The Dark Goodbye comes from the creative team of Frank Marraffino and Drew Rausch. It's a brilliant fusion of hard-boiled noir and and weird horror, all taking place on the mean streets of one very sinful city. Hired to locate a missing girl, Detective Max "Mutt" Mason discovers deeper malignant forces at work. Femmes fatales soon give way to strange creatures older than humanity, all bent on remaking our world as their own. Mason wants answers, but the solution to this mystery may go beyond mere greed and betrayal—leading the detective to the brink of horrifying realms in which man was never meant to set foot.

Max "Mutt" Mason        
Our hard-worn hero is a former cop now operating in the private sector. He wears a rumpled suit and fedora, and would be fairly healthy if not for his long hours and excessive alcohol consumption. Nothing stops him from getting to the truth; he’s like a dog once he gets something in his teeth.

Livinia Tillinghast       
Mason’s client is an ice queen in the true tradition of femmes fatales. And when that ice begins to melt, the thaw can be violent.
           
Melissa Katonic       
Mason’s spirited office gal is a multi-talented independent who isn’t afraid to give anyone a piece of her mind, even her employer.    
       
Hasikiro Shinjo       
Mason’s partner is currently a resident at the local insane asylum, having gone off the deep end during his last case.
          
Ben Ohms       
A police lieutenant, and Mason’s contact on the force, Ohms knows that there is only so much that he can do within the confines of the proper channels.    
       
Gill       
The proprietor of a self-named bar.  Mason drowns his troubles at Gill's along with  various and sundry blue collar denizens of the city.    
       
Curwen Spindledrift       
Livinia’s grandfather is a wheelchair-bound former captain of industry. His feeble frame does not prevent him from pulling strings to achieve his desired results.    
       
Dot       
Spindledrift’s venomous vixen of a companion is a ball of trouble ready to bounce.    
       
Joe Canino       
A leader of the criminal element, there is more to him than meets the eye. And we don’t mean the eye that is barely kept inside his head, a souvenir from a run-in with something...other.

Frank Marraffino – Author:
When Frank isn't searching for hidden truths lurking beneath the thin veneer of “civilization,” he works as head projectionist at New York City’s famed Radio City Music Hall.

Drew Rausch – Artist:
From the tender age of six, Drew has attempted to explore the macabre underbelly of the world through art. A graduate of the Hussian School of Art and Technology, his other projects include the comic “Sullengrey.”

From an early age, most of us learn to avoid dark alleys. However, there are some of us who tend to seek them out. We need to know what's in there. What’s on the other side. And then there are times when those dark, ominous recesses find us.

When I was told about Frank Marriffino’s story pitch, I jumped at the chance to edit the book. In fact, I should take this opportunity to apologize to my good friend, and fellow editor, Paul Morrissey. It was Paul who told me about the pitch, and if I recall, I nearly grabbed him by the shirt collar and demanded the project. Paul graciously (maybe too quickly) acquiesced to my plea.

The reason for my nearly pathological reaction was that, years earlier, I, too, had been inspired to try my hand at a similar tale. It had never coalesced into anything more than rambling notes and fevered ideas, but it had remained in the darker corners of my mind, waiting...

And here was Frank’s story, better than I could have ever conceived it. A perfect fusion of Chandleresque hard boiled noir and the weird horror of H.P. Lovecraft. Gumshoes and femmes fatales mingling on the same pages as ancient insane deities and things that lurk in the depths. Frank had it down. The language and cadences of the crime pulps intermingled with a terrifying, dark mythology. It was clear that Frank understood the two genres intuitively, but what was impressive was how he tapped into the similar tropes and themes of the two, and melded them so seamlessly.

Now the question was, “who could possibly draw this madness?”Once again, I owe a debt of gratitude to Mr. Morrissey, who’d been (sometimes I think almost too conveniently) hanging on to the portfolio of a certain Drew Rausch for a while. Now, I can’t imagine anyone else drawing the book. Drew’s artwork is drenched in shadow. His line work has an unsettling, agitated quality to it, and he frequently frames his panels in an off-kilter manner, much like the German expressionism that informed film noir. It has, and I mean this in the best possible way, a sense of decay about it. It’s as if Drew glimpsed realms none of us were meant to see, and brought back these nightmarish representations to share with the rest of us.

So here you have it, Dear Reader.

The Dark Goodbye.

It’s the ink-black alley that found me and beckoned me to enter.
And refuses to let me leave.

And now, here you are. Will you join me?

At this very moment, I can hear Morrissey at his desk behind me...laughing.


~ Bryce P. Coleman, Editor