Chin Music, №1, May 2013

📗 Chin Music is a book confident and unforced in its concept: Gangsters and G-men up against, or in thrall of, ancient, possibly nasty, powers. It's a simple idea, and one we've seen before, but what makes it work is that Niles doesn't feel the need to overburden it with elaborate explanations, or indeed much in the way of dialogue; much of this opening issue is wordless. You don't have to know who Eliot Ness or Al Capone are to get the heft of this story, and Niles doesn't bother explaining it to us; everything about this book is revealed through action. We know Ness is a decent man not because he tells us, but because he stops by the side of the road to save a horrifically injured man, and if he can't do that, he commits to giving the family a little peace.