Brian Truitt

USA TODAY

%27The United States of Murder Inc.%27 debuts in May

Comic book imagines a landscape where the Mob won the war on organized crime

Series is by %27Powers%27 creators Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Avon Oeming

Writer Brian Michael Bendis and artist Michael Avon Oeming's new comic-book vision of the USA is one full of Mob rule and where crime-ridden streets are pretty much a given.

Welcome to The United States of Murder Inc.

The guys behind the award-winning comic Powers go deep into the underworld for their creator-owned title (out in May from Marvel Comics' Icon imprint) that imagines something happening in the history of our country where the strong arm of the Five Families of the American Mafia never dissipated.

Instead, their power grew so much that the government had to concede most of the Eastern Seaboard and parts of Nevada to them.

"For me, it was Brian thinking I came up with this awesome idea of an alternate history: 'What if the Mob had won the war with the FBI?' " Oeming says. "I was just asking a question, he took it as a pitch and off we went immediately going into ideas and rolling over scenarios."

It's a concept that's dripping with noir possibilities, and one that allowed Bendis, who's well known for his Marvel superhero work (Avengers, All-New X-Men, Guardians of the Galaxy) to return to his crime-fiction beginnings.

"We always wanted to do a real crime comic — no other genre immersed in it, not a crime comic with aliens," Bendis says.

"I wanted to read this comic really badly and no one was making it, so we just stopped what we were doing, rolled up our sleeves and made it."

Oeming sees the genre as a parallel to the superhero comics he grew up reading.

"Think about how criminal characters are so much like heroes," the artist says. "They live in two worlds, the one with their family and the one with their 'careers' and both often come into conflict with each other. Choices have to be made at times, loyalty to your friends and family or loyalty to the 'Family.' It's sort of the flip side to Daredevil and Spiderman."

Even in an alternate history, loyalty is a big deal in the Mafia right from the first page of Murder Inc. (The double-sized first issue kicks off six straight before the comic enters a schedule where it will alternate release months with Powers.)

Young Valentine Gallo becomes a made man in the presence of his mother Madonna and the organization he's been around his entire existence. The mysterious hitwoman Jagger Rose enters his life just as he's about to learn the Family secrets, and something happens that makes both of these hotshot rising stars in the gangster community to question everything they've ever known.

"We meet our character as he gets what he's always wanted," Bendis says, "and then discovers things he'd probably never wanted to hear."

Bendis was itching to do an expansive widescreen work along the lines of Once Upon a Time in America and first two The Godfather movies in comic form, and he's also had to do a lot of world building based on real history.

The writer knows the entire history of Murder Inc. — the term given to the Mob hitmen of the 1930s and '40s — "by heart, like it's a play I memorized," Bendis says. "For those who've really read up on their stuff, it was one or two lucky breaks that really led the federal government to take a swipe at organized crime in this country, and without those two lucky breaks, things could have gone very differently.

"What the Families also brought to their people was security and a place and a sense of belonging that is missing for a lot of people," he adds. "Here we are decades later at a place where it is so entrenched in our society that it's commonplace."

Oeming looked at a lot of America's criminal history for his visuals, since there have always been sections of a city completely run by the Mafia, he says. "Chinatown in New York City is like its own world in the 1960s through '80s. Cops were just for show, it was the Triad running things. You can extrapolate that to a more nationwide view of the Mafia."

Things have evolved for the Families over the years, and one example of that is Valentine himself. He's becoming a made man very early without having proved himself, Bendis says, "which says a lot about what's happened to the Five Families since."

If they're stronger than ever before and ruling the East Coast, Bendis had to figure out how that affected culture and society. Technology might actually be further along than now with the advent of a new organized-crime element — things probably moved a little slower sociologically and in terms of gangster language and lingo.

"It's been the most complicated puzzle making you could think of," Bendis says. "You have all these pieces and they all affect each other."

The initiation process into the Mob has also changed. What used to be done in private is now in public, which show the way the world has turned for them and how they don't have to hide. But, in the opening scene, the Mob boss even says, "This isn't the way we used to do things."

"You see that he's already kind of had it and they're doing something that is about 80% the way they used to do it but everything's a little bit different," Bendis says.

In bringing as much black and contrast to the page as possible, Oeming says Murder Inc. "will defiantly be more noir than Powers is." And for the main characters, Bendis gave him visual cues based on actors to capture a specific vibe.

"Wong Kar Wai films are a visual reference for us. His films just drip with mood so the world becomes a character. That world is a major personality in our book and has specific looks for locals and territories."

Bendis has read enough police interrogations of hitmen and gangsters to get into the mind-set of Valentine, and while Jagger is "probably the least traditional character," he says, "she's the one who looks at the traditions as things that must be upheld.

"The two of them have an uneasy partnership as they tiptoe forward into this new world they've seen for themselves."

Female enforcers weren't usual back in the days of flappers and the early days of American crime, but Bendis imagines a female revolution happening in this timeline, too.

"There would be quite a few women looking to find their place that isn't what their mothers did or their mothers' mother. That's who Jagger is, breaking that glass ceiling for all Mob enforcers," Bendis quips.

"One could imagine that her place in this world was probably something related to the sex industry, that she was absolutely not interested. And immediately throwing her sexuality in someone's face just to unnerve them, turning the tables on them completely, is a lot of fun."

Among the supporting players, Valentine's mom plays an important role in Murder Inc. — and a complicated one in her son's life. Bendis likes the idea of exploring a mother/son dynamic when comics are so full of father relationship.

The don of Valentine's new Family is also a big deal. He was the guy who was anti-authority, and now that he's the authority, disloyalty in the organization could be even more troublesome.

"Heavy weighs the crown for these characters who make themselves king," Bendis says, "and I found myself interested in his world of compromise as well."

An America run by gangsters has given Bendis and Oeming tons of storytelling potential and an alternate history not too far removed from our own.

"Some would argue, crime does pay and eventually someone's going to get their comeuppance," Bendis says, "but I think we also realize that we live in a world where corporations and financial institutions run havoc over our government using whatever power they have to get whatever they want, no matter how much focus is on them.

"It's not hard to imagine that with a couple of nips and tucks here and there that the Five Families could have easily found the same kind of success."