Trista and Holt Vol. 1

By Andrez Bergen

“What it meant for me was dealing with Macey – a potentially bigger explosion, since it was pretty obvious someone had lit the fuse. No way this could be passed off as an accident. When the entire city block was rubble.”

The first volume of Trista and Holt by Andrez Bergen is here! Another hard-boiled tale by the author of Bullet Gal!

This story revolves around the two title characters, (can you guess their names?) as Bergen will often give the reader both sides of the story, some issues focusing on one more than the other. One of the issues focuses on the aftermath of Trista’s night on the town; kicking off with her on the floor in pretty bad shape. Another brings us to Holt, where we meet a couple guys with a strange sense of humor, only to find out they’re who taught Holt the ropes back in the day.

For those who have read Bullet Gal you’ll notice Bergen’s taken a similar approach to the artwork this time around as well. He takes various pictures from the media, mixes them with some of his own, adds some sort of spices (maybe?), and runs them through various filters before slamming them together on the page in order to create this beautiful black and white noir world. If you pay close attention you might be able to pick out some familiar faces!

A groovy/happening scene comes early on when we take a trip into a disco club. The words “FEEL LOVE” stretch across the page as various dancers can be seen “getting their groove on”. This page shows how Bergen is able to transition his story from a noir story to something so much different with ease. He even injects some humor into this scene with dialogue between two men in suits sitting on the sidelines as one says “Flippin’ disco” and the other responds “A-bloogy-men”.

Bergen takes a different take on the artwork right from the get-go when entering issue #2 as he injects more hand drawn type images into the story – as opposed to the photographs which composed much of issue #1. It’s made clear Bergen is allowing himself to be creative in his process with this story, as he allows the artwork to flow freely, instead of keeping with a static look from one page to the next.

Trista and Holt Volume One shows off more of Bergen’s grasp on the noir world of story telling. He learned a few tricks during his time spent with Bullet Gal, but this time around he’s adding a few more. This guy knows his way around the hard-boiled/noir world.