From the dark and seedy streets of Toronto comes PlierPants, the collaborative team of artist Matthew Daley and writer Cory McCallum, and their Shuster Award winning comic THE PIG SLEEP (nominated for the Gene Day Award-Best Self-Published Comic 2012). A throwback to the wise-cracking detective days of yore, McCallum's writing contains "the best metaphors I've read in a long time" (Tdotcomics) and Daley's inimitable art "really completes the package, as the whole thing has a unique look to it that still somehow fits the theme perfectly" (Optical Sloth). Four cops have gone missing and there is precious little evidence to go on, but that doesn't stop the scaliest sleuth this side of Sam Spade, Mr. Monitor, the one-line wunderkind, from taking the case. There's no shortage of sidewalk slimeballs in Monitor's world, and no dearth of wry humour and dark twists in Daley and McCallum's mysterious yarn. Daley's art leaps off of the page, his original style managing to succesfully toe the line between forward-thinking and classic. McCallum's writing finds a delicate balance between revelling in the tight-lipped genius of gumshoe vernacular and gleefully ridiculing the very same.

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  9/24/2023