Here's another hard-fought work from someone who has spent years in the comics trenches.  Rich Tommaso has been working in comics for quite a while now, in a variety of guises.  He has done several interesting one shot comics, among them 8 1/2 Ghosts, Perverso and Miriam, the last of which was recently expanded into a graphic novel of sorts, titled Pete and Miriam; he teamed up with James Sturm to produce the excellent Satchel Paige,  a comics bio cum Jim Crow critique; and he recently has been keeping busy as the colorist on the Carl Barks Libraryproject, and doing a bang-up job holding up his end in producing what is sure to be the definitive edition of one of the most important bodies of work in the history of comics.  Here, in The Cavalier Mr. Thompson, Mr. Tommoso at last gets to stretch out his not inconsiderable talents in producing what promises to be the first of a series of graphic novels released under his own imprint, Recoil, and distributed by Fantagraphics.  What we have here is a fast-paced bit of Americana filled with dusty small town main streets, greasy spoon diners, midnight train trestles, fist fights and pretty girls in cute hats that immediately made us think of Frank Santoro's Storeyville, both for its content and with it's mustard yellow palette and fairly regular grid.  Anyone looking for some good ol' time adventure comics set in America's ruggedly innocent days should give this one the once over.