5 out of 5

Jason Aaron’s characterizations are so gritty and real, his story beats dragged through the mud stirred up by these warring personalities – which is just the human condition in these tales, to butt heads – that it inevitably becomes clear how strong his creator-owned works can be over his major publisher stuff.  Those characters aren’t his; his ideas surely get tossed into the pit for getting kicked about, but at the end of the day, it’s a Marvel or DC world, and nothing you do can change that.  Or it takes a particular writer to make us not care that those limitations exist, and it’s honestly few and far between from the current history of the medium who can do that.

But that’s also my tastes falling to the side of what’s offered by The Big Two.  And I’m sure Jason’s noir-tinged style has elevated his works there, but as I flip through Thor, or the Avengers, I just don’t feel the wind-up for the gut punch he seems to deliver elsewhere.

When Scalped was in full swing, I glanced at it.  I already had my negative boner going for V-go at that point (see any of my reviews moaning about the decline of that publisher), plus my still existent general dislike for overused profanity, which writers like Warren Ellis, Mark Millar, and occasionally – especially in his post-Boys works – Garth Ennis have gotten by with while still earning accolades.  In my grumbling, I consider this trash talking generally lazy, and covering up boring plotting with crass spectacle.  Scalped had a tough time clambering over those judgmental defenses.

Thankfully, the rebirth of Image brought us Southern Bastards, and a new #1 (and an appealingly dusky art style from Jason Latour) encouraged me to give it a shot, and I came to understand the wonders of Aaron’s America: dirty, vile, and full of tarnished hearts.  The profanity was there, but it, for better or worse, rang true.  It never read like the writer falling back on four letters to emphasize whatever poignancy his mouthpieces were spoutin’; it read like the guttural utterances of the four-letter abusin’ people we interact with day-to-day, and probably moreso if you live in the fucked up places Aaron has captured.  Southern B’s, at this point, is still goin’ strong.  And I realized I needed to check out Scalped with new eyes.

And it’s all here, eight years before Southern Bastards.  Dashiell Bad Horse is our ready-to-tustle lead, returning to the reservation he’d escaped from in his youth to spit in the locals’ faces and get in bar fights, and then, why not, get scooped up by local heavy Red Crow to be the new sheriff.  There’s history here though, of course – an old flame, Dash’s mother – and a boiling plot of corruption which Dash is now primed to help bubble over, and volume 1 – the first two short story arcs – shows us that.  Through a miracle of narration, it turns out, as Aaron holds tightly onto his details, wisely doling out flashbacks (in one of the most effective use of back-and-forth time jumps I’ve seen in a comic) to slowly set the stage.  We don’t get exposition page-dumps, or Dash helpfully recalling a scene which ingratiates him to us; instead, we’re fighting through the dust and dirt like he is, the story earning our respect, such that when those character moments are revealed, they actually hit with all due force.

As Bastards has Latour, Scalped had R.M. Guéra.  Anyone who can make the shitty, cheap printing quality of Vertigo trades look good is already a star, but Guéra – with Lee Loughridge’s rustic colors adding to the effect – brings every page, every panel home.  Not a character or a setting or a background is spared the gorgeous mire of the look he brings, casting just enough shadows about to dot things with darkness, or mystery, or grime.  In other words, with writer and artist combined, you are sucked into this world, all its cruelness and profanity completing the picture.

So, Mr. Aaron, sign me up as having missed out on the first go ’round, and I’m sure I’ll be praising volume 2 – 10 of this series as I get through them…