Love Shots

The French authors meld a European sensibility, drenched in the estheticized introspection of the outcast, with the violent and gaudy archetypes embodied in American film noir classics. Hollywood stars, gangsters, boxing and the Louisiana delta figure prominently here. Through the use of memory fragments, these stories delineate some ironic triumph that ultimately diminishes and alienates the characters. The loosely rendered, richly colored, epiphanic drawings are placed above the textsans word balloons. Impressive watercolor-and-pen work captures the brooding darkness of a northern black pugilist in a southern racist town (``The White Woman'') as well as the garishness of a murder as stark as the brilliantly lit desert in which it takes place (``New Mexico''). The best story of this admirable collection, ``Night of the Alligator,'' displays the collaborators' ability to reinvigorate American gangster mythology with lush, romantic visuals while devaluing the glamour of those archetypes through the very savagery and moral degradation that such myths often serve to conceal. (Nov.)