When this showed up in the new graphic novels listing at my library, it seemed a familiar title. I was hoping it was a new installment of a collection I'd read a decade before, but this is just an abridged hardcover edition of that same book, omitting a Stray Bullets story by David Lapham and another story by the Fillbach Brothers. Of the eleven stories left, it still has a Mister X story by Dean Motter, a Kane story by Paul Grist, and a Criminal story by Ed Brubaker, and one-off tales by popular writers Brian Azzarello and Jeff Lemire.

I decided to read it again, but it wasn't really worthy of a second go-round. At eight to ten pages each, there is not much time for any of the tales to fully develop a noir atmosphere. So you end up with opaque stuff like the Mister X entry or simple assassin vs. assassin dreck like "The Last Hit." A couple resorted to stupid and jarring, out-of-nowhere science fiction twist endings. And -- always annoying in a graphic anthology -- there's a text story plopped into the middle that just seems to go on forever. One of the tales turns out to be a Batman homage, but is sort of pointless even with that aspect. ( )