Where the Body Was (2023)

The real crime in *Where the Body Was* isn’t murder—it’s the way the past refuses to stay buried, shaping lives through obsession, identity theft, and emotional repression. Palmer Sneed doesn’t just steal his father’s badge—he steals an entire life, building a false identity as a self-appointed cop that collapses under the weight of his own fantasy, culminating in a heart attack that mirrors his father’s death. The murder of Jack Foster, the story’s titular crime, is a tragic accident—caused not by malice but by a lover’s betrayal that triggers a fatal fall. Yet the true tragedy unfolds in the collateral damage: Tommy Brandt’s lifelong fixation on Karina, born from a childhood trauma that never healed; Lila Nguyen’s roller derby persona as a defiant act of self-empowerment in a neighborhood that isolates her as the only Vietnamese family; and Dr. Melville’s hollow suicide, driven not by passion but by a desperate need to protect a mortgage. The 1980s setting isn’t a nostalgic backdrop but a psychological mirror—where emotional repression and fantasy become survival mechanisms, and the body was never the point. The graphic novel’s strength lies in its character-driven depth, but its failure to anchor itself in authentic period detail—no Cyndi Lauper, no Ghostbusters, no Breakfast Club energy—leaves the world feeling hazy and ungrounded, undermining its potential as a visually immersive crime tale.