Wednesday 10 March 2010

A little off the top? : Why 'Scalped' is the Graphic Novel You Need.


“Scalped”
is a Graphic Novel series that started in 2009 on Vertigo Comics. Eisner Award Nominated and well deserving, it is one of my favourite reads of the moment.

Dispatching with the rather overcrowded world of ‘Superheroes’ and dealing with a more realistic and engaging plot of a corrupted Native American Reservation... A once proud people’s shameful truth… and the lives entwined within it.

This is basically a modern western in ink form.

Created & Written by Jason Aaron, and largely illustrated by the talented R.M. Guera, it is a work of perfect Noir. It’s dark and twisting plotlines all leading towards an inevitable conclusion, but giving you a tense ride all the way there.

Aaron pulls no punches, and with Guera’s canvas worthy artwork, they draw you right into the seedy, hopelessness of it all. Making you experience every wrong decision the characters make, every sexual encounter and dirty fistfight, every drunken regret and every repressed memory.

The characters are ugly and flawed, and each page looks as if it could be actually stained with real blood and flecks of dust from the dry landscape.

Through all this, the beauty of the story is in the depth and breadth of the bitter world Aaron envisions, and the artwork is actually breathtaking. Stylistically, it’s all there. Not only is it a good read, but it is actually a classic film waiting to happen….

And if it gets picked up, I vote that Clint Eastwood gets the directors chair.

All Images taken from various issues of 'Scalped'.

No comments: