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Stray Bullets: Sunshine And Roses #1
Released by: Image Comics
Released on: February 4th, 2015.
Written & Illustrated by: David Lapham
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The first chapter of this latest Stray Bullets storyline, once again brought to you by David and Maria Lapham, is entitled 'Kretchmeyer.' Page one travels back in time to May 15th, 1979 to the lovely city of Baltimore, Maryland. Here a blonde woman named Beth introduces herself to the titular Kretchmeyer at a house party. From there we cut to May 23rd. Kretchmeyer runs to the top of an apartment building, heads out onto the roof and pulls out a rifle stashed inside a ventilation grate. Here he takes aim at a man coming out of a building across the street. He fires and hits his mark, the results are not pretty.
From here we see Ron Ron and Scottie (last seen in Stray Bullets: Killers) discussing the hit. The target's name was Lonnie and Scottie figures this is a sign that bad times are coming. This was a power play of some sort, and Scottie wants to put the city on lockdown before a war breaks out to take control of the spot Lonnie has recently left empty. Scottie also wants to find out who the gunman was.
On May 25th, Beth and Kretchmeyer are on a date playing mini-golf, after which they head back to an apartment and fuck. Cue the regret. On June 2nd, Beth is back at her place. There's a knock on the door, Kretchmeyer has shown up with Chinese, her roommate Nina is not that impressed by any of this. Neither is Beth for that matter. On June 3rd a thug named Monster is cracking heads at Scottie's behest. He's giving it to a guy named Jacob who warns him 'You're on the wrong side of this.' It doesn't end well. When June 8th rolls around, Scottie is about to off a young man on the word of a woman who is essentially blind. Things are getting complicated. In the middle of the night on June 10th, Beth and Nina are woken up by a knock at the door. They're freaked out, but it's Kretchmeyer again. He wants to watch a marathon broadcast of The Prisoner with her. He's got good taste in TV shows. Days later, Scottie shows up and tells Beth they burnt the bakery down with Clayton inside. He also tells her he's moving Nina out. When he tells Beth he's looking for Lonnie's shooter and describes him to her, she gets a nervous look on her face. We know why.
On July 4th she confronts Kretchmeyer about his occupation and he's savvy enough to realize they're being watched. Their stalkers approach them just as the fireworks are going off but Kretchmeyer has got some fireworks of his own to unload on them. Their relationship only gets more complicated from here…
This fiftieth issue of the series fires on all cylinders. We've once again got a new storyline going, albeit with some familiar characters to reward those who have been paying attention to the series all this time anchoring it in the thick, sticky, wonderfully intricate continuity of Lapham's Stray Bullets universe. At the same time, as this is a new storyline, new readers can jump on and have a reasonably easy time of figuring out just what exactly is going on here. As is typical with Lapham's work on this series, this issue pulls no punches. We get earthy, witty, and most importantly believable dialogue from all of the quirky, strange characters that inhabit this land and we get a plot that is as layered and well structured as it is intriguing and just plain smart. Stray Bullets was, is, and probably ever shall be modern crime comics done right, assuming the quality level can stay this consistent - the Laphams continue to prove that it can.
The art style here differs not one iota from the art style we've seen in past issues, but why would you want it to? Great line work, beautifully tense black and white illustrations with fantastic facial expressions and nice background details to keep your eyes as interested as your brain. It makes sense that the man who writes this would be the right guy to illustrate it. According to the back page, David and Maria's New Year's resolution was “We're fucking great, and we've got some showing off to do." So by all means, show off. You know we love it. Issue #2 comes out in March, we'll just have to wait until then to see where this goes but if you've been ignoring this series so far, particularly after the amazing Killers storyline, you're a damn fool not to jump on now.