Stray Bullets Killers #5

Stray Bullets Killers #5
Released by: Image Comics
Released on: July 16th, 2014.
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The fifth issue of David's Lapham's Stray Bullets: Killers is entitled “Call Me Gilgamesh or… The First Time I Ever Saw Your Face It Was On Your Butt.” Fairy tale style narration tells the story of a blind and limbless young man whose father passed and who lived with his mother, a horrendous woman who made him try to scrub the floors, a sponge in his mouth. His name was Gil and the only peace he found in life was when his mother stuffed him up the chimney like a human pipe cleaner. It was here that he would be afforded a few fleeting moments of privacy that he would use to pray in hopes of finding someone who would love him and take him away from this shitty life.

Three planets away, Amy Racecar is in the middle of an epic shootout with the cops. She swiped forty million from a bank and blew the place up on her way out. Amy's anti-establishment tactics have made her a folk hero lately. While this is being covered on the news, Amy shows up at the home of William Williams, her former partner in crime and now the man in charge of bringing her to justice. She's come to tell him that she quits, she's giving it all up and doesn't want to kill anymore - and she does, but she reads in the newspaper six months later that bounty hunter Jack Rum is on the lookout for her and so she bails, heads to the coast where no one will know her. Here she sees limbless Gil try to drown himself in the surf but she saves him before he can finish the job. She tells him she loves him and he tells her how he came to be in the state he's in. Together, they go to see his mother. Predictably, it does not go well and they wind up on the run together, but Amy can't kill anymore and Gil has no limbs. Whatever shall they do and what part in all of this is Amy's mother going to play?

Lapham takes a break from the regular continuity of the series to once again delve into the fantasy world of Amy Racecar. It's a completely over the top universe where anything can and does happen and it's pretty far removed from the typical Stay Bullets story (if there is such a thing) but at the same time, it fits. In this issue Lapham eschews the hardboiled real world horrors of the regular series and replaces it with completely insane violence and humor of the darkest, most twisted kind. There are those of us who prefer when the series plays it straight but this issue is fun, it's ridiculous, it is in spots very romantic and occasionally it's pretty sick. You won't see the ending coming and the little winks and nods to the regular storyline worked in here keep it interesting and worth paying attention to.

Lapham's combination of writing and artwork works just as well here as it has in any of the other issues, and that's a good thing. Since bringing the series back late last year it's been hitting one high note after another and while this issue is very much a diversion, that's okay. It's interesting and very creative how he works the continuity of the last few issues into this condensed fucked up fairytale retelling, straight from the id of Virginia's fragile and likely very cracked up psyche. What's fun about the Amy Racecar stuff, this issue being no exception, is that it puts to pen and paper the childhood fantasies many of us had where we WERE invincible heroes or anti-heroes or whatever, but we stood for something and we meant something to the people. Of course, 99.9% of us grew up, got jobs, started families and chilled out but yeah, for awhile it's safe to assume that most comic book readers at one point in their younger years had an Amy Racecar style imaginary alter-ego. Lapham obviously did, and he channels it - either that or he's some sort of psychological genius and tapping into dormant and very latent memories. But we're over analyzing…

Well drawn, quick witted, and as funny as it is shocking violent but this is very likely the calm before the storm, a quick and humorous reprieve before we get back to the chilling 'real world' darkness and all too human characters that make up Stray Bullets: Killers, still one of the best Goddamn comic books out there on the market right now.