Stray Bullets Killers: Number Three “The Five Fingers.”
Writer and Artist: David Lapham
Produced and Edited by: Maria Lapham
Publisher: Image Comics
Released: 14th May 2014
Stray Bullets is a black and white crime genre comic book that you’ll find certain fans gushing over, proclaiming it to be ‘gritty,’ ‘noir,’ ‘edgy’ and anything else that they can conjure up to encapsulate the image of an ‘adult’ comic that is nothing like those silly, childish superhero books. Absolute nonsense of course, because Stray Bullets comes from exactly the same kind of mindset as any other comic book on the market today. The only difference is that this book deliberately attempts to shock by using sex, violence and profanity. It has children playing childish games with their dolls, but instead of childish banter they talk in a language of sex and violence learnt from their absent father. The themes in this book are of Italian gangsters, absent parents, damaged children and horrible people doing horrible things to each other. Leaving aside the surface differences of black and white artwork and sexually explicit language, the main difference between this book and the last book I reviewed on this blog (Captain America #20) is that the Mother in Stray Bullets is just as self serving and willing to abandon her children as the Father. Captain America had a drunk Dad, but his Mother was a paradigm of moral respectability and expounded the rarely realised ethic of doing the right thing no matter what the cost to yourself personally. In Stray Bullets #3 both parents are rotten.
Captain America #20 is set in a contemporary setting with villains laughably trying to make the world attack America for their latest war outrages (and yes, it’s just as stupid as it sounds). Stray Bullets #3 deftly avoids dealing with any contemporary issues whatsoever by setting itself in a safe pre NSA surveillance era of 1986. The first panel uses the F bomb and the last panel sticks it in there as well, just in case you weren’t aware that this is an ‘adult’ comic and something you are supposed to take seriously. Well I didn’t take it seriously, but I have to admit that writer David Lapham knows how to do profanity laced cool dialogue in a Quentin Tarrantino anachronistic, sex and violence is cool kids, kind of way. There’s no wisdom in this book, but there’s a cleverness to the narrative structure and the dialogue has moments of humour throughout, as you might expect, with people swearing at each other in cool ways that only really happens in fiction.
This is a book for people who are easily impressed by fictional characters swearing at each other. That sounds like I hated it, but it’s actually very enjoyable to read. The story itself is interesting, entertaining and probably worth following. There’s a glimmer of moral integrity in the book as well, in one character that at least at the moment appears to be doing the right thing. You’ll like it. I did, even though it’s hiding in 1986, using cleverness to get away with not saying anything, depicting parents as selfish, horrible people and giving you the impression that violent gangsters are super confident, cool people. Hello Quentin. It was a good book, probably a bit too much in love with it’s own cool cleverness, but an enjoyable read nevertheless whether this reviewer liked it or not. Rating 8/10.
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