Customer Reviews

Scalped Vol. 1: Indian Country

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The protagonist: A hard as nails nunchak-wielding Indian FBI Agent who is a master of Tae Kwon Do and the art of stomping people's brains out. The Villain: A former "Red Power" Indian activist turned Crime Boss and Casino Owner with a penchant for scalping. The Supporting cast: A beautiful drug-addicted alcoholic suffering from nymphomania (the Crime Boss' daughter), and one lone woman standing against the forces of corruption threatening to tear her community apart (the mother of the proverbial hero of the story). Enough to get you interested yet? But wait...there's more! Throw in a mystery surrounding the events that led to Dashiel Bad Horse (our FBI agent) returning to the Prairie Rose Reservation which he escaped from when only 13, and why a certain FBI superior blackmails him into doing the Bureau's bidding, coupled with the relationship between his mother and Boss Lincoln Red Crow as well as the romantic attentions of the enemy's daughter...Isn't this enough to make you want to pick up this book? Trust me, there's still more, but I don't want to ruin it for anyone. I'll finish by saying this: Scalped is the best comic book out there at the moment. Buy it if you like a fast-paced narrative with lots of action and intrigue (meant for mature readers; this is DC's Vertigo imprint after all), as well as some pretty amazing art. I simply can't recommend it highly enough.

I've just finished a fresh re-read of the five issues collected in this trade specifically for prep in writing this review. Jason Aaron, previous to giving us Scalped, penned a mini-series called The Other Side, also published through Vertigo. Prior to that, Aaron was basically unheard of. The fact that he's hit a bullseye with his very first monthly series is incredible but I assure you, dear pondering reader, that it is a fact. Indian Country introduces us to Dashiell Bad Horse, a native to The Prairie Rose Reservation, South Dakota. The first thing Dash does is get into a fight with fifteen guys in a bar. With nunchaku, no less! He is, to put it mildly, looking for trouble. He's been off the Rez for fifteen years and has just come back for reasons made clear at the end of the first issue (or part I of the Indian Country arc). Right away Jason Aaron assaults the reader with abrasive language and since we're reading a Vertigo book, there are no asterisks, ampersands, question or exclamation marks to cover up the naughty words. It's hardcore, is what I'm saying, and it reads like real talk for real thugs and hoodlums.

It isn't long before the main "villain" is introduced, Lincoln Red Crow. Red Crow is the Council Tribal President and essentially runs the reservation. His introduction leaves no question as to how ruthless a character he is but I don't like to use the label of villain to sum him up, hence the quotation marks above. Again, putting it mildly, he's complicated. In describing these two characters, I do hope I'm implying the excellence in Aaron's writing and characterization. All the characters in this book are, at best, morally grey. They're whole humans, not caricatures.

Without spoiling too much, we learn very quickly that Dash is back on the Rez for a reason, even if he knows he's in over his head. He's an undercover FBI agent who's been sicced on Red Crow by probably the most miserable and hateful FBI minder ever to "grace" South Dakota with his presence: Special Agent Nitz. Nitz has an axe to grind with Red Crow that goes back twenty some years to the murder of two FBI agents on the Prairie Rose Reservation. All of this is deftly explained over the course of this five part collection. Meanwhile we get to see Dash kick some teeth and break some heads as he's quickly hired on as Tribal Police under Red Crow. Through this, the character becomes re-initiated into life on the Rez and the reader gets a glimpse of what life might be like there.

This is a crime story but it's told in a way that's as unique as it's setting; an American Indian reservation. Aaron uses some slick time displacement gimmicks to trade back and forth between past, immediate past and present as he brings us along on a ride through this poverty stricken wasteland. When we meet Dash's mother, Gina Bad Horse, all question about the tone of the book should be laid to rest. Gina's first reaction to Dash is to slap him and call him a fascist. Later on, Red Crow uses eloquent phrasing toward his own daughter, Carol. These are HARD people with no illusions and to go back to the title (a quote from Red Crow in part I) of this review, supremely disenchanted.

Jason Aaron masterfully captures this cast off world and sucks the reader in and after reading the first five issues again, I'm craving more even though I've read up through issue sixteen already! Another thing I like is Aaron's use of Lakota dialogue (sans subtitles). It's little touches like that, especially without translating it for us, that lend to the authenticity of the book. But is it good? Yes! There's shootings, there's meth lab busts, there's rampant sex(!), there's organized crime intrigue, there's betrayal, there's scalping(!!), and there's plenty of meat on each perspective of each of the characters to satisfy all your crime/noir needs. R.M. Guéra (Heavy Metal) handles the art and his style totally fits the book. The facial expressions are perfect and the action scenes flow cinematically. Plus, he has a way of depicting the residents of Prairie Rose Reservation that clearly divides them as two tribes: young and old. It's interesting to note all the little touches he puts in and oh! His women look ridiculously sexy too. It's hard to compare him stylistically to other artists but if I had to do it, to save my life, I'd say he's very reminiscent of Eduardo Risso from 100 Bullets except less polished (not a knock).
If you're looking for a new venue in crime fiction, this book is it. Buy it!

Easily one of the best new books out there. Jason Aaron weaves an amazing story that draws the reader instantly and rewards them with every page. The story is split between past and present and builds a rich pantheon of deap characters.
I'll be honest the story didn't appeal to me while reading reviews of it but once I started reading I was hooked.
R.M. Guera's artwork is masterful, he captures the somber mood of the reservation in every page. I find it easy to get detached from the story when the artwork doesn't work well with the writing but in Scalped the two elements merge perfectly.
I strongly suggest giving Scalped a try, I for one can't wait for more.

After hearing almost nothing but ecstatic reviews about this I've finally read it and I'm pretty underwhelmed. The book gets compared to the Sopranos a lot, but its a lot closer to the Shield: cheap cynicism masquerading as realism. It depicts Native Americans as nothing but drunks, drug addicts and thugs. You can do a google on "scalped comic" to see what real Native Americans think about this.

Maybe the series gets better and presents a more balanced, realistic view of this world later on but the first book was a let-down.

It's too bad that people aren't giving "Scalped" the same attention as "Watchmen", "Sandman", or "The Killing Joke", because frankly, Scalped better than any of them. If people could just move past the unconventional art and the lack of zombies/superheroes, they'd find the most deeply layered, intriguing, and flat-out entertaining Graphic Novel ever produced. THIS is what Graphic Novels are all about. Do yourself a favor and buy it. If you can't bring yourself to fork out the money, find the free first issue that's available online. I DARE you not to buy it after reading Issue #1, and believe me, it only gets better after that.

It's dirty, nasty, unpredictable, coarse, and brave. This series has some serious balls underneath it's intelligent exterior. I've always been a fan of accurate American Indian history, and this series combines the accuracy with brutality and crime/noir entertainment. I was reading intently the whole way through, and I'm bummed that I don't own volume 2 yet to carry on the vicious reading.

The artwork is the type of ugly/beautiful artwork that you rarely see these days. An aquired taste for some, but a guilty pleasure for us Frank Miller and Paul Pope fans. I thought of the series of a TV crime show like "Sons of Anarchy" set on an Indian reservation. It's a whole lot of foul-mouthed trashy fun, and our protagonist is not spoiled within the first few issues. I've never read a comic that is so hesitant to explore the main character early on. It was very effective to slowly reveal Bad Horse throughout the course of the first book.

In the tradition of great crime sagas like Criminal and Sin City, Scalped leads the pack. I'm getting the feeling that as this series progresses, all the writers of crime tv and literature will become sickly green with envy.

Our culture needs the comics medium to tell stories that are both honest and compelling and the comics medium needs series like Scalped to show just what this medium is capable of. This is not easy, light reading- it's dark, violent and challenging. But it tells a story of a people who've been betrayed and abused for the 400 years, so it couldn't be anything else. This feels like great cinema or cable TV and like all great comics should, it takes the reader of his or her mundane surroundings and puts them into an environment as dangerous as it is exotic. If you're a fan of modern noir and neo-pulp, this series will certainly appeal to you as well.

The title of my review isn't just hyperbole due to excitement with the series - I think scalped is the best comic series there is. I love Alan Moore as much as any comics fan, but Scalped is just as good as a lot of Alan Moore's works, and a lot less pretentious. Jason Aaron (the writer) has a story to tell, and he know how to tell it. I think Scalped is one of the most underrated, overlooked books out there - it's better than so many other books, whether comics or not, and yet few people know about it.

However, I wouldn't have thought Scalped would end up being my favorite comic series when I first read Volume 1 in the series. So I can understand people who read the first volume and then stopped, thinking the series wasn't for them. I beg you, though, DON'T STOP. I almost did too, but then I read Volume 2, and my opinion of the series changed dramatically. The main reason Volume 1 fell just the slightest bit flat for me when I first read it was that I didn't know the characters well enough. But by the time you read Volume 2, you're hooked (I was anyway) and reading Scalped, from then on, is an incredibly riveting experience.

So Volume 2 is definitely better, but Volume 1 sets it up brilliantly. There's so much information that has to be conveyed to the reader, and Jason Aaron is a master at exposition. He reveals just enough at just the right times. Make no mistake; Indian Country is very well and carefully written. All volumes of scalped are also incredibly re-readable. I've read Indian Country a few times now, and though I was confused the first time I read it, I constantly notice and appreciate new things in it.

There are a few objections people seem to have with this series. One, that it's violent and dark. And it's true - Scalped is incredibly dark, at times violent (never gratuitously), but that's because it's noir influenced. I like how Scalped has the feeling of a violent Western, and also the imistakeable feeling of noir. There are few happy moments, and they're more bittersweet than happy. All of the characters are flawed, and often bad people. Yet the characterization is also one of the best parts of the series. We get to see monologues and flashbacks that get into the characters' heads, showing why they do the things they do. Even the most dark characters have complex inner lives.

The other objection I've seen is that the series, written by a white guy, shows Native Americans in a bad light. But in fact, this isn't what's going on at all. Scalped is noir, and in noir often the whole world is portrayed as a dark and sinister place, where everyone has ulterior motives, and morality is collapsing. Yes, most of the Native American characters are not admirable people (at least, in Volume 1). And yet, this is true of everyone. Every single FBI agent portrayed in the series (and there are several) is malicious, selfish, amoral, and breaks laws. All the white and Asian characters in the series are also corrupt and bad. That's just how noir is. This isn't meant to be an accurate reflection of reservation life.

And yet, Jason Aaron has a lot of empathy and humanity at the bottom of his writing. Most of the characters are terrible, but he tries to get inside their heads, shows why they might be this way, that they truly believe. And there are admirable characters (mostly later in the series) who show that it doesn't have to be this way. This isn't supposed to be an accurate portrayal of reservation life, but I came away with it appreciating even more the difficult and bleak conditions on many reservations, and the people who struggle to lead a good life, or even just survive.

Dashiell Bad Horse returns to the Indian Reservation in South Dakota where he grew up to find it in a state of decay - alcoholism and drug abuse is rife, women are prostituting themselves, and Red Crow, once a fighter for Indian rights, has become a bloated, greedy sell-out intent only on money and his chain of Indian casinos. But this isn't some nostalgia trip for Bad Horse, though for whatever reason it is he's returning for, he can't help but run into ghosts from the past. And some ghosts want Bad Horse dead.

I've liked Jason Aaron's work so much I was surprised by how little I cared for this effort. The characters are all hostile and angry at each other, as well as displaying no real likeable traits, while pursuing their own selfish, petty agendas. I didn't like the characters, I didn't care about the story, and the artwork was pretty terrible. There's too much black on the pages and what little colour there is looks washed out and faded. It makes looking at the comic that much more difficult when presented with an equally dismal story.

It's basically a crime drama, very little innovation than in any other crime series you've seen only the characters are all modern day Native Americans, and lots of staples such as the ex-girlfriend the hero still holds a candle for despite the two of them fighting, the old cop working a case from 30 years ago which still sticks in his craw, and the usual array of violence, swearing, and sex for critics to point to and say that it's "gritty".

"Indian Country" is an unimpressive first book in this series and, despite being a fan of Aaron's (his work on Marvel's Punisher MAX and Wolverine: Weapon X is fantastic), I struggled through this slim volume. I'm not sure if I want to continue with this series and if the other books following this are similar, then I definitely won't be.

*Update, 11 December 2011 - Having stuck with it and just finished the eighth book "You Gotta Sin To Get Saved", I can't let my two star rating of "Indian Country" stick as it might put people off of this amazing series. All I can say is that I'm glad I stuck with it, while the first book asks a lot of the reader, it's worth it. This is an amazing series and deserves all the acclaim and readers it gets - read it, you won't be disappointed.

Jason Aaron, Scalped, vol. 1: Indian Country (Vertigo, 2007)

Having just finished singing the praises of Ex Machina (in my vol. 9 review, q.v.), a series that's just about to end, I can now turn my attention to a series I just discovered for the first time over the weekend: Scalped, a gritty, gruesome noir title that reminds me of nothing so much as another now-finished series I was overly fond of, 100 Bullets. As I write this, Scalped is in sex volumes, with a seventh about to drop in a couple of months, and shows no signs of slowing down. Not that it starts off all that slow. (One of the big differences between manga and American graphic novels--manga generally take their time getting going. Stuff like Scalped, 100 Bullets, Ex Machina? It blows your head off on the first page.) By the end of chapter one, our hero, Dashiell Bad Horse, has punched out about half the rez, cursed out its leader, and revealed a very big secret that will affect the way the entire rest of the series plays out. Bad Horse grew up on this particular reservation, located in the South Dakota Badlands. When he left fifteen years ago, it was one of the poorest counties in America. Now he's back, and it's the poorest, a hotbed of alcoholism and meth, but Red Crow, a former red-power activist who's since become the chief, has thrown the reservation's future into a big gamble--a ninety-three-million-dollar casino that, he claims, is guaranteed to pull his people out of the gutter and give them jobs, a half-decent economy, and a chance at a better life. There's a whole lot more under the hood than that, of course, and I can't tell you about any of it without spoiling things (for the love of god don't read the jacket copy on later volumes in the series--I just had a major turning point spoiled for me by accidentally letting the jacket copy of vol. 6 catch my eye), but trust me: if you're a noir fan, Scalped is a journey you're going to want to take. ****