By Dustin Cabeal

Yellow Cab is an interesting read to say the least. I spent the entire story waiting for the other shoe to drop and it never did. Instead, it’s just a look at the complicated nature of driving a cab in New York and how basically it’s a money pit trap for immigrants looking at getting their start in the country.

What’s even more disappointing is that it’s not even a true story, but instead the author of the novel has written themselves into the story to give a fake sense of realism. At least if the concept was based on fact, it would have perhaps been a story to bring up for this one interesting aspect.

But atlas, I went into my rant too soon. Yellow Cab follows Benoit Cohen, a French filmmaker living in gentrified Brooklyn trying to find his next story and we are obviously reading it. He decides to become a taxi driver to find a story and begins crafting a story that’s duller than the one we’re reading. It shows all the struggles and annoyances of becoming a taxi driver. It’s a big business after all so adding extra steps produces more money for the city and businesses attached to the industry. Benoit goes through it all and about halfway through the story he’s finally driving a taxi. And there’s not much else. Eventually, he stops driving a taxi and the story ends.

On one hand, this is a love note to the complicated nature of New York city. Logistically, New York shouldn’t be able to function and yet it does… constantly and that’s something that a lot of people find fascinating. This is a love note to the city and to taxis which are synonymous with New York. That part is enjoyable. Having only visited New York I too find aspects of it fascinating, but there were so many wasted pages of just artwork of buildings. Buildings that aren’t recognizable or really striking in thick black and white linework. The latter half of the book is just average looking people sitting in the back of a cab and it goes on and on until Benoit is done driving a cab.

The artwork is enjoyable and realistic. It’s all black and white as I said, but it’s meant to be that way. It’s not something that could be easily colored without losing a lot of the detail and contrast in the artwork. At the same time, I never cared for the artwork on the faces. Everything else was fine, but the faces were all pretty damn ugly. As a whole, people are average and borderline ugly, but this comic didn’t have one passable beautiful person. In a city of millions, they are apparently all ugmos. I’m sure a sense of realism was trying to be achieved here, but for my tastes I never liked the faces or the facial expressions. Everyone had the same shocked look and its used over and over throughout the course of the 162-page story. There was almost a sense of timing to when it would hit, but I couldn’t bring myself to count how many times I saw it used.

It’s not a bad story. It’s well-paced and an easy read. It’s the fact that it’s too easy to read. There’s no conflict, just minor inconveniences and because there’s nothing at risk for our character there’s no reason to worry about him. His biggest worry is that he’ll keep driving a cab. Like no shit, I think that’s what most taxi drivers worry about. The story does try to instill this panic and fear of Benoit driving a taxi at night, but then it only seems to happen in his nightmares. Really it seems like Benoit had a fun little break from movies and slummed it as a taxi driver.

It's really difficult to recommend this book. As I said, I was waiting for the other shoe to drop the entire time. I was stuck waiting for something, anything to happen, but it didn’t. You could call it a slice of life story, but it lacks anything deep to make it interesting. Benoit as a character isn’t exactly loveable or interesting and while the artwork is detailed and lovely at times, overall, it’s not memorable nor does it add a deeper layer to the story. Who is this story for? I have no idea, maybe it’s for you though. Maybe something here will ping with you and strike an interest. Maybe this will be someone’s first slice of life comic and they’ll see a world outside of superheroes that can be told with comics and that’s fine. I hope that happens, but for me personally I would be hard pressed to recommend it.

Chabouté
Benoit Cohen
Edward Gauvin
Nathan Widick
Alonzo Simon
Zac Boone
IDW Publishing

Score: 2/5