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March 14, 2017 · 10:23 am

“Multi-Tasking” by Dale Berry

Dale W. Berry is a commercial artist and designer, graphic novelist (see the Tales of the Moonlight Cutter series), and the founder of Myriad Publications. In December 2015, AHMM published his “Not A Creature Was Stirring,” the first graphic short story ever to appear in the magazine, and in the current issue (March/April), we published a second, his suspenseful “Dead Air.” Here he talks about that story, and how graphic storytelling and the mystery genre work together.

Sometimes I think the process of creating graphic short stories—of telling a tale visually on the page as well as in written words—is like having to do the same thing every writer does, but times two.

You imagine the plot and characters, maybe a certain sequence or relationship, and then conjure the words to describe them. You live and breathe and compose them into existence. Difficult enough, even in the best of situations. But then, somewhat ridiculously, you must do it all again, in sketches and thumbnails, in pencils and inks, and graphics and print production.

In the end, though, it’s worth it. Because that fusion of words and pictures, laid out in sequence like movies on paper, connects in the reader’s mind differently than words alone. And that’s always been the real magic of “comics.” They can float a global corporate film franchise, sure, but they’ll also take you into your most private space. There’s really no great, cosmic backstory necessary.

For me, that’s why creating them in the mystery genre makes sense, especially in short form. Graphic storytelling can capture a moment. Arranging and re-arranging that sequence of little pictures evokes mood, atmosphere and motivation. It allows you to examine an intimate human drama, building and dissecting conflict and suspense, beat by beat. You go deeper.

And the mystery genre does the same thing.

The two forms were made for each other. If I’m wrong, then Alfred Hitchcock never storyboarded the shower scene from Psycho.

For “Dead Air”, in the latest issue of AHMM, I drew (pardon the pun) on my 25+ years as a radio disc jockey to tell the kind of intimate story that mysteries and comics both do well: the isolated protagonist is confronted with a potential life-or-death puzzle, and must solve it while the clock is ticking.

It’s a classic set-up. It’s also classic live radio . . . you can ask any disc jockey. God forbid you let “dead air” happen, even as somewhere out there a listener is connecting with you in an immediate and intimate way.

Strength of Character (March/April 2017)

Crime is character building, at least in crime fiction, because it is characters, their dark psychologies and questionable motivations, that drive compelling stories—as the tales in this issue amply demonstrate.

What compels a model prisoner, in Tony Richards’s “Magpie Man,” to burst out of jail just before he is to be lawfully released? What motivates a desperate woman, in Dale Berry’s graphic story “Dead Air,” to strike up a conversation with a radio DJ? Why does a detective, in Wayne J. Gardiner’s “Bygones,” return home for the funeral of his high-school adversary?

Interpersonal entanglements complicate Charles John Harper’s police procedural “The Echoes.” A man seeking invisibility is driven from the dangerous shadows in Bob Tippee’s “Underground Above Ground.” Susan Oleksiw’s “How Do You Know What You Want” is a poignant story of a teen in foster care and the woman who tries to connect with her, and Martin Limón’s P.I. Il Yong pursues a case that takes him to the remote reaches of the Himalayas, where survival may depend on the uncertain kindness of othes, in “hominid.”

Social institutions and conventions are questioned in Alan E. Foulds’ “Razor’s Edge” when a reporter revisits a long-ago cold case, and in Mitch Alderman’s “Bleak Future” when P.I. Bubba Simms looks into extortion among central Florida’s genteel society. An old injustice gets a fresh look in “Rough-Hewn Retribution,” Nancy Pauline Simpson’s historical set in the early twentieth century South. A homicide detective and suspect match wits in the interview room in Chris Knopf’s “A Little Cariñoso.” And a land dispute is complicated—and deadly—in Gilbert M. Stack’s British historical whodunit “Greed.”

Watch out, these complicated characters will steal your attention—and perhaps your sympathy.