| Title | : | Southern Bastards, Vol. 1: Here Was a Man |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 1632150166 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9781632150165 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 128 |
| Publication | : | First published September 24, 2014 |
| Awards | : | Harvey Awards Best New Series AND nominated for Best Writer (for Jason Aaron) (2015), Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards Best Continuing Series, Best Writer (for Jason Aaron) (2015) |
Southern Bastards, Vol. 1: Here Was a Man Reviews
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Had to go and remind myself just how good a writer Jason Aaron is (after reading some of his awful X-Men books) by moving to his more personal love and hate look at the South.
Earl Tubb returns to Craw County, Alabama after 30+ years away... and his family's home is still a big football place, but it is also all Dirty South with an entire county corrupted by the football coach! Tubb decides to ask some questions... with a bat! Very very very good... excited to see what comes next. A Four Star, solid 9 out of 12.
2019 read -
The entire time I was reading this I kept thinking, This is just like those movies The Hubs likes to watch!
One man. Alone, outnumbered, and outmatched against a corrupt corporation/government/town/agency. No hope. No way to win.
He's never really been a good man, or a hero.
But this time, he's found a reason to make a stand!Usually a kid or a dog...just sayin'.
He won't back down. He's gonna fight 'em till the bitter end!
You know, the ones I usually leave the room for...
And that's pretty much the plot for Southern Bastards. And while I refuse to watch the movies with my sweetheart, I did enjoy it in graphic novel format. Go figure.
The South is kinda well known for our history of small town corruption, so it does make for an excellent setting for this sort of story.GO REBELS!
And it certainly doesn't hurt that the writer and the illustrator are both southern boys. On the first panel you can see that these two know the lay of the land, so to speak.
And, for those of you Yankees out there, yes...there really are that many churches all over the place down here. The road in front of my place has 6 churches on a 1/2 mile stretch. I shit you not.
This might not be for everyone, but if you've grown up in a small southern town, there are quite a few things in it that will ring true.
And as silly as a villain named Boss Coach sounds, it's actually not a stretch for me when I think back and remember some of the 'leaders' of the town I grew up in.
Gritty, hopeless, and dark describe the mood & the art in this one.
Read it at your own risk.
I gotta thank my good friend
Mike for gifting me with this, and whole slew of other amazing indie comics a while back. If I ever run across any Alpha Flight memorabilia, you can expect a care package. -
Find all of my reviews at:
http://52bookminimum.blogspot.com/
2.5 Stars
I am 150% certain I read this wrong. I was distracted last night between dealing with a real-world annoyance and pissing half the internet off so my attention was not focused on this story whatsoever. NONE of my friends who have read this rated it under 4 Stars so take my “meh” with a shaker full of salt.
The problem I had with Here Was A Man was twofold. (1) Like many other initial volumes, this one didn’t have a whole lot of plot development for me. It provided enough backstory, but you know the real juicy deets are yet to come and the main focus was just on kicking ass. Which leads me to (2) the ass kicking. Been there, done that . . .
Or if you’re only here because I read a lot of porno here ya go . . .
(You’re welcome)
Bottom line, this story didn’t seem fresh at all to me.
But enough of that Negative Nelly bullhonky. Here’s the reasons why you should read it.
1. It says the F word at least 47 times more frequently than any other graphic novel I’ve ever read . . .
2. Meth. ‘Nuff said . . .
3. Alabama football and a character named “Coach Boss” . . .
(Get it? If you don’t then you’re really missing out because that is a MOTHERFUCKING GEM!)
4. Scattered, smothered, covered, peppered and topped . . .
(If you find the thought of experiencing this revolting, we probably shouldn't be friends.)
5. Best first page ever . . . .
I need to get my hands on the next volume and confirm my thoughts that this should end up being one of my favorite graphic novels of all time when it’s all said and done.
Once again this was a gift from the best little pitcherbook fairy in all the Goodreads’ land. Said book fairy has chosen to remain under the user name A. Nonymoose (not really – don’t bother searching that) so go read
Mike’s review if you want to see just how iggnant I really am. -
Earl Tubbs comes back to town to clean out his dead father's house. While there he stumbles onto corruption in small town Alabama.
The coach runs the town. Period.
This was frigging good. Once I started it I wanted more. Hell, I still want more. Small town, southern grit lit, and BBQ. Hells yeah. Throw in some football and you have the makings of a great afternoon.
I received an arc copy of this book in exchange for an honest review from Netgalley -
Three and a half stars.
When classical musicians weren’t blatantly ripping one another off, they would title a piece, “Variations on a Theme by…”. They probably did this to avoid getting punched in the face by the original composer or his heirs.
Southern Bastard has a been-there-done-that quality to it. Anyone not familiar with the corrupt-southern-town-under-the-iron-thumb-of-one-evil-man, the return-of-the-looking-for-big-trouble-native, or the I-have-unresolved-issues-with-my-club-wielding-daddy tropes? Me neither. Even the artwork, when it juxtaposes present day events with imagery from the past has an “Aaah yes” vibe to it. The speak-softly-and-carry-a-big-ass whooping stick conjures up cinema antecedents (Walking Tall).
It’s the slight variations and the ending (it’ll take the wind out of your sails) that lift this (barely) above the mediocre. Jason Aaron has showed sparks of brilliance in his work (“The Doop issue”) and he does some interesting things here, just not enough of them -
This Southern-fried pulper comes complete with beer-drinking rednecks, trucker caps, lots of bullying and corruption, a powerful and ruthless football coach, his successful high-school team turned private death squad, sweet tea and barbecue, nasty Church-going sneaks, and an angry old man bent on cleaning up the place with his very big stick. As you can tell, the story is not terribly original. Then again, neither is the American South, so I guess it is a good fit. The two Jason's - both hailing from the South - manage to bring their dirty old town to life with many memorable images and gritty details, successfully walking the line between authenticity and cliche.
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As a Southern Bastard myself, I slurp sweet tea by the gallon, pig-out on BBQ ribs every other meal, have the words REBEL tattooed across my throat, wear an unwashed Confederate Flag g-string daily, am barely literate, have a piece of Bear Bryant's dogstooth hat braided into my chest hair, have four teeth (two of 'em being my good teeth), wear a John Deere cap that's fused with my scalp, snore through church service every Sunday, shoot guns at shit, get an erection at the sight of Nick Saban, have a mutt called Mutt, hate the president, can't help but cry when I hear Toby Keith's "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue", spend most nights drinking cheap beer to drown my many faded dreams and sorrows that I'm incapable of adequately expressing on account of dropping out of middle school at 19 to take care of my ma and sis who I impregnated roughly around the same time - but I'm able to cope with all this tribulation the Good Lord done seen to give me through occasional acts of brutal violence and because of a deeply spiritual appreciation for college football. I am a Southern Bastard. Don't like it? Then you can go ahead and go fuck yerself.
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Seems like the two Jasons have a bone to pick with their American South, where they grew up and no longer live. Maybe it's a love-hate relationship. The tale is of a solo vigilante ex-football hero Vietnam Vet that returns home to rain some Hell on some local football coach and his former players who operate as local asswhoopers. They are some of the southern bastards the title refers to that the Jasons can't seem to forgive.
Throughout, Tubb, our sorta hero, leaves phone messages for someone who gets revealed in the last image of the volume, which just might explain why the southern bastards are happy Tubb left town. I won't say what that something is, but it may point to the very bone the Jasons have to pick with the old boy south they left. Tubb also talks with his dead father, whom he hated, and for whom (in part) the ironic subtitle is intended, a phrase that is etched on his gravestone.
Every cliche in the book is here about The South but it doesn't really matter, as the dialogue crackles and the action thunders. Or maybe it's in part good because they try to explore those very cliches, a whole ton of 'em. It's (to me) surprisingly entertaining, especially since I was practically the only person in the universe who didn't really get into Aaron's Scalped, when I read it three years ago.
Maybe my tastes have sufficiently devolved to appreciate this raucous profane storytelling. Maybe I just need a football, bbq and beer and an old-man-with-a-big-stick story right now. Maybe I should even give Scalped another try!
I liked this one quite a bit. A pulp Alabama ride! -
Jason Aaron returns for his first creator owned work since Scalped with Southern Bastards (choosing Image as publisher over Vertigo this time around) alongside fellow Southerner, artist Jason Latour.
Earl Tubb is coming back to Craw County, Alabama for the first time in 40 years. He’s going to clear his hated, long-dead father’s house of stuff before getting the hell back out. That is until he realises what a festering swamp of injustice his childhood hometown has become.
Drugs, crime and corruption rule under the unwavering glare of Coach Boss, the owner of the local BBQ joint and coach of the county’s football team, the Runnin’ Rebs. And when Earl sees that a murder at the hands of Coach Boss’ goons has happened without the culprits being punished, he puts his plans to leave on hold while he metes out justice - southern style!
The main theme of Scalped (and if you haven’t read it, seriously check it out - it’s comics at their finest!) was the tense relationship between fathers and sons; Aaron returns to that theme with Southern Bastards. Though the father is dead and buried many decades gone and the son is in his late 50s/early 60s, his dad’s legacy is still affecting Earl as he realises he isn’t that much different from him after all, and (corny to say, I know) though he left the south, the south never left him.
If you’ve read Aaron’s Punisher MAX books (another must-read if you haven’t already partook), you’ll know he does the one-man vigilante story perfectly, and he brings that similar intensity to SB. His Earl Tubb is more or less Frank Castle - they’re both Vietnam vets and both can handle themselves just fine in a fight. They have a singular purpose, once they set their minds to it, and fear is no obstacle. The difference is that Earl has a family still alive and is much more human in general.
There’s also another Marvel element in this book as Earl gets a mighty stick for a weapon from his father’s grave tree after a bolt of lightning blasted it in half. That scene felt like it belonged to a mythical story or perhaps a Thor comic, of the kind Aaron’s written for the last couple years. SB feels like the convergence of a lot of his recent comics work in one place.
Both Jasons have written about their love/hate relationship with the south with Aaron firmly of the mind that though there are things he loves about it, he will never go back there again (he lives in Kansas) while Latour talks about how he’ll never leave the south. The impression I got from reading Southern Bastards is actually very one-sided: it’s a hellhole!
Right from the first page the tone is set: a mangy dog is taking a massive dump in front of several signs advertising churches on the side of the road. All throughout the story, Latour colours the book in muted, dark reds as if Craw County were actually in hell, while the townsfolk go about their business, turning a blind eye to evil. From the tattooed scumbags who hospitalise an innocent child, to the complicit attitude that allows the local football coach to act like a mafia boss of the town and get away with murder just because he wins them matches, SB is all condemnation of what the South stands for.
Also, I’m no Southerner, but if I had to list the things that make up the South, I’d say: ribs, religion, football, and the Confederacy. So maybe there’s some truth to those stereotypes because all of those assumptions are present and correct in SB!
Southern Bastards is a very grim comic full of violence and darkness, but it’s presented with such skill from both Aaron and Latour that it’s enormously compelling to read. Jason Aaron is back with another vicious tale from America’s heartland - and it’s a welcome return. -
My first Indy Week Buddy Read Shallows. Thanks to Humble Bundle for their last and superb Image Bundle. I will be flowing forth with tons of IMAGE reviews as such! (especially since I figured out how to load them onto my iPad!)
So this non-mainstream slice of Jason Aaron is his first since the glory days of SCALPED, a certain masterpiece of modern noir crime fiction. (I'm only in the middle of that series and I'm already hooked like a junkie for my next fix).
Aaron is in my Top 2-3 writers in the industry right now, no doubt. So when I read the jacket on the back of this one and look at all the names giving quotes and recommending this: Brubaker, Hickman, Fraction, Remender, Snyder; well holy fuck, that's just like the 1927 Yankees talking about Gehrig or Ruth...a regular murderers row of talent. The best in the bizz.
Between that and the fairly accepted praise from friends on here who's opinions I truly value, this was set up for greatness...
And boy, does it deliver.
Earl Tubb is one badass mofo. Having left the small Alabama town where his daddy was sheriff 40yrs ago, never to return...until now.
He comes back conflicted, and within hours, is knee deep in local bullshit all over again.
This feels like a Clint Eastwood movie just waiting to be made.
Cross Deliverance with Walking Tall and give ole' Squint the reins.
The county his father kept clean until his death is the usual Southern Hellhole, run by Coach Boss, a combination of Boss Hogg and the Coach in Varsity Blues, except filtered through Satan. The use of heavy reds and browns and yellows really give the feel of hell on Earth, heat, and damned souls.
Try as he might, Earl wants nothing more than to pack up his family house, and get the fuck out...but the murder of an old acquaintance is just a little too much for Earl to take when he sees the current Sheriff isn't fixin' to do a Good Goddamn thing about it.
This is the same kind of unflinching look at the real America of the South, that Scalped gave us of the Western/Plains Native Reserves. This is noir so dark, it's black. It takes a chunk of you just to read it. Make no mistake, this isn't some comic book, this is pure American Noir in the hands of a modern master.
If you haven't already, grab yourself some fast, because like the best Ribs/BBQ, you DO NOT want to miss out on this.
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Just finished this book and my heart is pounding. Shouldn't have read this before going to bed - I'll be up half the night, dreaming of revenge fantasies.
One of the most striking things about this book is just how much of a presence Earl Tubbs has without lifting a finger. The grizzled squint, the toothbrush moustache, the gnarled arms - yes, Earl's a piece of work and I'd believe he's a shitkicker even in his (sixties?).
The next thing that struck me was how much this book owes to noir - the gnawing feeling of inevitable failure and succumbing to a fate you never even knew was threatened before you step on the scene. Earl's fucked as soon as he drives into town, and I'm not sure whether he doesn't know or really hasn't got a shit to give (let alone two).
The whole book has a slight whiff of moldy ground beef - discoloured, chewed up, ragged. Makes me slightly ill just thinking about it.
What a great, grand villain they've crafted in Coach Boss. Terrifying yet weak in just the right amount to make him supremely dangerous. And a town full of cowards and lackeys.
Y'know what this reminds me of as much as anything? Road House - that 80's Patrick Swayze movie where a town full of rednecks get steamrolled by an evil overlord. Can't wait for "the cooler" to show up. "Be Nice. Until it's time to not be nice." -
Sweet tea, ribs, and high school football, Southern Bastards is satire and southern gothic, with rough, beautiful artwork. Probably Aaron’s best work to date.
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Bullet Review:
After Original Sin by Jason Aaron, I was about ready to throw in the towel on him. But my coworker found this - and I rather liked it!
It's brutal and gritty. It's realistic and violent. But the characters grow on you. The Southern Atmosphere is alive - I can almost smell the biscuits and ribs! And the art makes the entire story jump.
So yeah, Aaron, well done! You are a good writer after all!
Full Review:
Earl Tubb returns to Craw County to clean up his uncle's home - the home he was raised in. But when he arrives, he starts to see how the town is owned by Coach Boss and his cronies - men who beat up and kill other men for reasons as yet undisclosed. Is it time for Earl to take up his father's beating stick and beat some sense back into the town?
I tried reading "Original Sin" by Jason Aaron, and while I enjoyed the beginning, the end was a massive flop. It was just so disappointing and pointless - I wondered why and pretty much assumed that Aaron and I were parting ways.
But my coworker is great and lends me all these cool finds from the library. Some of them have been out of this world insane (Zaya and Naja come to mind), but some of them have been winners.
This was a winner.
This book drew me in, with the art (this cartoony yet really gritty style, that relied on all these browns, reds, and oranges), with the characters (Earl, Dusty, Shawna, and more), with the setting. Ah, the setting! It is completely obvious that the authors are more than familiar with living down South - the good AND the bad.
And I think that's really what I like about this. I hate those silly cozy novels, where a slick city girl moves to this country town and life is perfect and idyllic. Everyone is quirky, but everyone is also tolerant and blissful and blech. Come on, please. I don't care where you live, there will be great people, but there will also be tyrants and complete assholes.
I finished this in one sitting and immediately needed to know what happened next. Unfortunately, I'll have to wait for Volume 2. -
”Aqui Jaz Um Homem” é o primeiro volume da série ”Southern Bastards”, com argumento de Jason Aaron (n. 1973) e desenhos e cores de Jason Latour (n. 1977).
No prefácio os dois autores revelam a sua paixão pelo Sul. Não é obviamente por mero acaso que o enredo se situa no Alabama, terra de nascimento de Jason Aaron.
Earl Tubb regressa ao condado de Craw com o intuito de desocupar e vender a casa que era do seu pai, Bertrand Tubb, um xerife já falecido; e onde o seu tio Buhl morava; agora a viver num lar para terceira idade.
Earl Tubb acaba envolvido num confronto que o faz regressar ao passado. A um passado de que ele anteriormente tentara escapar quanto foi para a Guerra do Vietname.
A história avança através de flashbacks - em que a intensidades das cores é de tal maneira acentuada que a violência surge imediatamente subjacente.
As memórias de Earl Tubb – dominadas quase exclusivamente pela brutalidade, pela agressividade, pela crueldade, pela fúria; evidenciam-se no confronto entre o presente e o passado.
Este primeiro volume de ”Southern Bastards” é dominado pela amargura e pela raiva, numa sensação que se vai repetindo; mas onde existe um lado compassivo e de luta contra a corrupção e a arbitrariedade.
Apenas no final sabemos a quem são dirigidos os telefonemas que Earl Tubb vai fazendo durante a narrativa.
Neste volume há um excepcional equilíbrio entre o intenso argumento de Jason Aaron e a arte rude e áspera de Jason Latour. O uso do vermelho serve para destacar a maldade e a violência que reinam por aquelas paragens. As expressões faciais são de tal modo intensas que se sobrepõem muitas das vezes aos diálogos.
”Aqui Jaz Um Homem” é um volume excepcional em que se associam inúmeras temáticas: o racismo, a solidão, a corrupção, a criminalidade, a violência, as relações familiares, o desprezo; só para referir algumas, são moldadas pelos sentimentos antagónicos dos protagonistas, pela insanidade inexplicável e pelas emoções que se encaixam (ou não) numa vivência feita da brutalidade e de intimidação. -
Holy Shit did Aaron just knock this one out of the park. This is the best book I've read all year by far and right up there with Scalped for best slice of life comic for me. Talk about gritty in your face realism, man was this just brutal. Can't wait to read the next volume.
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This was pretty cool. I think it's the first Jason Aaron creator owned book that I've read. It's about a building feud in an Alabama town. A town where everyone is all about BBQ, football, beer and foul language. Not usually the type of thing I'd read, but I did enjoy it (probably because it felt different).
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Outstanding. I already told Santa that there are sequels. If he doesn't deliver, I'll have someone break his legs.
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The hell did I just read? Southern Bastards is plain perfection when you want some pretty nasty stories with a right amount of heart in it. Reading the first volume gave me mixed but strong feelings. Aaron has a talent to make the readers empathize with the old man protagonist Earl Tubbs. For the record, I absolutely loved the pages where Earl beats the f*ck out from Boss Coach's musclemen. It is is a driven and motivated beatdown that I am really, really satisfied with.
Like the beautifully created Scalped, Southern Bastards doesn't waste a sweat to make itself brutally clear that it is one of the ultimate messed-up gritty comics stories out there. -
I do not possess the required amount of superlatives to describe this piece. Aaron and Latour have caught the essence of every bitch-ass redneck known to humanity and distilled it into this noir meets Walking Tall homage. It can only reach stellar heights by continuing and I am reserving my spot on that fucking carnival ride right now!!!!
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Gritty. Dirty. Brutal.
Also...BBQ.
Whats not to like? -
**Buddy read with the Shallow Comic Readers, theme this week: Indies!***
Basically, Aaron and Latour lean upon every Southern stereotype out there, borrowed from Walking Tall to Bear Bryant to how Food Network portrays Southern food, and serve up a bloody, uber-violent take on corruption in a small town. Even the last page "shocker" is such a silly cliche it had me laughing out loud. I'm just surprised the KKK wasn't thrown in as well, but maybe they show up in future issues.
Aaron is a good writer, and there are some terrific tension filled moments in this book, which is autobiographical, based on the brief interview with the two creators in the front of the book. The protagonist of this book, if you can call him that, is some guy named Earl Tubb (wow, that's an original name). Tubb is modeled after Jason Aaron himself, whose love-hate relationship with the South is portrayed in Southern Bastards as Earl's love-hate relationship with his father. In other words, lots of anger and misplaced hatred.
But, as a fellow reviewer put it, the whole book is not very original. There's nothing in this potboiler that hasn't been written about before. And although Aaron tries to shoehorn some personality into Earl Tubb, it falls flat because the warmth Tubb shows on the phone to an unknown person is belied by the burning fury inside that makes him become just another thug bent on kicking some ass vigilante style. Batman could take some notes off of this guy.
I suppose Aaron thinks it's cute to name one of the characters after a prominent Alabama family, the Tutwilers, one of whom was an Undersecretary of State for George W. Bush, and another who was a major force for prison reform in the state and whose name adorns the women's prison, currently ranked as one of the ten worst in the nation. It just seems cheesy. Aaron doesn't tell us where in the state Craw County is supposed to be, but unless it's in the very bottom portion of the state, Birmingham is not as far away from any other place as Aaron makes it out to be, either.
Latour's art is good. Rough as a comic like this would require, and he doesn't spare us shots of blood everywhere as people get beat up on page after page. Latour also does the coloring, but everything is in subdued tones of reds and grays and browns, and becomes very one-note and rather dull.
Didn't hate this book, but didn't like it much, either. I still have Scalped on my shelf, but after reading this, I think I'll put it further down on the list. -
As much as I enjoyed Aaron's previous work, Scalped, this following offering feels a bit of a downgrade. And despite the pleasant art work, it feels more like a glorified intro than anything. What should have (just) been a vignette of sorts is dragged out into a 100 page comic that for all its length, doesn't really have much to show for it.
Enter: our main character (who I don't even think even gets a name) who returns to his small town for the murkiest of reasons. A story of a man's past catching up to him ensconce this tale of (a) gang(s) and chump-change corruption. The trope of a cowboy/hero returning to his town to liberate it that could be imported from a Western is strangely applied to a small southern town.
This might've worked in a Western but feels quite a mismatch for a lone-hero within a modern context. Not because it's a bad idea but because everything is super-duper vague and it reduces to a quixotic one man's fight against town hall. If we don't know why our hero is fighting how can we care?
All the more irritating is that when he's not clobbering people with a stick and munching on ribs our protagonist essentially talks to himself as a plot device to drive the narrative. This odd decision does nothing to drive an emotional connection and merely justifies the creation of another sequel. $$$.
All in all, Southern Bastards reduces to a demented take on The Andy Griffith show. Good guys lose. Bad guys win. And as always, there is another comic to sell. -
As an exile from the south myself, I really get the criticisms of southern culture that the authors are making here. Just like the main character I understand the feeling of wanting to get away from it, but at the same time that it is always pulling for you to come back. The south, especially in the small towns, is welcoming if the people view you as 'one of us', but as soon as the surface is scratched and they find out you're different in some way (not religious, a liberal, not interested in football, etc.), something changes in the way that they look at you. In short there is something deep under the surface of this story that clicks with me.
As for the art, it's rough edges really highlight the tension and violence in this book. It's use of red panels for events in the past, make it clear that the memories are not good ones. As for the story, it feels like it is leading in a certain direction, but it take a hard turn right at the end of this first volume. In fact, my jaw nearly hit the ground when I got to the twist at the end. That twist guaranteed that I would be picking up the next volume. -
Pretty good start. Interested to see where this series is headed.
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My review of another edition. -
What do you do to pass the time when your roommate is do accounting for her church, you're sitting in the other room, surrounded by outdated ministry/religious books, and looking forward to some ice cream afterwards? Read a comic with a sacriligeous word in the title of course! Seriously, why the heck did I wait SO LONG???!!! It's yet more proof that I have as of yet never held a book in my hands, published by Image, that truly disappointed me in any way. This was awesome! It was like every angry-old-man book or movie you've ever seen. You know, the ones where the guy's looking for justice for his murdered family/wife/best-friend/ill-used town, etc.?
Thrown in just about every Southern cliche ever over-saturated into our brains, via American pop-culture, and you have a winning recipe! After all, who doesn't love inbred children, football as a town's true religion and a local rib joint owned by the football coach/crime lord?
Am I allowed to admit that the preacher's boy, Esaw, being one of his lap-dogs/thugs made me smile? Surprised that being as I was in a church-owned building, I wasn't smited (or is it smote?) down...And I think I might be going to Hell for the level my excitement reached when we finally saw Earl's daughter in that last panel and she mentioned coming down to see him. Man is the shit going to hit the fan! I honestly cannot find a single thing wrong with this trade, I loved it to pieces. It was overdone in exactly the way I like 'em. Can't wait for the next Southern-fried slice to clog my arteries with! :)
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Update: Re-read
So I liked it more the second time around. It does feel a little light, and I didn't love any of the characters, but the art is really damn good. I also enjoyed the ending, even if I guessed it, but it does built the town world up nicely. I say it's around a 2.5 but I'll bump it to a 3. Going to read volume 2 now.
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Maybe I just didn't gather what the fuss was about but besides some nice artwork I basically was bored half way through. None of the characters clicked with me, none of the situations were interesting, no twist I didn't expect. I didn't care much about the background of "Boss". I just felt like it was all one big setup. Maybe Volume 2 will fair better. -
Review to come.
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Quizá lo mas justo fuera 4 estrellas y media, pero me voy a quedar así, sin dejarme llevar por el impacto final de este primer arco argumental. Al fin y al cabo esta historia de mala hostia sureña, no deja de ser un historia mas bien simple y que no cuenta demasiado. Esta vez importa mas el mal rollo, que una pretendida o enrevesada profundidad argumental, que hubiera resultado mas irreal. Es el sucio y profundo sur al fin y al cabo poco hace falta para que las cosas se salgan de madre, en un tebeo cuya primer viñeta es un perro cagando ante carteles de toda clase de iglesias... no engañamos a nadie.
Earl Tubb vuelve 40 años después de irse, al condado de Craw para hacerse cargo de la mudanza de su hermano, pues este ha sufrido un derrame. Earl se marchó a la guerra de Vietnam escapando de aquel pueblo y de su padre, sheriff que acabó asesinado, y nunca había vuelto a poner un pie en ese pueblo de mala muerte en el que parece que todo gira en torno al equipo de fútbol americano.
Pero a veces 40 años no son suficientes para el sucio sur, y mas cuando el pueblo parece dirigido por maleantes y gentuza a las ordenes del propio entrenador del equipo local. Violencia, mal rollo, brutalidad, viejas rencillas, redneckismo, white trash, fútbol americano, tumbas, palos y bates de beisbol. Ese es el coctel de una historia simple de "well, that escalated quickly", mas que efectiva, con final impactante y que no termina en este primer tomo, habiendo ya otra grapa posterior publicada que ahonda en uno de los personajes principales.
Jason Aaron tiene clara su historia y la cuenta sin ataduras. Jason Latour nos ayuda a "ver el rojo" y va variando de narrativa, desde grandes no-viñetas horizontales a doble pagina, pasando por paginas llenas de viñetillas cuadradas, en varios tiempos argumentales, pero componiendo una pelea de una manera que muestra tanto la pelea real como la interior.
Recomendable y será que no tengo mucha imaginación, pero al ser una historia de viejales con malas pulgas, yo no he dejado de imaginar a Clint Eastwood en el papel de entrenador, aunque los protagonistas sean "tan solo", sexagenarios. -
The comic equivalent to the most fried southern comfort food you could think of...
Southern Bastards captures the tone of a down and dirty grimy southern atmosphere very well. From the art, to the characters, and writing; it embodies the feel perfectly. There is also a great cinematic quality to the panel composition. For example, each chapter has a “title card” presented as if in a movie. Another positive is the interwoven flashback scenes.
For me personally, it’s greatest strength was a negative. The strictly southern setting and character are not my cup of tea...or rather not my preferred fried chicken. Some action scenes are difficult to follow and too frantic to grasp on first viewing. While this is just a review of the first volume and this criticism may end up being arbitrary later on, I felt the story and art did not take a big enough risk to go past a line of violence that would really make it more effective in it’s storytelling. For example, when a character is assaulted and then shows up in a football field, I thought it would be more impactful if they used a larger panel to show more of the detail of his wounds after it’s slow buildup of anticipation. For being such a down and dirty story, it held back on really showing off something gruesome or shocking to really add strong impact to more than one violent moments.
I feel that people that can enjoy the unapologetic setting and atmosphere will really enjoy this book and want to know the secrets.
