Southern Bastards #2

Southern Bastards #2
Released by: Image Comics
Released on: May 28th, 2014.
Purchase From Amazon

The second issue of writer Jason Aaron and illustrator Jason Latour's Southern Bastards basically picks up right where the first issue left off. Earl Tubbs has returned to his home town in Craw County, Alabama, for the first time in four decades, found a weird tree growing out of the grave of his deceased father, the former town sheriff. Some guy named Coach Boss seems to be in charge and Earl just wants out. He packs up everything from his dad's old house into a truck and decides that since it's too late to make the drive tonight, he'll kill some time at the local high school football game.

While sitting in the bleachers minding his own business, Tad, the kid he met at the tree the day before, comes up to him. He knows that the real reason Earl is at the game isn't to catch up with the football team he used to play on but to size up the coach. Shortly after they talk, a man covered in blood wanders into the melee on the field looking for the coach. Earl knows that it's Dusty, the man he met at the dinner earlier, and obviously the hit that coach put out on him then didn't go as planned. Earl confronts the coach on the field but it goes nowhere, neither man can do anything in a public place. Earl decides to go to the cops, but the cops aren't interested. Dusty was a meth head, a public menace, and the football player Earl accused of murdering him, Esaw Goings? He's a star player and the son of a local preacher. Since Earl didn't witness the murder and since he did smack Esaw in the face with a fry basket in the BBQ joint, it quickly becomes obvious that the cops aren't going to be any help. Esaw and the other players confront Earl when he leaves, but Earl ignores them and keeps on walking. He drives back to the house… he can't stop thinking about that tree, the one growing out of his father's grave site.

Building perfectly off of the foundation laid in issue one, this second installment of Southern Bastards manages to ramp up the tension without the brutal violence that was so important to how the inaugural chapter played out. This time out, it's all about repercussions, be it the ways in which Coach Boss' minions very obviously manipulate seemingly anyone of importance in town or the way in which Earl has to deal with the relationship that he once had (and in equally interesting ways still has) with his father.

Once again we get some really impressive work from the creative on this book. Aaron's script is effectively earthy, he's able to create believable characters and put them in interesting situations that never feel out of the realm of possibility. Pulling from influences like Joe Lansdale and hicksploitation pictures (the original Walking Tall being an obvious example) of the seventies the dialogue is fun to read without sounding forced or clichéd and the plot moves briskly without sacrificing character development. Earl becomes even more fleshed out this time around, we get to know him from the one sided phone conversations and through… well we don't want to spoil the ending. Likewise, Latour's artwork continues to impress. There's a lot more color used in this issue than in the first and it opens things up a little bit in nice ways. Background details like the expressions on the faces of the rabid crowd at the football game help to make this easy to look at for just that reason - you find yourself wanting to find those little details here. Nice line work, solid inks and the lay out in the football scene is surprisingly intense, it plays out much like a movie would, with the panel movement working in much the same way that a movie might be cut.

Like a lot of good comics, this one ends on a cliffhanger, the kind that makes you cuss out loud when you get to the last page because you know you're going to have to wait another month or so to find out where this is all going. But patience is a virtue and all that and even at only two issues in, it's easy to have faith in Aaron and Latour as they take us on a grubby, sweaty trip through the filthy underbelly of small town Alabama. This already has the potential to be one of the best new books of the year and we're nowhere close to done yet. Oh, and in case you were wondering, the dog from the first issue? He pops up again in this issue too.