Review: Satellite Sam #4

Politics, closet homosexuality, and baseball this month on 'Satellite Sam', as the expansion ambitions for LaMonde start heating up. As per usual the mystery sort of takes a backseat to the studio drama, with little progress on the murder front for Micheal, though a burgeoning temptation might cause him future trouble. It's a factor of the slow pace that has gotten quite a few readers to check out but something that fails to bother me now that I've accepted it as being not critical to the story or my enjoyment. It might sound silly to say the murder mystery is unimportant to a comic book about a murder mystery, but Fraction has too much fun exploring his seedy little world to begrudge him this, and the book is plenty engaging without an investigation dominating the page count.

Micheal isn't a paticularly successful detective anyway, and perhaps isn't intended to be one, his playing investigator may having more to do with his own steady decline down his father's path. Regardless, I'm happy to tune in, a comic that's not for everyone but is good for quiet nights with a glass of bourbon.

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Score: 4/5

Writer: Matt Fraction Artist: Howard Chaykin Publisher: Image Comics Price: $3.50 Release Date: 10/23/13