”
The Mary Sue Exclusive Interview: Introducing Oni Press’ Angel City
Say hello to Dolores Dare.
by Carolyn Cox | 4:15 pm, March 28th, 2016 6
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ANGELCITY #1 RETAIL COVER
The Mary Sue is pleased to exclusively announce Angel City, a new title from Oni Press that writer Janet Harvey promises will please readers who like their feminism “with a whiskey chaser.”
Angel City’s hardboiled hero is Dolores Dare, a stunt-woman in 1930s LA who falls in with the mob. In Angel City Issue #1, coming October 5th, 2016, Dolores copes with the death of an old friend from the past, and starts her own investigation into LA’s “April Fool’s Killer.” Over email, we spoke to writer Janet Harvey, artist Megan Levens, and colorist Nick Filardi about the research that goes into writing about historic Los Angeles, why they created a female anti-hero, and the importance of not whitewashing LA.
The Mary Sue: There’s so much incredible history in LA. What has your research for Angel City looked like so far? Are there any aspects of old Hollywood you’ve been particularly influenced by?
Janet Harvey: I definitely did a lot of research into Hollywood history, and particularly the life and murder of Elizabeth Short, aka the Black Dahlia. There’s, like, a whole true crime section you could build out of books that claim to reveal “the truth” about the unsolved Black Dahlia murder. But one of the most compelling theories, to me anyway, is the idea that it was mob-related. And it makes a lot of sense, because for a while there, the boundary between gangster movies and actual gangsters was pretty permeable in Hollywood. And that just seemed like a rich vein to mine for drama – that moment in Hollywood history where everything was up for grabs.
I also grew up reading trashy books like Hollywood Babylon by Kenneth Anger, and the old True Detective magazines with their pulpy covers. And of course, you can’t talk about LA crime or the Black Dahlia without talking about James Ellroy’s books. One of the editors at Oni called Angel City “Ellroy with a feminist twist,” and I take that as a humongous compliment.
You’ll also see a lot of influence here from classic Hollywood noir, and gangster movies of the 30s. Megan and Nick are probably both really sick of me “suggesting” research and movies for them, but I just love this stuff. For me, the challenge is not to fall in love with the fly on the wall and tell you everything about what really happened, because I find the actual history so fascinating.
Megan Levens: On the artist side of things, it’s all about looking up reference for the period. Coming off of Madame Frankenstein (which is set in the early 1930s) made moving to the clothes, cars, and architecture of 1939 a bit easier. I had accumulated a stack of reference books on the entire decade of the 30s so I could finally use the later entries!
Obviously, living in LA, I see little pieces of old Hollywood history all around, but even the things that have survived this long have changed a great deal. There was a lot of research, for example, to find enough photographs of what the Chinese Theatre actually looked like in 1939…the famous facade has stayed much the same, but the area around it has changed several times! And actually all those reference photos and links from Janet were incredibly helpful in getting the setting and tone of different scenes.
My favorite thing about that era is, probably pretty obviously, the fashion and style. I’m a sucker for anything from the Jazz Age up to WWII, so while some of it was familiar, other points were fun for me to research in detail…like how the men’s suspenders attached to buttons on their pants. I had no idea!
Nick Filardi: I’ve been coloring Powers, another noir book for almost 10 years now. When I signed on to it, I watched a lot of old noir movies and have been gathering reference here and there as we went on. So much of my shadow reference comes from Hollywood noir. The one that jumps out at me is T-Men, made in 1947. Its a little later than Angel City, but is a perfect noir jumping-off point. I’ve been drawing form that pool for a long time. Powers, however, has a distinct look that was established when I started working on it. It also feels like a New York City comic. I’ve been wanting to work on a noir book that feels warmer and sun-drenched for a while now. Angel City, set in LA, is that book.
The Mary Sue: Are Dolores, Joe, or the April Fool’s killer inspired by any historic figures?
Harvey: Dolores and Joe are basically fictional, but a lot of real people are floating in and out of this book. The studio fixer, Eddie Mannix, makes an appearance. You also see a version of him in Hail, Caesar! In the Coen Bros movie, the scandals Eddie is “fixing” are pretty charming and lightweight by today’s standards: cheesecake photo shoots, a pregnant starlet that needs to get married. His assignments are much darker in Angel City.
Another colorful character is Brenda Allen, who was a notorious madam who ran a call girl racket that catered to the rich and powerful in Los Angeles. She was a power player in LA for many years, until she got arrested alongside gangster Mickey Cohen in the 1950s.
I should also mention Aggie Underwood, who will make an appearance later in the series. Aggie was the first female reporter on the crime beat in Los Angeles, and a fascinating character in real life. There were so many details I wanted to include about Aggie that we just didn’t have time for. For instance, she knits. She used to sit at her desk at the newspaper and knit. I suspect the phrase “I’m going to stick to my knitting” was coined by Aggie.
TMS: It’s awesome to see a female anti-hero (or at least, a complicated female hero) for a change. I think we’re much more accustomed to seeing men in those roles. Can you speak to that at all?
Harvey: I love anti-heroes—I just feel like I can relate to someone a lot better if they’ve gotten knocked around and disillusioned a little bit by life. To me that’s the whole point of writing, and reading. It’s to help you get inside someone else’s skin and try to understand how they became the person they are. Anti-heroes also tend to be snarky rebels who don’t go along with the status quo. And that’s something I can relate to, as well!
I like my angels with dirty faces, and that’s definitely Dolores. She starts out in a pretty cynical place, but you start to understand the reasons why she feels the way she does, and that she’s developed this hard shell because it’s the only way she can survive in the world she finds herself in. And it really gives her someplace to go in her character arc as she starts to reclaim who she is and assert herself, and try to get some justice for her friend.
I feel like, in terms of pop culture, we’ve come to expect less from women characters. It’s funny, but you take the gun molls and showgirls from the gangster movies of the 1930s and 40s—the ones who are platinum blonde and hard as nails. I’m thinking of Jean Harlow, or Virginia Mayo as James Cagney’s girlfriend in White Heat. Those were some smart, tough, ride or die dames! And they had their own stories and their own internal conflicts. Jean Harlow was definitely an inspiration for Dolores Dare. She probably dated a few gangsters in real life, too.
The story of the women who came to Hollywood in those days really isn’t told anymore—or it’s been told in stereotypes. We characterize them as hungry starlets, or victims, or hardened femme fatales, and we think that’s the totality of who they are. But it’s not, and it shouldn’t be. They were chasing the American dream, just like everybody else.
Levens: I think what’s most refreshing about Dolores, for me, is that she’s an anti-hero, but she has a lot of emotional nuance. Anti-heroes can be just as boring as the squeaky-clean heroes if they don’t have enough substance to them. I feel like I’ve seen plenty of “strong” female characters who are tough, cold, and have a troubled past, but they almost always exist on this very narrow end of the emotional spectrum. Dolores grieves, and cries, and it’s not shown as her breaking character or having a moment of weakness. That range of emotion and expression makes her a lot more interesting to draw.
TMS: Can we expect to see a lot more of Joe as the series progresses?
Harvey: Oh, definitely. Joe is the Bogie to Dolores’ Bacall. He’s a photographer for the Tinseltown Tattler, so he’s used to getting into scrapes trying to uncover the truth and he’s got some skills that complement Dolores’ skills. She’s more of a scrapper, and jumps in with her fists, whereas Joe’s a bit more laid-back, taking pictures and gathering evidence. And he keeps her honest. They’re a good team.
Levens: I’m happy to say I get to draw lots more of Joe as the story progresses. I do develop “crushes” on some of my characters, and that’s happened very quickly with Joe.
The Mary Sue: What has the collaborative process for the three of you been like so far, and how did you wind up coming together to work on Angel City?
Harvey: Our awesome editor, Ari Yarwood, gets all the credit for making that happen. She and I had a lot of conversations about what we wanted for the look and feel of the book, and when we approached Megan, we were lucky that she could fit this into her schedule. I loved Megan’s work on Madame Frankenstein, and she brings so much personality and life to Dolores. It really is a joy to see her pages. It helps that she’s also based in LA, so she knows the personality of the city really well. Megan and Nick had been looking for an excuse to work together, so Nick actually campaigned to get on the book. So yeah, basically as an unknown creator, I couldn’t have gotten luckier than to be matched up with this team.
I have to say, this is the most collaborative, open team environment I’ve ever worked in, as far as comics go. I’m used to doing work for hire, where the editor keeps everyone compartmentalized, traditionally. You submit a script, and a few weeks later somebody sends you some pages and says “here’s your comic” and you’re like “Awesome! Thanks!” For this book, these are our characters: we all have a stake in it, and everyone has a distinctive style that they bring to the table. Ari’s been a guiding hand, but she lets us talk among ourselves. And whenever they ask me for an opinion, I apparently have one. So again, I’m sure I’m annoying the hell out of the rest of the team. But we’re all working together to bring this new thing to life, and that’s really exciting.
Levens: There’s a very open exchange of ideas at every stage of the project, which I was actually used to on some level since my first two published books were creator-owned. So it’s nice to have that here, where we’re all contributing our thoughts even if it’s not what would typically be considered our stage of production.
I definitely have to second giving Ari credit for putting us all together! She’s doing a fantastic job of steering this ship and she has very much had a hand in shaping the story and characters. And after working sort of adjacent to Nick on Madame Frankenstein (where he was coloring Joëlle Jones’ beautiful cover linework), I am beyond excited to get to have him color my work now.
Filardi: Megan and I both went to the same school, so I’ve been looking to work with her for a while. I feel like when you get the same education, you end up with a similar thought pattern, and you know you can rely on someone to be engaged with what you are doing. You communicate well. Janet also might be the most involved writer I’ve ever worked with. Any reference she finds, she sends. Which is fantastic. That doesn’t happen enough. You get the best results with a project when you get to experiment as well as bounce ideas off the rest of the team. We’ve been doing that in spades. When I start a book I’m all over the place looking to make it unique and interesting. Ari, our editor, Megan and Janet have been nothing but encouraging to me as I try a bunch of techniques. I’ve tried odd painting stuff as a reference to crime noir pulp novel covers, Ziptone patterns as a reference to how actual noir comics looked back then. Shadows that feel more abstract and art deco. Sometimes when I do this kind of thing creators I’m working with are just kinda like “ok whatever, just make it look good” but Ari, Megan and Janet been right there with encouragement on the experimentation the whole time. It’s been great.
Harvey: One thing I want to mention is that it was important to us, as a team, to make this a more diverse version of LA than you’re maybe used to seeing in “historical” stories. The true history of LA is extremely diverse. I mean, you can’t really tell the story of Los Angeles without talking about the Asian immigrant families that settled there, or the Latino and African American families that have always been a big part of the population. So we did want to make sure that we were representing a Los Angeles that wasn’t totally whitewashed.
Levens: I agree with Janet, setting this story to be representational of the real LA, which we don’t always see. I think that it’s a crime noir story whose central protagonists are a woman and an Asian-American man is already pretty unique for that genre.
Angel City #1 will be available to pre-order in the August PREVIEWS catalogue #335, and will be on sale at local comic books shops, Comixology, iBooks, and Google Play on October 5th, 2016. In the meantime, you can check out our exclusive preview below.
Janet Harvey Would Like Angel City To Spread Its Wings
Posted by Rich Johnston November 4, 2016 0 Comments
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angelcity-1-4x6-comp-retail-fnl-webJason Borelli went to New York Comic Con to meet Janet Harvey…
This month, Oni Press released Angel City, a limited series written by Janet Harvey. She has been around the comic book industry for some time, most notably as the writer for Sony’s DC Universe Online. She co-created the series along with artist Megan Levens and colorist Nick Filardi. In addition to writing Angel City, Ms. Harvey has also been working on Scene Queen, an anti-bullying film which she wrote and directed. She recently came to New York Comic Con, and she talked about her Angel City. I hit the Oni booth while she was in the restroom. I’m guessing you know how difficult those were to locate, and I know the women had longer lines. While I waited, I was given a number of first issues, none of which I’ve gotten around to reading. When I met Harvey, she gave me a variant covered ANGEL CITY #1 (I had gotten an issue of my own for research prior to the show). We wound up going to the Press Area, which was quieter than the floor.
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Bleeding Cool: What is the basic premise of Angel City?
Janet Harvey: The basic premise is Dolores Dare, who is this cocktail waitress/gun moll. She wanted to be an actress, but she’s become muscle for the mob. She finds out her friend has died, and so she decides to go after the killer, but she’s part of the sort of corruption of the city, so she knows how to navigate it. She has access to things that an outsider wouldn’t.
angelcity-1-marketing_preview-4BC: When and where does the story take place?
JH: It takes place in the Thirties in Hollywood, It’s sort of the golden age of Hollywood. We chose 1939 because that was when the height of when the movie industry was starting to really come to its own. Lots of big cars, flashy dresses, gangsters and movie stars. It seemed like a good place to put a comic book.
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BC: How did you get into the style of noir?
JH: I’ve always really liked noir. I guess I have a very cynical worldview. A series about corrupt cops and people who have been through the wringer a little bit. I got into that through punk rock and B-movies, and eventually ended up in noir.
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BC: What have been the biggest influences for Angel City?
JH: [Dolores] is not [based] after a specific actress, but I kind of had somebody like Jean Harlowe in mind, who always played the gangster moll, or Virginia Mayo in White Heat. They’re kind of like showgirls who [slipping into period accent] talk like dis, they’re always a little bit like dis? [laughs] They’re wisecracking, they’re a little hardened, but they’re tough/ They can take care of themselves.
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BC: How long did it take Dolores to develop?
JH: I feel like characters, when they come to life, it just clicks and they’re talking to you and talking through you. Dolores was definitely one of those characters. I just loved her. The story was built around her. I always felt like I knew what she was doing. I had the idea of, “What if there was this woman [who] did stunts and had been a cocktail waitress?” If you had somebody in fishnets fighting crime,who would they really be? [laughs] The idea of Dolores came out of that.
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BC: Who are the supporting characters you’d want the audience to know about?
JH: My favorites [include] Joe Yoshimoto, the photographer who is kind of Dolores’ sidekick. He’s going to be back a lot. They’re working together to solve this crime. The gangster, Gino, is also really fun. He’s going to be a major player. He’s kind of big and dumb. He leans with his heart and his chin, but I think he and Dolores are a lot alike in that respect. He’s definitely going to be a part of the entire plotline that’s coming. We’re going to have a new character is issue #2 named Rita, who would also be fun for people. She’s an actress as well.
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BC: How long is Angel City scheduled to run?
JH: We have six issues. I think we’ll get it collected quickly. If we can tell further stories with these characters, I would really like to do that.
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BC: How much story would there be after six issues?
JH: It’s called Angel City, so we can tell stories about the other characters. I’d want to take them to New York, but then we’d get outside of Angel City, so I’m not sure that’s really going to happen. I feel like like there’s a lot more we can tell, especially with Dolores and Joe. There’s a lot more we can tell, and I think there’s other things that they can solve in the larger world of the story.
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Quoted in Sidelights: “This is Hollywood mystery at its most classic.”
Angel City: Town Without Pity
Publishers Weekly. 264.26 (June 26, 2017): p165.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Angel City: Town Without Pity
Janet Harvey and Megan Levens. Oni, $19.99 trade paper (168p) ISBN 978-1-62010-426-2
Dolores Dare was once a starry-eyed ingenue, fresh off the bus from Muncie with a heart full of Hollywood dreams. Today, she's an enforcer whose life is confined to Tinseltown's shadows. When an old friend shows up in a dumpster, however, the tension between Dare's past and present peaks-with violent results. Dare is embittered, exhausted, but ultimately hungry for justice. Though this midcentury noir treads familiar ground--slain starlets, mob bosses making their moves, intrepid journalists getting their hands dirty--Harvey (Batman) presents the story with style and verve. Levens (Madame Frankenstein) brings a wonderful visual weight to the cast: dresses drape luxuriously, suits strain at the shoulders, and the set lights throw the glamour and decay into sharp relief. This is Hollywood mystery at its most classic. (Aug.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Angel City: Town Without Pity." Publishers Weekly, 26 June 2017, p. 165. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A497444394/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=3150561a. Accessed 19 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A497444394
Quoted in Sidelights: “Harvey gets in a surprising amount of depth and detail for a limited-run series, and to great effect, e.g., she really made me fall in love with Dolores.”
Angel Dare – a review of ANGEL CITY : TOWN WITHOUT PITY
BY A. J. JONES · JANUARY 6, 2018
Angel DareAngel Dare – a review of ANGEL CITY : TOWN WITHOUT PITY
ANGEL CITY : TOWN WITHOUT PITY. Written by Janet Harvey, art by Megan Levens with Nick Filardi. TPB release August 2017 ; collects Issues #1-6 of the Oni Press comics series (Oct 2016 – Mar 2017). Angel Dare
This is one of those stories about the coming of the Mafia to Los Angeles, so you might expect a straight-up formula tale, but Janet Harvey does an amazing job telling her version of the story, which is the story of her charming protagonist, Dolores Dare.
As the Oni Press copy for Angel City #2 sums things up:
Frances Faye and Dolores Dare were best friends, once upon a time; small town girls with cardboard suitcases and dreams of Hollywood stardom. But that was the past. Now, Frances has been murdered, and the crooked Los Angeles cops don’t care enough to solve the crime. Dolores hunts for the murderer everywhere, from high-end studio lots to seedy gambling dens…
As Dolores keeps digging, she discovers that gang war is coming to Los Angeles – and before she gets her answers, she’ll have to stay out of the crossfire.
So what makes Janet Harvey’s Mafia murder mystery noir different and amazing ? For one thing, Harvey gets in a surprising amount of depth and detail for a limited-run series, and to great effect, e.g., she really made me fall in love with Dolores ; for Dolores, I was willing to suspend disbelief in the unlikelihood of female Mob muscle in the mid-Twentieth Century, the way I did for Kathleen Turner in PRIZZI’S HONOR.
The dialogue is a bit predictable, as are some of the plot twists, but that’s as it should be : anything else would stand out in a disagreeable way – noir is almost always like that.
I also really liked Megan Levens’ art : it’s distinctively stylized in a way that’s playful, cartoonish even, e.g., solidity of line, bright palette. In fact, Levens employs this stylization to create a visual vocabulary, allowing her to raise period detail to the level of pop iconography. Overall, production design is superior, particularly in character design ; the layout is eye-pleasing, and the frame composition is particularly dynamic owing to the skillful character blocking.
I’d recommend ANGEL CITY : TOWN WITHOUT PITY to most comics readers, and especially to fans of graphic crime fiction, who will find this collection a most pleasant diversion, eminently satisfying – and in any case, the artwork is most definitely worth a look.
Another thing : this is a good book for girls and young women interested in comics, because with ANGEL CITY, Janet Harvey and Megan Levens have succeeded spectacularly in the male-dominated world of comics creation. Although ANGEL CITY is graphic genre fiction and not strictly literary, it even passes the Bechdel Test, in its portrayal of Dolores’ friendship with Frances.
What can I say? I like the vibe this book puts out – and the fact that it puts out an appealing vibe is an accomplishment in and of itself, isn’t it?
If you like this review, please check out the rest of my stuff here at Outright Geekery – thank you.
This title was provided to me as a regularly circulating print edition from the Seattle Public Library, to whom I’d like to offer a special note of thanks this time around: in my family’s use of the Library during 2017, we accessed thousands of dollars worth of books, graphic novels, CDs, DVDs, digital / streaming media, and DRM-free music, as well as 4G internet access through the Library’s circulating mobile hotspot program.
Tinseltown isn’t all glamor, but we knew that
Janet Harvey makes the femme fatale the protagonist in Angel City: Town Without Pity
By Ivy Li Apr. 20, 2017
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Angel City: Town Without Pity
Writer: Janet Harvey
Artist: Megan Levens
Colorist: Nick Filardi
Published by Oni Press
Book Market Release Date: August 29, 2017
Like the crew behind the film Hidden Figures, Harvey too writes a rarely told story: the point of view of the noir femme fatale. Seductive and cunning, this archetypal “fatal woman” manipulates characters with malicious intent with her charm. In Angel City, our protagonist Dolores Dare is not the villainess but the heroine. She reigns amidst Megan Levens and Nick Filardi’s colorful artwork, a sharp contrast to the typical black and white of noir comics.
After failing in Hollywood, Dolores becomes the enforcer for the Volante mob and Gino Volante’s woman. But when her best friend, Frances Faye, is discovered dead in a dumpster, Dolores begins investigating her death.
Angel City is gritty. Mobs run amok and this fictional town harbors selfishness and resentment. A disillusioned Tinseltown leaves its victims as relics of themselves; women and men chase after the glamor of stardom, drowning in the ecstasy of false fame. In typical 1930s fashion, misogyny and racial discrimination remain at large. To a modern reader, some of the dialogue may seem farcical, but it does well to remember a time when they weren’t.
This year, we find ourselves seeking more diverse voices in our media. As Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie reminds us in her TED Talk, misunderstandings arise when we are limited to the single story, a limited scope of the rich heritages of different people. Writers like Harvey are working to break the single story, and I tip my hat off to them.
While Dolores elevates the single story of the femme fatale — she feels, she cries, she fights — she, like the other characters, is not memorable in the realm of fighting, strong protagonists. Initially, her characterization feels like a sketch at best. She is the victim of excess; aspects of her character — her work for the mob, her loss of her mother and her best friend, her romance with Gino — could have fit together better. Rather than an organic presentation, the first few issues worked toward establishing a different aspect of her character, as if listing her different attributes.
Yet I have to acknowledge that although I sincerely wanted to love this work, I felt underwhelmed. The premise promises to subvert film noir tropes, but the actual narrative draws excessively from stock elements. The villain reveal and eventual romance are predictable, and frankly, despite being a solidly written narrative, Angel City is not genre-breaking work.
A hindrance is the underdevelopment of its side characters. Although these characters develop Dolores’s characterization, they are forgettable unless in relation to Dolores. She is spurred into action when Joe Yoshimoto angrily tells her that her friend was murdered. She later rejects Gino, a mobster who provides her with wealth and a job but cannot seem to empathize with her compassion. We find her character becoming more heroic as she gets more involved but I would like to have seen the rest of Angel City’s inhabitants receive the same development. Angel City comes together at the end, a disillusioned Hollywood that Dolores is able to survive but not save.
As Dolores narrates at the end, “They say that Hollywood loves a happy ending. The good guys win. The bad guys get punished. In real life...it’s rarely that simple.” In one memorable panel, Dolores and Joe embrace in front of the Clover Club. The two are standing on what looks like a red carpet. The lights of police cars flash behind them like those of films. Yet no matter how much like Hollywood it appears to be, this town can never hide its scars.
Quoted in Sidelights: “Angel City: Town Without Pity is everything a crime thriller lover would delight in. This comic keeps you guessing until the very last moments.”
Buy This Comic! Angel City: Town Without Pity
BY INSHA FITZPATRICK 08.16.2017 :: 2:15PM EDT BENWYYATT
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Buy This Comic: Come Into Me #1
Buy This Comic: The Ballad Of Sang #1
“Introducing ANGEL CITY, a hard-boiled 1930s noir starring Dolores Dare, previous Hollywood hopeful and current enforcer for the Volante mob. When her best friend turns up dead in a dumpster behind the Chinese Theater, Dolores starts her own investigation of the “April Fool’s Killer.” As she gets closer to the truth, Dolores will go up against the studios, the corrupt homicide division, and even her own gangland contacts – and uncover a scandal that shakes the very foundations of Tinseltown.”
Angel City: Town Without Pity is everything a crime thriller lover would delight in. This comic keeps you guessing until the very last moments. It’s truly a one of a kind gem that everyone should get ahold of.
ANGEL CITY: TOWN WITHOUT PITY
(W): Janet Harvey (A): Megan Levens C): Nick Filardi (L): CRANK!
I’m in love with true crime. That shouldn’t have been the first sentence coming into this review, but it’s true. Stories set in the ’30 or ’40s classic Hollywood era bring me in everything, but that might also the film nerd in me arising as well.
There was an alarming and hefty amount of stories that go unnoticed and unheard from that time. In a time where everything was corrupt, morality was slim to none, and nothing was off limits, it became an era that hurt more than helped. Angel City: Town Without Pity takes all of what happened back in the days (and even now) and brings it to us in a crime caper riddled with intrigue, determination and pure guts in the face of absolute corruption.
via Oni Press
Janet Harvey invokes so many different types of stories to make this vision a reality. Her writing’s so well crafted and suspenseful. It’s bound to keep your fingers turning to the next page to know what happens next. Angel City reads like a neo-noir it almost reminded me of films like Double Indemnity, The Third Man, Chinatown, and more.
The comic reads as a throwback to different crimes and events that happened, but retelling it in a way that’s fresh, vibrant and well done. For example, the crime itself committed by the April Fools Killer is almost reminiscent of the Black Dahlia’s murder in the 1940s. The studio system of corruption, gangsters, “models” and greed all call back to MGM’s double dealings in stories such as Girl 27. It’s such a significant piece of history told in one story.
With Harvey’s words comes Megan Levens fantastic art. Her cartoon style is a match made in heaven for this comic. A brilliant thing to notice about Megan’s art is that her line work carries a lot of emotion, in particular on the faces of the characters that bring out their sadness, happiness, and any other type of emotion you can think of.
However, with Megan’s art in full focus, Nick Filardi’s colors make this comic what it is. Filardi takes Levens’ lines and creates a superb noir tone. He makes the comic gritty, emotional and a bit raw. CRANK! rounds out this phenomenal team with unique lettering that hits with this comic so wonderfully.
via Oni Press
You’ll want to get your hands on this comic. I don’t think I can recommend it enough. It has excellent characters, intense suspense, a crime of the century and so much more. Also, make sure you read the last few pages of Angel City: Town Without Pity for some of the remarkable histories that inspired this story. This book is out now digitally or in print.
8/16/17 Releases – In addition to Angel City: Town Without Pity, here’s a list of other new titles that came out this week that you should be reading.
Gotham City Garage #1 by Collin Kelly, Jackson Lanzing (W), Brian Ching (A), Kelly Fitzpatrick (C), Rafael Albuquerque (CA) DC Comics
Spy Seal #1 by Rich Tommaso (W, A ,CA) Image Comics
Genius Cartel #1 by Marc Bernardin and Adam Freeman (W), Rosi Kampe (A) Image Comics
Planet of the Apes Archive Vol. 1 by Doug Moench (W), Mike Ploog, Tom Sutton, Herb Trimpe (A) BOOM! Studios
Quoted in Sidelights: “Dolores may be a jaded, former actress who’s dating a gangster, but she’s also his enforcer. It’s a choice that not only bucks convention, but assures the audience Dolores won’t end up as just a damsel in distress.”
“well-written and researched.”
Review: Angel City: Town Without Pity
When you hear “film noir,” you usually think of hardboiled detectives with fedoras on their heads and half-smoked cigarettes hanging from their lips. You think of dangerous dames and sinister conspiracies, of shady rooms and even shadier people. Angel City: Town Without Pity, a new trade paperback collection from Oni Press has all of those things with one major twist: this time, the gun moll is our heroine.
However, writer Janet Harvey spends the first few pages of the series pretending that’s not the case. We first meet Joe, a Japanese American photojournalist who goes to a grisly murder scene only to discover that the beautiful, blonde victim is his friend Frances Faye. From there, he goes to break the sad news to another aloof blonde, Dolores Dare, who convention tells us is just the girl he’ll spend the whole story saving in order to make up for losing Frances. Instead, the story switches perspective and Dolores who seeks justice for her fallen friend.
Though that sudden but deftly-handled shift is the first time Dolores subverts our expectations, it’s not the last. Dolores may be a jaded, former actress who’s dating a gangster, but she’s also his enforcer. It’s a choice that not only bucks convention, but assures the audience Dolores won’t end up as just a damsel in distress. It also speaks to Harvey’s seeming desire to fill the series with more than just strong, silent men, beating up other strong, silent men. That said, she comes by much of that diversity honestly. Some of the characters and events Harvey references (crime journalist Aggie Underwood or the animosity between the Chicano population and the local authorities, for instance) are true aspects of Hollywood history and including them gives the whole series a verisimilitude.
Still, well-written and researched as the story is, artist Megan Levens is equally responsible for making the series work. The world Harvey creates may be hardboiled, but Levens’s figures are unexpectedly supple and well-defined, emphasizing glamour over grit. That said, there’s no shortage of chiaroscuro lighting and it’s easy to picture the story unfolding in black-and-white—but then we’d have to lose Nick Filardi’s gorgeous colors. His Technicolor hues could seem strange given the story’s context, but they add to the sense of Old Hollywood glamour that gives the story its mood, making the more brutal moments of Dolores’s investigation into Frances’s murder even more effective.
Speaking of, though Frances’s murder sets the story in motion, it does get a tad lost in all the gangsters and prostitutes and Hollywood scandal. Regardless, anyone who’s seen a film noir and knows a little about Hollywood history can probably guess the outcome, but the plot isn’t necessarily the point of Angel City: Town Without Pity. It’s the mood. While the series technically reaches a conclusion, the ending also leaves the potential for more story—though not necessarily set in Hollywood. And maybe that’s for the best. Dolores is a helluva gal, but not every story needs to continue and after seeing what Harvey and Levens can do with Hollywood, imagine what they could do with Las Vegas.
Angel City: Town Without Pity Rating 9.5/10
Quoted in Sidelights: “Harvey’s ear for dialogue is excellent, using 1930s slang like ‘rubes,’ ‘holy smokes,’ and ‘dollface’ without overdoing it. Levens does a great job depicting Los Angeles during the Golden Age of Hollywood.”
ANGEL CITY
TOWN WITHOUT PITY
Janet Harvey
Megan Levens (Illustrator)
Nick Filardi (Illustrator)
Oni Press (Aug 29, 2017)
Softcover $19.99 (168pp)
978-1-62010-426-2
Angel City: Town Without Pity takes 1930s noir style, sets the story in Hollywood, and makes one major change from similar tales—here, a woman is the hero.
Dolores Dare, a former circus performer and aspiring actress, now working as a mob enforcer, is dragged into a mystery when her best friend, Frances Faye, is mysteriously killed.
A murder to be solved, mob involvement, and Hollywood studios that might be complicit are not new subjects for fiction, but Harvey brings distinct elements to the fore, simply by looking through the lens of a woman protagonist. Dare—formerly Dorothy Dunkel—is a survivor, but with a different set of talents and circumstances than other (male) noir protagonists. Adding to the interest is the role of her right-hand man, a Japanese-American journalist named Joe Yoshimoto.
Without a trench-coated, hard-boiled detective to solve the murder, it’s up to Dolores to untangle the web of greed and crime that snared her friend, and threatens to do the same to her.
Despite clever vérité touches like convincingly weaving real-life gangster Bugsy Siegel and a mention of publisher William Randolph Hearst into the story, the real treat here is getting the perspective of Dolores and Joe, a pair who represent the often-ignored background figures in many noir stories, now cast in leading roles.
Harvey’s ear for dialogue is excellent, using 1930s slang like “rubes,” “holy smokes,” and “dollface” without overdoing it. Levens does a great job depicting Los Angeles during the Golden Age of Hollywood—hair and clothing, as well as architecture, all ring true—but she has a distracting habit of drawing short horizontal lines across the bridge of her characters’ noses. Few escape this treatment, whether male or female, of varying age or ethnicity, and it immediately draws the eye, slightly diminishing the luster of Levens’s otherwise outstanding art.
Harvey, who has worked in film and television in addition to comics, has created a story that would make a good movie; however, with a woman as the main character, the chances of that happening aren’t good. Noir fans can take heart that Angel City: Town Without Pity exists to give a moody and compelling story the treatment it deserves.
Reviewed by Peter Dabbene
July/August 2017
Quoted in Sidelights: “Angel City doesn’t turn the noir genre on its head the way its press suggests. Rather, it forces open the door and claims a place within that genre for the groups traditionally marginalized by the tradition. It’s a tightly-paced, exciting tale that gratifies and frustrates exactly the way noir should.”
Angel City: Starlets and Crime
by Annie Blitzen | Oct 11, 2017 | Comics, Reviews |
Angel City: Starlets and Crime
Angel City
Janet Harvey (writer), Megan Levens (illustrator), Nick Filardi (colorist), Crank! (letterer)
Oni Press
October 2016-March 2017, collected August 2017
The studio-era Hollywood noir thriller mystery is a very entrenched, narrow genre. Noir as an American prose and film genre originated in that time and place with books like Double Indemnity and its film remake. That setting has been retained in a great number of works, from Blade Runner to the recent Brubaker/Phillips comic The Fade Out. In nearly all of these stories, despite the changes in settings, the protagonist remains more or less the same: a white, middle-aged, cishet, working-class man dragged into a dangerous investigation of entrenched corruption by an attractive woman with mysterious and complex motives.
Angel City: written by Janet Harvey, illustrated by Megan Levens, colored by Nick Filardi, lettered by Crank!
In this sense, Angel City turns the equation on its head. The man drags the woman into the investigation, and he’s a person of color (Japanese-American, in this case). The woman still has complex motives, even with the classic element of being a Mafia boss’s girlfriend. But she’s the protagonist. She’s not just arm candy for the mob boss. She’s an enforcer. She passes for the setting’s definition of “white,” but she’s Jewish, a fact she feels it’s in her best interests to hide. Many of the allies she works with along the way are people of color even less privileged than she is.
Angel City: written by Janet Harvey, illustrated by Megan Levens, colored by Nick Filardi, lettered by Crank!What intrigues me is where Angel City chooses to stop the subversion. This is an essential element of every attempt to subvert entrenched traditions. Change too much, and it ceases to be recognizable as an example of the source. Change too little, and you’re simply reinforcing the tradition you want to disrupt. Your changes become gimmicks. This line appears to be something Harvey is conscious of. She uses many, many classic noir elements, such as the struggling starlet from the sleepy Midwest; the close connections between studio, mob, and government; and the conversation about dangerous secrets incongruously held in a diner. The story arc is familiar. Dot is conscious of the racism around her, but she’s not above it. By keeping so many important and recognizable elements but changing the players, she errs on the side of changing too little.
Levens’ slightly cartoonish art style might seem an odd fit for such a gritty work, but it fits well. She focuses on facial details and acting, allowing figures and backgrounds to remain relatively simple. She doesn’t go in for much of the expressionism of noir cinema, instead opting for open, often bright, shots. This places the story in a slightly different Hollywood than most noir stories, a Hollywood so certain of its invincibility that it doesn’t bother hiding in the shadows.Angel City: written by Janet Harvey, illustrated by Megan Levens, colored by Nick Filardi, lettered by Crank!Filardi’s coloring is where the book really falls down for me. Starting with the cover, he colors Dot in a way that suggests she’s a light-skinned black woman rather than a white-passing blonde Jewish woman. Inconsistent skin tones remain a confusing issue until the final issue, when Dot takes refuge in a Hispanic-owned garage. In a book where race is such an important underlying element, this is a bad look. In other respects, though, his work is great. Palette choices signal the changes from “glitter and spotlights” LA to the everyday to the dark and dangerous world of hidden violence. Stronger art direction might have helped.
Angel City doesn’t turn the noir genre on its head the way its press suggests. Rather, it forces open the door and claims a place within that genre for the groups traditionally marginalized by the tradition. It’s a tightly-paced, exciting tale that gratifies and frustrates exactly the way noir should.