Weekly Comic Book Review

By: Jason Aaron (writer), R.M. Guera (art), Giulia Brusco (colors), Sal Cipriano (letters), Mark Doyle (associate editor) & Will Dennis (editor)

The Story: Is it curtains for Red Crow after last month’s cliffhanger?

Five Things:

Full SPOILERS appear below….

1. Shunka is the main character of this issue.  It all starts with the resolution to last issue’s cliffhanger where it looked like Shunka and two hired thugs were going to kill Red Crow (due to Red Crow’s attempt to shut down his criminal empire).  The first time I read through this, I actually didn’t like the scene because when Shunka shoots the other two thugs it seemed like it was just a bunch of misdirection (i.e. it only appeared like Shunka was going to shoot Red Crow when he was really rushing to save him).  That seemed really cheap to me.  But, then I looked at the scene again and noticed those two panels of Red Crow staring at Shunka in the aftermath of the shooting and Shunka being unable to meet his eyes and the brilliance of the scene washed over me.  Shunka really was there to kill Red Crow, but he wimped out at the pivotal moment because Shunka isn’t a leader or a man of action.  He’s just a big mean dog on a leash who does what Red Crow says even if that shames him.  And that look from Red Crow tells you that he knows what Shunka’s original intent was.  This is obviously going to be a little hard on their relationship going forward and that’s what leads to drunken Shunka loitering in the junkyard later in the issue.

2). Really nice art by Guera.  I mean, how about nailing a subtle scene like the one described above??  Think of how many artists would struggle with a scene like that.  It also speaks to the relationship between Aaron and Guera that Aaron knows he can put a scene like that in the script and that it’ll turn out well and that it doesn’t need Red Crow to say, “I know what you meant to do, Shunka.  You were here to kill me and the fact that you didn’t makes me almost respect you less.” Guera isn’t so much about the dramatic action scenes, but he always gives you the mood and emotions of the characters.

3. Plot hops around a lot.  Aaron probably needs to kill some characters because this issue just leapt around too much to have a good flow.  All of the scenes seem necessary and important, but there’s just a few too many of them.  OR, this might be one of those times where having an issue be 20 pages versus 22 pages really sucks because the creators have to stuff all the material in without doing appropriate transitions between scenes.

4. Not much Dash or Red Crow.  Those are the two main characters of the series, but we don’t see them all that much in this issue.  Instead we get big helpings of Sheriff Karnow, Agent Nitz, the meth dealer with the monkey nose, Catcher and Dash’s father, etc.  All of these supporting characters are enjoyable in their own ways and it is important to get them all into their “place” for the finale of the series, but none of these guys is the reason why we read Scalped.

5. Sheriff Karnow.  He’s become an interesting character since he underwent his transformation from being an “all-hat-no-saddle” wannabe tough guy to a man who actually wants to get things done.  Really can’t decide if he’s dead meat in the next few issues or if he’ll be the last man standing.  Seems like it should be one or other.

Conclusion: A good issue with one great scene, but it also has some flaws.  However, the flaws are 99% those imposed by reading this in single-issue format and not things that make it a bad story.  But, we can only grade it and review it in the format they publish, so…

Grade: C+

-Dean Stell

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Filed under: Vertigo Tagged: | Dean Stell, Giulia Brusco, Jason Aaron, Mark Doyle, R.M. Guera, review, Sal Cipriano, Scalped, Scalped #53, Scalped #53 review, Vertigo, Will Dennis