All the Things We Didn't Do Last Night #1 // Review
She’s a jewel thief. He’s a hitman. The two of them meet and agree to go on a date...only it turns out that their jobs have rather unfortunately crossed each other’s paths. They both bear witness to each others’ crimes. The next morning the authorities come to ask some questions. It could be love or it could be convenience. Either way it’s All the Things We Didn’t Do Last Night: a one-shot by writer/artist Maria Llovet. Originally serialized in Image Comics' 30th anniversary anthology last year, all three parts of the story rest quite comfortably under one cover for the first time.
She’s working a really high-class place. It’s beautiful. Totally stunning location filled with some very lovely things and likely quite a few very lovely people. She doesn’t belong there, though. She’s more like one of the countless tourists who shuffle through the museum she’s working at. It’s a nice place, but it’s not for her. She’s really only there for the big payoff. And he’s only in town for work. But they’re both going to have to deal with each other in ways that they might not have entirely expected once the night gets started.
Llovet’s story has a crisp precision about it that would work quite nicely in almost any narrative format at all. It’s a very sharp romantic crime thriller that almost comes across as a bit too thin and clean to fill an entire issue. Love knows exactly how much story she’s going to need to get from one cover to the other in a story that just might have been weighted-down too much in one direction or the other. She could have made it a bit too light on narrative and it would have felt a bit vacuous. She could have added a few story elements and bogged it down a bit too much. She’s got a clear balance for a one-shot.
The art is sketchy and fluid. The visuals would benefit a bit more of a clean approach. Her style might suffer a bit from the scratchiness of the lines, but the overall framing and pacing of the action feels more than adequate to deliver a very immersive style, tone and mood. Llovet has a solid handle on what she needs to do to keep the story moving and there are some beautiful moments in the one-shot, but it all feels a bit...unfinished visually.
Llovet mentions a bit of the background on the story at issue’s end. She really wants to make this thing work. The hitman and the jewel thief could end up a really clever combo if Llovet had the good fortune to be able to follow them further on other adventures. There’s a stylishness to the idea that could work in a variety of different settings without ever getting dull. And while that may never happen, All the Things We Didn’t Do Last Night is a very, very fun, little dream in comic book form.
