Comic Review: Fishtown

By Lisa Fary

I didn’t mean to read all of Kevin Colden’s Fishtown in one sitting.  The plan was to read a few panels while downloading something else; long after the download finished, I was still reading.  Partly because it was so good, but partly for another reason.

Fishtown was so bleak and disturbing that, had I taken a break, I may not have gone back to it.  John had a different reaction to the disturbing bleakness: he had to put it down because it was too much for one sitting.

The comic, first published online and now in hardcover from IDW, is based on the true story of the 2003 murder of a 16 year old boy at the hands of four of his friends in Philly’s Fishtown neighborhood. The non-linear narrative switches back and forth from the kids’ statements about the murder and Colden’s speculative retelling of the actual events.

As in reality, Colden’s version of the murder and those involved is grisly and horrifying.  Angelica is a Catholic school student who does drugs in the girls’ bathroom, prostitutes herself for drugs, and self-mutilates at home.  She’s the only character that seems to have a concerned family – both her mother and her older sister directly express their worries and fears about the girl’s actions, but Angelica, other than her cutting, is unresponsive to them. Keith, grade school drug dealer, and his older brother, Adrian, live with an abusive uncle.  The group is rounded out by Justin, who’s shown with no parental figure at all.

What was most disturbing to me is that each one of these kids reminds me of specific students who have come through my classroom over the years.  There haven’t been a  lot, but there or four or five kids who stand out in my memory who I think would have been capable of something like this.

When I met Colden at a signing event at Brave New Worlds in Philly’s Old City, he said that the local media coverage of the crime and trial was sensationalized and he wanted to put it out there without that filter, let the murder be shown for what it is rather than what the media made it out to be.

Colden handles the horror of the kids’ actions and aftermath without passing judgment or making excuses for them.  In Fishtown, they’re not monsters and they’re not victims.  It’s all part of the story and you’ll draw your own conclusions about the perpetrators.  You may even look at the people you think you know and ask yourself, “What is this person truly capable of?”

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Lisa Fary’s early exposure to classic Battlestar Galactica in 1979 is largely responsible for her lifelong interest in science fiction and her childhood ambition of being an intergalactic space cowgirl. She thinks diagramming sentences is a fun alternative to Sudoku.

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