Black Monday Murders

[Joker]

Did it ever list it? It's only got two books listed as 'creator of' and those are both currently coming out. His bio is wildly out of date, too.

I wouldn't take too much stock in his creator page.

[hunterpend]

Did it ever list it? It's only got two books listed as 'creator of' and those are both currently coming out. His bio is wildly out of date, too.

I wouldn't take too much stock in his creator page.

I'm not sure about the creator page, but the Black Monday Murders page (on Image and Comixology) used to show preview images for future issues (through 12 IIRC) and those got memeory holed after issue 8 dropped.

[Joker]

How could they show preview images for issues that don't have covers and haven't been solicited yet? Literally nothing has ever existed past issue 8.

[Abe]

November 30th, guys, November 30th!

Just a typo then.

The TPB looks really fine btw. Beautiful cover.

[numberthirty]

November 30th, guys, November 30th!

Just a typo then.

The TPB looks really fine btw. Beautiful cover.

Well, things just got a lot less interesting.

[JKtheMac]

Well, things just got a lot less interesting.

Yep. That's just being a spoil sport. He should have embraced his error and let our weird speculations stand.

[seismic-2]

People who read only the individual issues won't know about any changes that were made in the collections. Will a page in the back of the next issue explain that the Nov. 31 date was just a typo? If not, people will be very much confused!

[OceanMachine]

Hey all. I just picked up the trades and had a re-read of everything. In the spirit of keeping the home fires burning between arcs, here's where my thoughts are at the moment:

We haven't really seen what Beatrix and Marco are going to do, now that Ria has consolidated her power. They were plotting against her for most of Issue #7, even before she killed Viktor. They don't like that she and Daniel tried to manipulate things behind their backs. They don't like that her blood is common. They may not have cared for Viktor, but at least he was a kind of a power check, within the Caina-Kankrin group. Each of them kind of has unique motivations -- Beatrix is about solidifying Caina's corporate interests, while Marco is going all Fifth Business, wallflower-ish, couldn't-care-less-but-actually-fingers-on-the-strings. Will they team up?

Alexi is even more interesting. He's the only Kankrin member left, and he and Viktor were old friends. We've no reason to think he has any allies amongst the remaining board members. And he's likely nurturing vengeful feelings of some kind, or will be, if he hasn't figured out yet that Viktor is dead. But that gets to another question -- where is he? His complete absence in the past few issues is a little suspicious in itself. I'm very interested to see what happens with him.

Wynn: He's clearly got some pretty beefy powers, apparently even beyond what Viktor was capable of. At least based on what we've seen. Even without Mammon powers, he was a really gifted kid. But a piece of this might tie into whatever he has been up to after he went missing. If he was associating with other schools, like Ria did while exiled, then he might have picked up some new tricks that way. Apparently going on sabbatical is where it's at if you want to consolidate your power.

And then there's Dumas. Last we saw, he was telling Ria he wanted in on the whole deal. He's not from a rich and powerful family, so it's unlikely he'll just join Caina, but then what would the alternative be? Some sort of operative on Ria's behalf? Got me thinking about their motives. Ria is ruthless, but is she evil? She's obviously at the head of a family that is knee-deep in blood power, but her conversation with Thomas Dane about Daniel seems to suggest that she feels he was right in working against Caina's corporate power mission. In trying to do some good. Maybe you gotta do some damage to do some good? Maybe she sees the same virtue in Dumas?

But do we have a lot of evidence that Dumas is really a good guy? All of his actions point towards a strong sense of justice and an innate thirst for knowledge. But these can be skewed towards dark ends. I guess I'm kind of excited at the potential in this series for the blurring of lines in terms of good/evil and right/wrong.

[Ramsay Snow]

I'm a little late to this party. I love the majority of Hickman's work (Especially East of West), but I didn't bother with The Black Monday Murders when it originally came out because, thematically, it didn't interest me. "A comic about the banking industry being mixed with the occult?"......Plus, I wasn't too crazy about his other somewhat recent comic, The Dying and the Dead (It was OK, but nothing great)......I decided to finally buy the first trade a few weeks ago, and this is one of the best comics I've ever read. It tops East of West as my favorite Hickman title. I finished the second trade in one day.

I wouldn't be surprised if there were a lot of people like me who, even being fans of Hickman's stuff, didn't bother with the title due to lack of interest.

I guess on one level the use of magic in this book could be seen as a critique of how algorithms have slowly but surely taken over the market. Indeed many think Black Monday was partly an accident caused by the automated 'portfolio insurance' algorithm which was designed to offset losses in large investment portfolios in a time of 'sell-off'. In other words the computer algorithms designed to protect the largest investors perpetuated and exacerbated the drop in price to cause the biggest one-day drop in history.

The algorithm was designed to sell futures as an offset, but smaller investors could see no reason to buy low price stock when the futures market was also depressed. For a short while it looked to everyone like a depression. The market had actually fully recovered within a year, and people could have made a lot of money buying stock, but nobody could perceive this possibility and for short and medium term investment selling now was better than selling twenty minutes later when the price had gone down, and potentially (according to the futures market) showed no sign of recovery.

If you then overlay a conspiracy theory onto this you could posit that this computer algorithm actually accelerated the use of computer algorithms in the market. Many computerised systems were put in place to stop this kind of sudden and relentless drop in price. Mainly pausing and then stopping the trade in stock. However stock can now be traded much faster now, and is very often done using algorithms.

Numerology is a good analogy for algorithmic systems.

Add to this that 'games theory' which has some serious flaws in its methodology, dominates economic thinking and therefore the algorithms that are used in the market, and one could make a claim that algorithms are artificially controlling the market.

The idea that the 'market gods' can no longer see the actions of their followers also mirrors the way that the algorithms used by traders are naturally trade secrets. Algorithms represent an added layer of abstraction overlaying the already rarified world of the economic theories of the stock market. A world that does indeed tend to think of money and its value in the abstract rather than as a collective will of real people taking very real human risks.

That was fascinating. Thank you for the post, it brought me a lot more insight into this book.

Y'all. Hickman, via twitter, says the following:

"Also, we're waiting to solicit the final arc until Tomm is a good ways into it."

My heart... it's gonna take a while to sweep up the pieces.

A true shame this brilliant comic won't go further than 12-issues, but that eventual 12-chapter hardcover collection is going to be sweet!

November 30th, guys, November 30th!

Just a typo then.

The TPB looks really fine btw. Beautiful cover.

I was hoping Hickman was going to No-Prize himself through that typo.

[awayne83]

Just caught up with book 2. The timeline for the events has me confused, not sure if i misinterpreted something or not, but it's off pretty significantly imo

Bea confronts Ria at the shooting range on Nov 8 @ 1131 pm. (Seems a bit late for that ?)

Then we get her familiar setting up the stage via interns or students or whatever on Nov 9 @ 0142 am

Followed by the scene of Viktor's abduction Nov 8 1143 pm, with the eventual reveal that Viktor is there at said stage on Nov 9 @ 0143 am (everything seems kosher so far)

In the next chapter, Bea is discussing the Ria confrontation with Marco. But this is on Nov 8 @ 240 pm. This would've been b4 she even met with Ria in the first place.

One could assume a typo on the time, and the confrontation could have been 1131 am on Nov 8 instead of the pm, and now we're back on track.

But during said meeting between Marco and Breatrix, they realize the scales are unbalanced, which leads them to (a bank vault i think?) where the stage had previously been set with Eresko kidnapped and the interns/students seemingly removed at this point. Again this is on Nov 8 @ 252 pm.

Viktor wasn't originally shown taken until that night, and the stage set up early on Nov 9.

The only way this series of events really makes sense is if there was a typo and the Bea/Marco scene occured the following day on the 9th. Then you could theoretically have the Bea/Ria confrontation late Nov 8th, the kidnapping of Eresko around the same time, the meeting of Marco/Bea the next afternoon, and subsequent discovery of the Eresko situation minutes later (although he'd have been in the vault for 12hrs or so at that point)

After typing all that out, I feel like this is the most likely scenario, and maybe obvious, but this book so far has paid such fine attention to detail. And that mistake on the date was repeated multiple times. Just curious if others felt the same about the timeline of events, or may this be a case of something left to be explained?

[seismic-2]

I've given up on trying to read the story too deeply, if the "November 31" date was in fact just a typo rather than some out-of-time reference.

[awayne83]

I've given up on trying to read the story too deeply, if the "November 31" date was in fact just a typo rather than some out-of-time reference.

Appears to be, as it was corrected in the trade.

And i don't know if "too deeply" constitutes wanting the timeline to make sense

[your_name_here]

Still no sign of more issues. What happened to Hickman has he turned to TV?

[Joker]

I think he said April? It’s coming back, I think the idea was to complete the issues before soliciting anything.

[OceanMachine]

I think he said April? It’s coming back, I think the idea was to complete the issues before soliciting anything.

That was my understanding, although I'm not sure about the timeline. And it's been a while since he said that, so who knows where it's at.