Despite UK illustrator Phil Elliott’s best efforts, the art in Contraband is overshadowed by ponderous soliloquies by the characters, most of which serve only to make the novel read more like a manifesto than an actual story. Word balloons, arranged haphazardly, crowd out the art in too many panels, resulting in a jumbled mess that’s at best confusing, and at worst, seriously challenges the reader’s attention span.
Elliot’s art doesn’t really mesh with Behe’s story—rather, it comes off more has hurried sketches more suited to storyboards than an actual graphic novel. His style is somewhere between R. Crumb and Herge, sans the subtle intricacies of either artist. Thus, the reader feels disconnected from the characters, despite Elliot's keen sense of establishing shots and perspective. Behe’s story, with its arbitrary flashbacks and flash-forwards, grows tiresome quickly as it is, and Eliot’s simple drawings of the characters, devoid of any outstanding features, make the story all the more difficult to follow.
It’s all presented in black and white wash, presumably to give it a noir feel, but it only serves to make the characters less discernible, and the contrived story even more murky. Contraband might work as a B-movie, and perhaps that was the intention of the creators. As a graphic novel, however, it comes across as a poor adaptation of a movie yet to be made.
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