Great plot & writing that was essentially ruined by the choice of artwork. Easily could have been 5 stars if only the art wasn't so unpleasant. I understood why they would choose this route but it hindered the enjoyment of it for me. It was very difficult to differentiate characters. ( )

Eliot Ness, fresh off the defeat of Al Capone in Chicago, comes to Cleveland to clean up its corrupt police force. But he quickly gets sidetracked, as what will become America's first famous serial killer starts operating in the city. We follow him and the two local detectives on the case as this black and white graphic novel depicts the hunt for the gruesome killings and mutilations done by "the Torso Murderer".

The artwork is not quite my thing, let's be clear. It's sometimes tough to follow, and it's so stylized as to not reallly add much when I can. And the re-use of drawings combined with the occasional injection of real photos doesn't quite grabd me, either (though the brutal reminder this makes of the reality of the subject matter is admittedly effective). But honestly, that doesn't really matter, because the story, I thought, is good. I cared about the detectives and Ness, and the typical problem I have with fiction based closely on real events (no real sense of ending or closure) is kind of baked into the formula in a good way here.

If you can stomach the (justifiably) horrific depictions of mutilated corpses, and if a 1930s true crime comic sounds like something you might enjoy, I'd happily recommend this. But it's not going to be for everyone. ( )

I liked Torso, but it was a tough eread for an old lady with cataracts. I gave up trying to read it on my Nook and switched to my desktop, which really cut into the available reading time, so it took a lot longer than it should have. The format gave me a headache. The story was a little pretentious, but good. ( )

An excellent story with great characters. It would be a classic in the hands of a capable artist, but as it is, the art is puzzlingly bad. ( )

Along with [a:Frank Miller|15085|Frank Miller|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1206594388p2/15085.jpg] and [a:David Lapham|52924|David Lapham|http://www.goodreads.com/images/nophoto/nophoto-M-50x66.jpg], Bendis spearheaded the crime comics movement of the 90s. Throughout the decade, he wrote and illustrated several now-classic thrillers including [b:Jinx|105861|Jinx The Definitive Collection|Brian Michael Bendis|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171560532s/105861.jpg|102042], [b:A.K.A. Goldfish|105859|Goldfish|Brian Michael Bendis|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171560531s/105859.jpg|102040], and Torso. Based on the real life "Torso Murderer," a serial killer who terrorized Cleveland from 1934 to 1938, Torso unveils the last case of the post-Untouchables Elliot Ness. Bendis and co-writer Andreyko effectively convey the fear, frustrations, and chaos surrounding the notoriously still unsolved case. The last crime work illustrated by Bendis, who later found more fame as a writer of and shepherd to Marvel's resurgence of the last decade, proved to be not only his most compelling work but arguably one of the finest true crime graphic novels ever produced. ( )