We all love the redhead forensic guy who lived for the flashes of red. And no we are not talking about West. Rather the guy that dumps bodies out by Key West. Dexter.
So after a Netflix binge, and a disappointing final season, I revisited Showtime’s Early Cuts, the Dexter motion comic series online. Watchmen truly set off a storm with the motion comic, and Early Cuts is one of the few motion comics that seem to get it just about right. In some places anyway. Indeed, the artwork at times is inconsistent in Season 2; illustrations and manipulated / traced photos takes you slightly out of the universe at times, but the mood and atmosphere created by the textures and sound brings us close to Dexter’s ‘Dark Passenger’.
Also it does something more effectively that I think the live action series did not… it created a poetic, tragic even, look into the loneliness of Dexter. I think this is congenital to the medium of the graphic novel. Relatively static images, bolstered by a powerful monologue, like how we read panels of a comic book, gives each image an impetus and discernment, observing Dexter’s ‘stillness’ even in chaos. Harry’s Law counterbalancing Murphy’s Law.
The episode that was done really well was Dexter Early Cuts: Gene Marshall. Some nice sequences and illustrations by Andrés Vera Martínez, with great sound design and enthralling narrative direction, this episode of Early Cuts definitely is worth a watch if you haven’t come across it:
Whole episodes can be seen on Dexter’s YouTube page: