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Jun 17, 2015 Web Exclusive By Zach Hollwedel

Four similar murders across four very different time periods in London reveal a complex mystery in Si Spencer’s eight-issue miniseries, Bodies, now collected and released as a single trade paperback. In the early 1890s, after fallout from the still unsolved Jack the Ripper case, inspector Edmond Hillinghead—whose own personal secrets threaten his career and his safety—stumbles upon a mutilated naked corpse in a dark alleyway. A similar body turns up after a bombing raid in 1940, which corrupt investigator Karl Whiteman initially uses to cover his own bad deeds. Nearly three quarters of a century later, the same savaged cadaver turns up, this time discovered in 2014 by detective Shahara Hasan, whose ethnicity makes her a frequent target of xenophobia. Lastly, a fourth corpse presents itself in post-Apocalyptic 2050, this time found by Maplewood, a woman suffering from memory loss and paramnesia.

Hands down, the coolest element of Bodies is the way in which each story is differentiated. Four separate artists—Phil Winslade, Dean Ormston, Tula Lotay, and Meghan Hetrick—illustrate the four different time periods, lending autonomous airs to each connected setting. Ormston’s 1890 is a dark, candlelit world inhabited by all that goes bump in the night. Winslade’s 1940 is dark for another reason, shadowed by an unavoidable and inescapable war, which no one can leave on the front. Hetrick brings realism to her racially divided 2014 London, and Lotav’s future is unexpectedly bright, despite the devastating pulsewave that has rattled the brains of Earth’s surviving humans. Spencer’s mystery itself (that of the recurring corpse) can be somewhat difficult to follow at times. It’s a cerebral, heady tetraptych that mostly comes together, though readers will want to follow extremely closely if they’re to fully understand it. Ultimately, the parts read stronger than the whole. Each of the four stories—with exception, perhaps, of the slightly convoluting futuristic one—are more intriguing than the unified mystery. Edmond Hillinghead and Shahara Hasan are exceptionally interesting characters, whose tales are likely to be the most captivating. Overall, though intentionally perplexing at times, Bodies is an engaging peek into the sleuthing and crime solving techniques employed during four different eras, as well as an examination of the London that was, is, and could one day be. (www.vertigocomics.com/graphic-novels/bodies)

Author rating: 6/10