Scalped Deluxe Ed. Book Two

The second volume of Scalped comes at you the emotion from the get go.  Tragedy comes for everybody in this volume.  Gina Bad Horse is dead but no one knows who killed her.  Dashiell Bad Horse has a crisis of consciousness while he is trying to deal with the death of his own mother & the death of a teenage boy’s mother.  The teenage boy's name is Shelton, he has four brothers & sisters that he looks out for.  Shelton reminds Dashiell of his own troubled past as he tries to relate to the kid & reassure him that they will catch the guy who killed his mom.  In his grief Dashiell turns to Carol & picks up some more of her bad habits.  We do get to see some of her backstory & why she hates her dad so much.  Shelton dies while trying to get revenge for his mothers death. This leads to a confrontation between Dashiell & Diesel except now they both know that they are both undercover agents for the F.B.I.  

Lincoln Red Crow is probably the one character who has been affected the most by Gina’s murder.  He is starting to downward spiral in some of his decisions he is making.  Thanks to Red Crow's business deals with an Asian crime family the Hmongs, he is starting to lose control of his hold on the reservation.  The Hmongs have sent Mr. Brass a scary little man who works a lot like the Spanish Inquisition pain first & asking questions second.  By the end of this book Red Crow steps up & takes a stand against the cruelty that Mr. Brass is raining down on his people but some o the damage has already been done.

Granny Poor Bear is Dino's grandmother but she is respected by all of the characters that have interacted with her so far.  She prepares a soul pouch for Gina's soul & gives it to Lincoln Red Crow because of his history with her.  The book shows a lot of their history throughout this part of the story, Gina really plays a bigger part in flashbacks than in the present.  This responsibility that Granny has bestowed on Red Crow is a real driving force in this book & provides his character with a lot of conviction.  In the end however some old habits are just to hard to give up.  

Dino Poor Bear is the other great tragedy of this volume.  Dino fixes up his car with the money he was given but he gets pulled over for driving recklessly.  This one event leads to several bad decisions & bad situations that seem lucrative at the time.  All the while Dino keeps telling himself that he is trying to provide a better life for his daughter but in reality he is shackling her to life on this reservation.  Granny sees what is happening & she tries some tough love on him to make him see reason but in the end Dino will have to live with what he has lost as he is lying in a hospital bed at the end of this book.  

Franklin Falls Down makes his return in this book after recovering from being set up to be killed during a routine drug bust by Red Crow.  Falls Down is one tough character he is the one good cop on a police force of crooked cops his father was cop before him.  Red Crow comes to officer Falls Down with Gina Bad Horse's Murder Case because Red Crow wants it solved at all cost & he knows that Falls Down is the only cop he can trust to solve it.  F.B.I. Agent Nitz is back in all his glory he is glad that Gina is dead & like everybody else he believes that Red Crow had her killed.  The F.B.I. is portrayed in a very negative light in this series & I have a feeling that there is more to Agent Nitz than simple retribution for the deaths of two F.B.I. agents in the 1970s.  Catcher also returns in this book for one brief scene in which is is screaming that he can't wash off the blood it leads the readers to believe that he killed Gina.  To which I ask why did he do it?

Scalped Deluxe Ed. Book One

Jason Aaron can be a very polarizing writer you either like his writing or you don’t.  I have only read one title by him prior to this & that was Wolverine.  I like Jason Aaron’s style but this was a little hard to get into at first.  Scalped is not told in a linear fashion like 100 Bullets for example however that being said if you liked 100 Bullets you will like Scalped.  The art style is very similar in terms of color pallet but art in this book is grittier.  In 100 Bullets some of the characters were quite likable I have not found that to be the case in this book in fact by the end of this first volume I have only two characters that I like.  This book takes a lot of cues for Quentin Tarantino movies & forces the reader to piece things together.  This book is told through flashbacks, dreams, flash-forwards & different vantage points of the present.  It is truly amazing & confusing at the same time.  For example one of the main characters is killed off about half-way through this book but yet they are still heavily involved with the rest of the story in this volume because their death was revealed in a flash-forward.  I like the fact that this story takes place on a Native American Reservation for the Sioux Indians in South Dakota.  I love studying about Native American history however I am deeply saddened by the United States treatment of Native Americans even to this day.  It shows that America as a country has not learned its lesson.  Similar to that of the story even though this story is about a decade old it still rings true as taking place in the present.

Anyway there are several characters that we are introduced to in this opening volume the first is Catcher even though we don’t know it him at the time.  He shares a past with many of our main characters that is coming back to haunt them.  The second is Dashiell Bad Horse, he is supposed to be the protagonist of the story but I just can’t bring myself to like him.  From the very beginning he is more than what he seems but even the reveal of him working with the F.B.I. doesn’t make him any more likable in fact it gives off the opposite effect.  The next is Lincoln Red Crow who also has a lot of history with this reservation & a past with Catcher.  Red Crow is positioned to be the villain of the story but every time he appears a little more is revealed about him & he’s not as bad as everybody says he is.  Gina Bad Horse is one of the more relatable characters in the book simply because it is so hard to like her son Dashiell.  She also shares history with Red Crow & Catcher.  Carol Red Crow is a girl from Dashiell’s past & Lincoln’s daughter.  Agent Nitz is an F.B.I. agent with a grudge against the Native Americans.  That brings us to Dino Poor Bear who is just a teenage dad trying to create a better life for his daughter.  He dreams of leaving the reservation but something is always pulling him back in.  I really hope he survives this tale but I think that this is just beginning of what is set to be one long tragedy.  I look forward to reading the next volume in the series.  This is the series that put Jason Aaron on the map as a comic book writing & his career has just skyrocketed since.

New Avengers Vol. 5

Like the previous volume this story wraps up some loose ends of the New Avengers book that go all the way back to the start of this second series with the Heroic Age.  Luke Cage & Jessica Jones have decided that it is time to retire from the Avengers & focus on raising their child.  This last story arc is really a Dr. Strange story & the covers for the individual issues are quiet misleading.  The story does involve Brother Voodoo indirectly but he is not in this story.  This story is about how Stephen Strange once again becomes the Sorcerer Supreme for the Marvel Universe.  Just like in the first story where there was a lot of possession of different team members by a spirit that happens again in this story.  There is death in this book of several minor characters in this story one of which is quite shocking but the death that affected the Avengers team the most is the death of Victoria Hand.  Also just to take note of in this story for the sake of continuity Ms. Marvel has changed costumes & names at this stage of the game.  She now goes by Captain Marvel.  The story-arc also has several artists that bring this adventure to a close some is unique and cool while others seem childish.  I wouldn’t say any of the art is bad in this book but not all of it works within the story that it is attempting to tell.  This story is a great end-cap to Brian Michael Bendis’s run on the main Avengers titles.

Avengers Vol. 5

This is it the one of the final volumes of the Avengers written by Brian Michael Bendis. Bendis has been writing the Avengers since my reemergence into the the world of super-heroes; so for me this is a big deal.  There are two main stories in this volume the first of which is told through the annuals of both Avengers & New Avengers.  The events in those two issues takes right place before the Fear Itself event.  In which Wonder Man & his team of misfits take on the Avengers.  Wonder Man has been trying to prove for about half of Brian's run that the Avengers are a flawed concept this story-line comes to a head here.  The second story is a rescue mission to find a The Wasp.  She has been missing in action since Secret Invasion & thought to be dead.  She is very much alive & very tiny.  This story was amazing & quite well done all in all this is how you write the conclusion to a series.