Stray Bullets #2by Barb Lien-CooperReviews may contain information that could be considered 'spoilers'. Readers should proceed at their own risk.
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Credits Grade: 7 I managed to snare four — count 'em, four — issues of Stray Bullets during Free Comics Day. I now want them all. While wildly uneven, this is an intelligent, well written "crime" comic anthology that leaves other runners behind in the dust. Rather than review each issue separately, I'm just going to talk about the issues here.Issue #2: The official "free comic" is also, sadly, the weakest of the ones I got. The characterization is there, the plot doesn't come alive enough in the second part of the issue. The set up: a young girl in 1977 named Virginia sees a crime committed after seeing Star Wars. No one believes her. She turns anti-social. Instead of getting back to the fascinating "they won’t believe me" plot, we see some kids beating up our teenie heroine (maybe the crime plot is dealt with in issue #3?). A less than satisfactory ending injures the issue, but doesn't cripple it. The promise of later issues is there, but the story is a little weak. Just for reference, "he's a player" wasn't in the popular slang in 1977, Mr. Lapham, and Grease didn't come out until 1978. But, beyond those anachronisms (anachronisms are a pet peeve of mine), not a bad issue. Issue #4 : The place where I first saw brilliance in this work. In issue #4, Virginia has run away from home. She is hitchhiking. Since she is a young pre-teen, the readers' first thought is "if Lapham lets anything happen to that girl, I'm never reading anything by him again." We are, of course, afraid of sexual abuse or any other type of child exploitation. To say more than the girl is all right would be to give away many of the twists of the issue. The ending is surprising, yet logical. It is both a betrayal of a young girl's trust, yet also the only decent thing the man she gets a ride with can do (although he exploits his actions for personal gain). No, I can't tell you more. It's a brilliant issue and the cinematic yet simple art style is a perfect complement to the prose. Issue #15: This issue is not as good as the others. We follow a young runaway (not Virginia) as she stays in the home of a young boy she's befriended. The sexual exploits the boy's seemingly normal parents get up to when they think no one’s looking aren't disturbing or funny, just silly. The great promise of the first half of the issue isn't delivered upon, sadly, but Lapham has a way with characters that makes the issue still worth a glance. Issue #21: Once again, we have a solid story driven by character. The situation is simple. A man married too young. He has idle fantasies of what would happen if his wife died and left him a free man. He does love the woman, but he just didn't sow enough wild oats before he got married. Then, strange, terrible things start happening after he confesses his fantasy to a male friend of his. Part of us knows exactly what's going on in the story, part of us has forgotten an important detail because the subsequent events are so disturbing and rapidly paced. The ending's a twist we forgot we saw coming, so it's both satisfying, yet inevitable. What else? Stray Bullets is a mature title, with shocking violence that truly does shock with intensity of drama, not just a Garth Ennis/Brian Azzarello wet dream of 10,000 bullets going off just because violence is kinda neat. The art is like that of a black and white neo-noir of the early '60s (c.f. Cape Fear). The prose and action generally misses all the excesses of, say, Pulp Fiction but has the same spirit of being something different. The comic stays just on the right side of quirky. The self-contained stories are a nice touch, but I also like how they sort of bleed into each other and reflect on one another. All in all, Stray Bullets is mature entertainment that rarely simply exploits violence, but instead makes unintentional morality tales against violence, while recognizing how central it is to humanity's psychological make-up. Lapham's fictional world is one of much suffering and bloodshed, so when a moment of decency shines through the muck, it's almost a revelatory experience — a small blessing in an almost irredeemable world. These hard-won moments of decency give the work a redeeming social impact that most crime writers wouldn't even think of including in the work. I'm glad I don't live in Lapham's fictional world, but I do recognize how close to real life it sometimes seems. Worth reading. Averaging the four issues together, I give the whole package a seven. Written: May 8, 2002
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