Blue Estate (2011)

Blue Estate is an Image Comics crime series created by Viktor Kalvachev and Kosta Yanev, set in a sun-bleached Los Angeles where the Italian mafia and the Russian mob keep colliding. At its center are Bruce Maddox, a washed-up action-movie star whose terrible films double as a money-laundering operation, and his unhappy wife Rachel. When a hapless would-be private eye named Roy Devine Jr. starts poking into their world, a chain of double-crosses pulls in a hot-tempered mobster's son, a rival Russian boss, a recovering-addict hitman, and a scheming pole dancer. The tone is pulpy and darkly comic, built around botched plans, bad luck, and characters who are usually their own worst enemies. Kalvachev assembled a rotating team of artists and oversaw a layered, painterly look that shifts with the cast. The twelve-issue run gathers the full story and later inspired an interactive video game adaptation. It reads as a violent farce about greed and vanity on the fringes of Hollywood.