This extremely "graphic" novel has complex, troubled stories interwoven with different perspectives. All of the people are incredibly flawed and often malicious, this is a side of humanity that I hate to see but it is real.

"Fishtown: Brotherly Love Edition" has some great art throughout the graphic novel. But the story was pretty boring and repetitive for me.

This is a moderately interesting tale of true crime, as a few unlikeable and unattractive skunkheads kill off a fellow unlikeable and unattractive skunkhead. The story skitters between scenes of "ooh, my parents are horrid to me I must cut myself", them scoring, the build-up to the murder, and the skunkheads' interview scenes, where disembodied police voices interrogate them to work out what actually happened. What went down was a bloody murder, but which one of the friends did the deed – or did they all? Or was it, of course, their under-privileged working class upbringing to blame?

The merits of the book are certainly in the look – it has the colour of aged paper, and a certain very 1970s feel, that run counter to the true crime behind this happening in 2003, but still add a je ne sais quoi to proceedings. The problems perhaps are, to some extent, the disjointed narrative, but primarily the fact that it borrows the 1970s cinematic aesthetic and takes a lot of the drama out of proceedings. It tries to replace this with hippie/hipster coolness, acting as cold as is possible about the violent murder of someone for what was actually a pitifully small amount of cash. Marry that to what are utterly uninteresting characters, and you're left with an uneasy look at the dark side of human nature, with little redemption for either anyone in the narrative or in the audience. That mature side of things (and it's noticeable how much of this could have had sound FX splashed across the page yet doesn't) is what I'll remember from these pages, for it certainly lacks in a standard resolution to please the reader.

This is pretty disturbing, especially as it is based on real events. The story centers around a group of drug abusing high school burnouts who decide to kill a friend so they can take his paycheck ($500 to be split between all 4 of them) and have enough to buy drugs.
There's a lot here that might need content warning for the more sensitive readers: self harm, drug abuse, physical abuse, and sex. It's bleak, and dark, and definitely not for everyone.