Rotart Sulli is a painter who illustrates crime fiction. In the first of two stories that comprise Visual Crime, Sulli gets a call from the publisher who gives him an assignment for Visual Crime Magazine, which comes with a peculiar requirement: Sulli is to stay at Hotel Ace in room 611 until his assignment is finished. He completes the assignment in the basement of the hotel but not without coming to blows with a janitor with a penchant for chucking toys into the furnace. In the book’s second story, Sulli is once again hired to illustrate a crime story; and once again, it comes with a peculiar demand: he’s told to place the finished work “in your back window — it will be seen.” In between these two stories are a dozen short stories occupying a single page, all illustrated by paintings by Sulli. Painted panel sequences alternate with Moriarty’s rough-hewn, proletarian pen and ink panels amidst the luminous, Hopperesque paintings by Rotart Sulli, creating a portrait of the artist working alone in a mysterious and uncertain world, creating stunning images that transcend the melodramatic stories they illustrate.
