Scalped Deluxe Ed. Book Five

The last book in the Scalped series is quite satisfying as an ending but at the same time I still had some problems with it.  The opening issue is a great reflection on how far the series has come since it was first started.  Bad Horse & Falls Down are looking for Catcher since he killed Gina & tried to kill both of them.  Meanwhile in the wake of Medicine Rock's heart attack Red Crow has been tearing down his own meth houses.  Wooster Karnow has wised up as a law man & is taking matters into his own hands.  All of these changes seem very organic in the way they are executed in this final book.  

The teaser at the end of the last volume doesn't lead anywhere since Belcourt doesn't wake up next to Catcher in the hospital but instead Catcher winds up in jail with Wade.  During a fire fight in which some meth dealers in Nebraska were trying to kill Shunka.  Wade gets hit with a stray bullet & as he is dying Catcher admits to killing Gina which leads to Wade & Catcher choking each other.  I really wish Catcher had died here but it was not to be.  Sheriff Karnow takes on a meth house by him self after all of his back up deserts him.  Nitz finally arrives but it to late Karnow after being shot multiple times tries to reason with one the criminals wearing a gas mask but get shot anyway.  As the gangs runs away it is revealed that the guy with the gas mask is Dino who the sheriff let off with a warning earlier in this collection.  Shunka & Bad Horse have their showdown that has been teased since the very beginning and it is great but it still proves that Shunka would have one if it hadn't been for the most unlikely person.  Red Crow shoots Shunka at which Dashiell turns the situation around & puts Red Crow under arrest  Meanwhile Catcher makes it to a field where he comes upon his old horse.  Upon recognizing him the horse attacks him & while about to stomp a mud hole in him Catcher shoots the horse & it collapses on him.  If the series had ended here it would have been fine but no this is only the halfway point of the story.  

Red Crow is in jail Nitz is happy as hell & Bad Horse is viewed as a hero Dashiell starts up a relationship with Maggie Medicine Rock who seems to be a good fit for him but I was really rooting for him & Carol since they have so much shared history.  Dino manipulates things behind the scenes with Red Crow's lawyer which leads to Lincoln being released & Dashiells reputation in ruins.  Dash is on the run from the F.B.I. while someone is killing the tribal council.  Diesel's body turns back up putting further evidence against Dash.  The final fight is in the closed casino between Dino's gang of former Red Crow employees & Red Crow.  It turns out that Catcher is still alive & that he is behind the tribal council murders.  Nitz finds out that Catcher is really the one who murdered the F.B.I. agents back in 1975.  So everybody is converging on the casino.  Dino flees with a lot of money making his full criminal transformation.  There is a whole Mexican standoff thing that happens between Red Crow, Bad Horse & Catcher.  Bad Horse shoots both, while Catcher is stumbling away Nitz runs in & tackles him into the fire where they both burn.  Dash carries Red Crow outside.  Red Crow makes him an offer but Dash refuses.  By the end of the story Falls Down is made sheriff of the reservation Maggie is elected leader of the the tribal council.  Carol has officially replace Granny Poor Bear as we witness Granny's funeral.  There is a new drug kingpin on the reservation in Dino.  Red Crow is living secluded outside of town just trying to get back to his roots & Dash is hitching a ride out of the reservation because he is still wanted for the murder of Diesel.  This is not a happy ending book but it does have definite closure.  If you liked 100 Bullets or Y the Last Man you will love this I haven't read D.M.Z. yet but I have a feeling it is in the same vein as these other titles.

Scalped Deluxe Ed. Book Four

This is the second to last collection as Scalped is starting two wind down.  This book feels much more like an anthology as it includes several side stories.  I absolutely love issue 35 which opens up this book it is a beautiful one & done story about Mance & Hazel.  Next up we learn about Carol’s past as she comes to the realization that she is pregnant with Dashiell Bad Horse’s child.  She winds up torching her house & going to live with Granny Poor Bear.  Granny helps get Carol off of drugs & by the end it looks like Carol is turning her life around.  Dashiell’s father Wade has returned to the reservation & he wants to see his son.  Everybody is always giving Wade a hard in this book & I understand that he really doesn’t stand up for himself but he is at least trying to make an effort & is his past with all of the characters is murkier than anyone can guess.

The Native American sweat lodge comes into play in this book a lot as it is used to ween Dash off of drugs & even for prayer or meditation.  Other side characters get their chance to shine as Wooster Karnow from Nebraska keeps reminiscing about how he used to be such a big shot & a war hero until he starts chasing down a guy wanted by the US Marshalls office.  This is issue was also quite amazing & is setting up something for the final book.  The other character who really get some page time is Nitz.  Agent Nitz has such a fall from grace when his superior comes in from Washington fires him for incompetence & getting his partner killed.  Nitz is in a drunken rage goes to confront Red Crow who basically has his men beat the crap out of him but not kill him.  Nitz trying to find a way to end it so he goes to a meth lab hoping that the tweaking junkies will kill him in a fire fight.  But do to his luck things don’t work out the way he was expecting them to.  The whole Unwanted storyline is about regrets & bad decisions. 

The next story-arc in this book is called You Gotta Sin to Get Saved.  This is a very Red Crow centered story.  Lincoln is coming up against a rival for chief of the tribe & his rival is the man who raised him.  As Red Crow is dealing with this new threat Dashiell & he have become quite close.  Meanwhile Dino Poor is developing a major crush on Carol that balances on the very edge of creepy.  The character that I have lost all respect for in this book is Catcher.  In this collection Catcher proves how messed up & sadistic he really is as he tries to kill Officer Falls Down & Dashiell Bad Horse.  I can’t wait for him to wake up in the last book & see who is in the same hospital room as him.  This series has gained a lot of respect from me as I have continued reading it but it is not an easy series to get into.  But once it has its hooks into you be prepared you are in for a wild ride.

Scalped Deluxe Ed. Book Three

A lot happens in this volume of Scalped with the High Lonesome storyline.  This introduces us to a con man by the name of Wesley Willeford & he has a secret that even he doesn’t know until he sees Dash Bad Horse; he knows that Dash works for the F.B.I.  Dash is going through his own problems throughout this entire volume in fact he comes real close to losing his grip on reality.  He has turned to drugs, sex & alcohol to just ease the pain & burden that he is living with every day.   Finally Dash does confess to Carol that he is working for the F.B.I.  As the world is closing in on him Dash sobers up pretty damn quick really just in time to talk Diesel into double crossing the F.B.I. & then double crossing Diesel on the evening that he is released from prison.  The justice that Dashiell Bad Horse rains down on him quite literally in fact is too extreme & doesn’t make me sympathize with him anymore than I already do. 

Officer Falls Down is piecing everything together rather quickly in the case of the murdered F.B.I. agents from 1975.  Lawrence Belcourt who sits in prison wrongly convicted of this crime knows who the real murderer is hell everybody that was there that day knows who it is.  It is finally revealed to us in this volume, it was Catcher.  By the end of this volume Falls Down knows that Catcher killed Gina Bad Horse but he doesn’t know why.  Reveals himself to Dashiell again after swearing on Gina’s grave that he will protect her son.  Catcher has this old sage presence in this series he just pops here & there in the story & reveals major plot points he is becoming one of the most enjoyable characters to read along with Granny Poor Bear only appears briefly in this book. 

The second half of this book is very Red Crow centric as Lincoln does something brash when he shoots Mr. Brass in the head while he is on the phone with Johnny Hmong.  This causes the Hmong’s to come down to the reservation in force.  They are expecting to have a war with Red Crow & his men right outside the police station.  However Red Crow changes the game & goes out to meet them himself unarmed.  The Hmongs don’t kill but instead beat him senseless as example.  While all of this is going on there is a witness on the loose that can either seal the fate of Lincoln Red Crow for murder to the F.B.I.  or Dashiell Bad Horse to Red Crow or the F.B.I. for drug use.  But in the end everything is good the witness is killed to protect Dashiell & Red Crow flies to the city to deliver some Godfather style retribution to Johnny Hmong & his gang which is quite satisfying to see.  This book was the halfway point for the series if you have made it this far there are only two books left.  

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.