September 22, 2014

I’m sure a lot of you out there share my pain when I say I miss Dexter terribly. Regardless of how you personally feel about it’s conclusion or the various directions the series took over the course of 8 years, it’s hard to deny that it paved the wave for the current crop of genre-accessible television entertainment. And we can all agree that Season 4 has to be one of the greatest seasons of television ever. (I love Season’s 2 and 7 as well.) But there’s still that desire for your “Dexter fix.” I get it. I took solace in the Jeff Lindsay novels. I’d tried reading them while the show was in progress, but it started to get a bit difficult to follow along with the vastly radical directions both mediums were taking the characters in. (Dexter has a baby boy on the show, in the books its a baby girl, for example.) And so I opted not to read the books until after the show was completely over. It’s interesting if you’d like to follow a completely different alternate universe of Dexter, and some of that material is fun to read, in particular Dexter Is Delicious, but I get the sense that much like Robert Bloch had with Norman Bates and his PSYCHO series, Lindsay might also have a bit of a love/hate relationship with his most famous creation.

Regardless, one of the things that irked me about the way Showtime execs referred to Dexter was that he was as important to them as Batman to Warners or Spider-Man to Sony. Why does this bother me? Because they’re comparing Dexter, a serial killer… to superheroes, something he most definitely is not and shows how little they actually know the character. But alas, it should come as no surprise that he’s ended up over at Marvel Comics for his comic book interpretation, from original author Jeff Lindsay and which tries really hard to disassociate itself from the show version. (He doesn’t really look like Michael C. Hall for example, which could be a conscience choice or just a rights issue. Who knows?) I gave the first 5 issue run a whirl and bought each issue as it consecutively came out, but was quickly disappointed to realize that Lindsay was recycling elements from his book Dexter In The Dark (the universally agreed on worst of the lot) for his first Dexter comic outing. (They both share the character/killer Steve Gonzalez.) And so I kind of gave up fairly quickly, although the title “Dexter Down Under” intrigued me. I totally forgot about that new mini-series until my friend Cody Jones gifted me with the graphic novel which collects all 5 issues.

Essentially, Dexter has has attained some notoriety for writing a well reviewed and regarded book on Blood Spatter and Forensics. It gains the attention of Sergeant Shawna Wiggs, a tough as nails officer in Australia that’s in the middle of a bloody case of murdered immigrants that make it over to the country but never get the chance to start their new lives. (Most are snuffed out on the very piers they arrive at!) Who could possibly have a grudge against foreigners? Is it the wealthy and well known public figure & entrepreneur Bruce Grigsby, who openly is extremely prejudice? (They offer next to no other suspects, so it’s not really a guessing game.) Shawna coincidentally bares a lot of similarities to Dexter’s loving sister Deborah. Except well… she really, really wants to bed Dexter. (And does!) They eventually uncover Grigsby’s human hunting ground and are left to fend for themselves in the open jungle against hunters.

While it’s an interesting and wild story, riddled with that trademark Dexter voice over humor, there’s a lot that makes me question who the hell this version of Dexter is supposed to be? Unlike the show, there’s no real depth or any twists plotted out over the course of the 5 issue arc. It’s all pretty straight forward stuff and hence isn’t nearly as exciting. (Like I mentioned earlier, you pretty much know the “killer” they’re after by the end of the first issue. I like the idea of putting Dexter in foreign territory. That was always the funnest aspect of him in the show is putting him in awkward situations where he had to do everything in his acting ability to remain human. But in the comics, everything resolves itself a bit too easily and conveniently. And in fact, the way he kills is a bit questionable. No morals, no Harry’s code. He kills one guy held captive that doesn’t know any better – granted out of self defense, but it doesn’t feel like…. Dexter to me. If you take away his “code,” well then he’s just another serial killer. And that’s what was appealing about the show is they always maintained the complexity of that grey area regarding the character. None of that in the comic. So I wonder if Lindsay even knows who Dexter is at this point? (Again, love aspects of his books, but he does some pretty infuriating things with Dex in them as well. See: Dexter’s Final Cut. Pretty much all of the last 4-5 chapters.) I can say that the art of Dalibor Talajic is fun and interesting and I rather like the off-kilter cover’s he comes up with.

If you’re a fan of the show, but not much else, then I can’t recommend either the books or comics to you. However, if you’re a Dexterholic and just want to keep reading radical and various different interpretations of the character, then you might want to give this a read. It’s really only for Dexter fanatics that like me, really miss the show. I wonder if the average comic fan who is unfamiliar with either the show or books enjoys the comics on their own? If you’re one of those people, please let me know in the comments below. Otherwise, approach with caution.