Scalped #38 – Review

by Jason Aaron (writer), R.M. Guera, Giulia Brusco (colors), and Steve Wands (letters)

The Story: From the Vietnam War to the reserve, a character crucial to Scalped’s history is illuminated for the very first time.

What’s Good: It’s hard to write a comic centred on a character in existential crisis.  The problem is that it’s difficult to have readers be sympathetic with a character with no fixed identity or to understand a character who doesn’t understand him or herself.  Yet somehow, Aaron manages it.

I think it’s largely due to Aaron’s focus on mood, atmosphere, and environment (the end of the Vietnam War) despite the heavy character work.  While we never fully grasp Wade’s motivations, aside from some vague ideas of destiny towards issue’s end, we are carried along the stream right with him.  Wade seems to float through his life in this book and so, that’s what we do.  Regardless of what major historical events he’s a part of or what completely spontaneous acts of violence or cruelty he commits, there’s a constant sense of meandering and meaninglessness, possibly because of that very spontaneity.   Even when he does a fairly heroic deed, it doesn’t feel like a fist-pump; Wade rescues an old man from slavery, only for the man to spit in his face and say “go home.”

That sums up the effective moodiness of this issue, really.  A constant sense of drifting lethargy and confusion encircles a man who bounces from day to day, surviving but not really living, making as few choices as he has to and often being unaware of it when he actually does.  Due to Wade’s “curse” (by dumb luck, he seemingly can’t be killed), even war is made bland and un-invigorating.  Wade’s life is just one big wash that sees him increasingly isolated on his existential island.  By issue’s end, when Wade actually begins to have some sense of destiny, this lasts all of a couple pages before that is quickly inverted and problematized.