A History of Violence

John Wagner and Vince Locke’s stark, single-issue graphic novel for DC’s Paradox Press is a taut, brutally efficient crime story that follows an ordinary small-town diner owner whose violent past erupts when he guns down two would-be robbers. The book’s gritty, unflinching art and lean, morally complex narrative explore the long shadow of violence and the impossibility of escaping one’s history. A landmark in the crime-comics genre, it stands as a potent, self-contained work that demonstrates the power of the medium to tell a hard-boiled thriller with devastating economy.