Now What..?

DC's Vertigo imprint has been called "the HBO of comics" and I can think of no more fitting comparison. [Apparently it was Vertigo editor Karen Berger who made the statement, but I'm not going to fault her pride in her company's product for the astute remark.] Vertigo's greatest achievements can't fit into a single self-contained graphic novel any more than the impact of The Wire can be felt in a two-hour feature-length film. And unlike traditional serials, these stories have a finite plotlife, unfolding in episodic fashion. You know The Sopranos is going to end eventually, but that doesn't mean you want it to. Every installment is an entertaining story in its own right, part of a broader epic that keeps viewers/readers coming back for more.

Of course, once these titles have reached their conclusion, you're left wondering... now what? Recently the last of the three greatest Vertigo series reached its memorable conclusion. So now that you've finished reading every volume of Neil Gaiman's Sandman, Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon's Preacher, and Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra's Y: The Last Man, you need something to fill the void.

Enter Scalped, the work of American writer Jason Aaron and Serbian artist R. M. Guéra. Many Vertigo titles have excited me over the last year or so (and I'll undoubtedly be blogging about them at some point), but none have elicited that same can't-wait-to-see-what-happens-next feeling produced by the aforementioned comics. Except this one. I have to thank James Sime, proprietor of Isotope comics lounge in San Francisco for insisting that I pick up a book that, admittedly, failed to draw my interest based on subject matter alone.

The story follows undercover FBI agent Dashiell Bad Horse as he returns to his ancestral home, the Prairie Rose Reservation in South Dakota. He begins working for the Bureau's main target, Chief Lincoln Red Crow, on the cusp of the grand opening of the Crazy Horse Casino. Crow has decades of blood on his hands, including two murdered agents in an incident involving Dash's mother and a Native Rights protest gone awry, the echoes of which have haunted FBI Agent Nitz every day since. Nitz will do anything to bring Crow to justice, and his hellbent quest for vengeance is just part of the dangerous character ambiguity that populates any good crime drama: the heroes are often less than heroic and the villains are never quite who they seem to be. Over the course of 24 issues (four "episodes" in trade format), Aaron weaves his vivid, fully-formed characters into an intricate series of plots that are rife with twists more vengeful than a Lakota knife in the back. Aaron has clearly spent a lot of time researching life on "the rez," and despite protests as to the book's veracity, this is still an eye-opening portrayal of one particular seedy underbelly of American society that has yet to be truly explored. I mean really: I no more believe that every Italian family in Jersey has links to Goodfellas, or every Black kid in Compton came straight off the set of Colors, than I'm going to accept that every Dust Bowl Injun is a psychotic meth addict. It's an engrossing noirish Western, and goddamit, I'm here to be entertained!

Guéra's intense, visceral art complements Aaron's narrative perfectly. Scenes of sex and violence are equally disconcerting, supressing a latent rage and tension that simmers in the psyche of every character of the series, both White and Native American. And when you end each of the first two volumes with the brutal image of death-by-scalping, you very clearly state the direction of the series. These are the kinds of scenes that an accomplished author will turn over to his artist, confident that the image alone can both tell a story and convey a powerful emotion. It's intense, frightening, and dark, and, most importantly, it begs the question: what happens next?

Incidentally, the first two volumes of the series, Indian Country and Casino Boogie, feaure introductions by Brian K. Vaughan and Garth Ennis respectively, two-thirds of the Holy Trinity of Vertigo masterpieces, heralding the arrival of Jason Aaron as the Next Big Thing in comics. I'm sure DC tried to get Neil Gaiman to write the intro to Dead Mothers, thus completing the trifecta, but apparently he's been too busy making shitty movies.