Nate Powell (right) and Van Jensen with the cover of their graphic novel, Two Dead. (Courtesy photos)

It's October 1946, and Little Rock's criminal underground has grown more violent and out of control. The city is restless, divided harshly along racial lines and infested with political corruption.

A pair of detectives, disparate as night and day and each haunted by their pasts, are thrown together to try to bring peace to the troubled capital.

This is the story, based on true events, behind Two Dead, the furious, action-packed new graphic novel from writer Van Jensen and artist Nate Powell.

The book, a portion of which was excerpted in the Fall issue of the Oxford American, will be released Tuesday by publisher Gallery 13. Powell and Jensen will also speak Tuesday at the Central Arkansas Library System's Ron Robinson Theater as part of the Oxford American's South Words series. Jay Jennings, the magazine's senior editor and author of Carry the Rock: Race, Football and the Soul of an American City, will moderate.

In Two Dead, hot-tempered chief Detective Abraham Bailey and rookie Gideon Kemp attempt to root out the Little Rock mafia. Kemp, who is carrying some pretty serious baggage from his time on the battleground during WWII, is an FBI-trained, by-the-book type recruited to help rein in the hyperviolent, trigger-happy Bailey, who is on a frightening descent into schizophrenia.

The book also tells the story of brothers Esau and Jacob Davis. Esau is working for mob leader Big Mike, while law-abiding Jacob, a war veteran like Kemp, runs the makeshift, black police force that operates independently of its often indifferent white counterpart.

Jennings says the book is a "fast-moving, great-looking, pulp-noir piece of fiction. It also resonates today with a lot of the tensions that remain, not just in Little Rock but across the South, around race relations."

Jensen, a Nebraska native who lives in Atlanta, wrote the Pinocchio, Vampire Slayer graphic novel trilogy and has written for comic book titles like The Flash, Green Lantern Corps and James Bond. Two Dead was inspired by a story he encountered around 2005-6 while working as a crime reporter for this newspaper.

"It was clearly this tragic event in the history of the [Little Rock] police department," he says from Hollywood, where he is pitching an idea for a TV show.

During his time as a reporter here, Jensen picked up bits of Little Rock history that would show up in Two Dead. "I knew about the organized crime and the city being segregated, not just geographically but with the separate black police department. It's all of the elements of a very rich noir."

Two Dead was one of the first comic projects Jensen undertook after leaving the Democrat-Gazette in 2007, and he even had a Nebraska artist work up a few pages, but it was put aside until he brought it up to his friend Powell at the San Diego Comic-Con in 2011.

"The second we started talking, it was like, of course, Nate would be perfect" to illustrate the story, Jensen says.

Powell, who lives in Bloomington, Ind., grew up in North Little Rock where he first started drawing and writing comics. He won the National Book Award for Young People's Literature in 2016 for illustrating March: Book Three, which was part of the graphic novel trilogy-autobiography of U.S. Congressman and civil rights leader John Lewis. His solo graphic novels include Swallow Me Whole, You Don't Say, Any Empire and others. His most recent book, the Ozark horror tale Come Again, was published last year.

He and Jensen began collaborating on Two Dead in 2011 but it didn't quite get off the ground. They revisited it in 2014, pitching it to publishers as a 10-issue comic book series before finally landing on the graphic novel format.

"Each step along the way we refined our intent," Powell says. "I'm a graphic novel guy, and I was much happier to work on it as graphic novel and be set free structurally in the book."

His loose, energetic and gestural style, marked by his expert use of chiaroscuro technique with heavy areas of black ink and white highlights, bring Jensen's dark story and characters to life with a frenzied energy right up to the book's climactic end.

Changes in the American political and social climate since 2014 also inspired changes in the storytelling, Powell says.

"It gave us an opportunity to revisit the way we were approaching a lot of the themes and components of the book to meet up with where the world is now."

By bringing in the conflict of the Davis brothers, Jensen and Powell realized that they had two characters just as compelling as the two lawmen.

"I think that was the biggest shift, to allow more bandwith so we could focus on the lives of Jacob and Esau," Powell says. "To me, that became the most compelling part of the story."

Part of the South Words event will include Jensen and Powell describing their process of creating the book.

"We're showing the script and the art in its evolution and how, through conversation, something goes from that initial stage to a finished page," Jensen says.

After so much time living with the story and characters of Two Dead, Powell says: "Now, we're able to speak about the book and everything that's in it. Finally, we're able to discuss what has been rolling around in our brains for the past five years."

South Words: Van Jensen and Nate Powell 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Ron Robinson Theater, Library Square, 100 River Market Ave., Little Rock Moderator: Jay Jennings Admission: Free (501) 918-3000 cals.org/oxford-american-presents-south-words/

Style on 11/18/2019