Comics and noir come from similar roots. Both grew up as throwaway entertainments, published cheaply on pulp paper, often overlooked. Both became vernacular art forms, popular melodramas with a twist. Both have a fascination with the dark side—crime and criminality, certainly, but also the more existential issue of what it means to do right in an indifferent universe, to live by one’s own code. This is an ethos shared by every crime fighter and superhero; as much as Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe, Batman is a detective straight out of noir.
Of course, not all comics traffic in superheroes, just as not all noir involves the solving of a crime. Not only that, but sometimes the forms overlap. Jeff Lemire’s spare and moving “The Old Silo” is a stunning case in point. Taking place on a farm that is failing, it tells the simple story of one man’s efforts to keep his homestead in the family. That this calls for some drastic measures puts Lemire’s work squarely in the tradition of Edward Anderson and, more recently, Daniel Woodrell, purveyors of what we might call country noir. Lemire has long been drawn to stories with noirish textures; his graphic novel The Nobody revolves around a drifter whose presence disrupts the life of a small town. Think of “The Old Silo,” then, as operating in a similar tradition: it’s a story about what happens when one is pushed to the edge and survival requires some difficult choices—a moral reckoning, if you will.•
—David L. Ulin
“The Old Silo,” by Jeff Lemire is excerpted from Noir: A Collection Of Crime Comics, edited by Daniel Chabon. “The Old Silo” © 2009 and 2020 Jeff Lemire. Published by Dark Horse Books. All rights reserved.
