By: Jason Aaron (writer), R.M. Guera (art & letters), Giulia Brusco (colors), Mark Doyle (associate editor) & Will Dennis (editor)
Pin-ups contributed by: Tim Truman, Jill Thompson, Jordi Bernet, Denys Cowan, Dean Haspiel, Brendan McCarthy & Steve Dillon
The Story: It’s an anniversary issue, so we take a break from our regularly scheduled story to enjoy some central themes of the series set in the Old West.
What’s Good: First off, massive congratulations to Jason Aaron, R.M. Guera, Giulia Brusco, Mark Doyle, Will Dennis and all the fill-in artists who have gotten Scalped to issue #50. That is a real achievement in today’s comic market with a creator-controlled series. Already Scalped is one of my favorite series ever. It’s also a special series that disproves the commonly held notion that all comic books are about superheroes and are sold to fat, smelly & bearded men who haven’t adapted to adult-society. There’s nothing spandex about Scalped. This is straight-up adult fiction at it’s best. Bravo guys and thanks!
For this particular issue, we deviate from the ongoing story of Dash, Gina, Catcher, Red Crow, et al and get a story that is largely set in the later 1800’s that deals with the injustices that Native Americans have suffered at the hands of folks of European descent. Anyone who went to public school in the United States will not find this news, but Aaron finds a way to bring it to us in a special way by showing us a white man who is teaching his son how to scalp Native Americans for the bounty and how this story circles back in a not unexpected, but powerful, way.
Aaron then drags that “you-reap-that-which-you-sow” theme along to show how Native Americans ended up on reservations…. and that while reservations are no cup of tea being on the worst possible tracts of land in the United States and riddled with poverty, substance abuse, crime, etc. that the people who dwell there remain proud and alive and a distinct culture despite all the horrors that have been visited upon them.
The art is standard R.M. Guera goodness. He excels at the gritty, so I can think of few artists who are better suited for drawing the act of scalping a man alive. Guera also does the lettering by hand. I love hand-lettering and guess I understand why we dont’ see it much anymore, but it really drives home what an important aspect of the comic lettering can be. As a treat, a bunch of notable artists contributed splash pages towards the end of the comic. These mostly served to further excite me that Jordi Bernet is drawing a few issues of American Vampire coming up.
What’s Not So Good: Stories like this are dangerous because if you miss, they can come off as preachy. Every reader will have a slightly different reaction to such a story based on their personal levels of empathy, cynicism, desensitization and just how well informed they are. Obviously, if I’m saying that, it is because the story didn’t quite nail the bullseye for me. It’s a good 8.5 or 9.0, but not a 10. Now the Aaron/Guera team is strong enough that they power through and never come off as “preachy”, but they still didn’t get quite the emotional reaction from me that they were probably looking for.
I probably would have preferred a regular issue of Scalped complete with one-armed, eye-removing Vietnamese torturers, Shunka curb-stomping someone and another shootout in the cab of a pick-up truck.
Conclusion: A real achievement to get to 50 issues. Let’s have a round of applause for Team Scalped! It is a very strong issue that doesn’t quite get the emotional reaction they were shooting for, but doesn’t come off as preachy either. Maybe we have another 50 issues coming? I doubt it, but we can hope.
Grade: B
-Dean Stell
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