Broken Frontier

Before diving into this week’s book, just a note, in case you didn’t notice, Guiding Lines has moved to Tuesdays for the foreseeable future.  Hopefully, by being a bit closer to new comics day, the books I talk about will stay fresher in your mind, and you’ll remember to try them out!  Onto today’s fun…

I grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a decent mid-sized city, not small by any means, but certainly not a New York or Los Angeles.   Certainly too big for me to know everybody in that city.  Yet, the 18 years I spent there found my life constantly intersecting with people connected to me in some of the strangest ways, colliding circles, so to speak.  Now I work in the entertainment industry, and I’ve started to see the same pattern applied here.  I work with people from seemingly disparate backgrounds, yet everyone knows each other.  It’s a phenomenon that occurs in all of our lives, often times somewhat mistakenly called “Six Degrees of Separation.”  You see, it’s rarely that far out, most people you meet in a mid size pool are closer to you than six degrees. 

Well, to me at least, that’s what Stray Bullets is all about.  David Lapham’s ongoing noir epic is divided into issues of self-contained stories all played out across a recurring cast of seemingly disparate characters.  Consequently, you can start almost anywhere, including the long awaited issue 33, which is supposed to ship tomorrow.  Set for the most part in and around Baltimore in the early 1980’s, Lapham’s stories are inherently approachable to new readers, and yet still filled with nods and winks for the long time reader.  While the book seems a bit more enjoyable when you can actually see everything going on, each issue serves as a complete story unto itself, furthering the “plot” of the series only in the sense of defining new characters and catching up with old characters. 

The sole unifying device in the books is the “Harry” character, who is a silent unseen crime boss, who is often mentioned, and whose motivations and plans propel several of the stories and the city of Baltimore.  Baltimore serves as an additional character in the story, as Lapham subtly charts the cities economic and social peaks and valleys.  While much of the book has a focus on the seamy underbelly of society, not all of the book is entirely crime based.  It ranges from family drama to love story to coming of age, and even the occasional sci-fi story.  The best stories are when that usually unseen criminal element creeps into the suburban home life, cracking the sheen of happy middle class existence. 

Lapham’s art is quite possibly the only style of art that can make a book with this range of style work.  His work is gritty yet simple, with enough definition that you can recognize characters whom you’ve only seen as 8 year olds when they are shown as adults.  His line work favors a more cartoony style, yet each character is wholly real, and feels so.  There’s a connectedness in the artwork and the story telling that you only get from a double-threat like Lapham.  The line work shifts and bends to suit the story he tells, and does so with flawless style.

Stay Bullets is entirely self-published by Lapham, who has taken quite a bit of time away from the series as of late (this is the first issue in nearly a year), to work on his Murder Me Dead series.  But, the joy of this book is that when it doesn’t come out you miss the book for its quality, not due to dangling storylines (like say… The Ultimates.)  This book is truly the most satisfying single issue read in comics today, and trying out this weeks issue is sure to be a great way to prove it to you.

There are beautiful hardcover collections of a good amount of the series, as well as corresponding soft cover versions at a fantastic price point.  If you’re into the single issues, I just picked up a full run of the series for under $70 with very little footwork.

GUIDING LINE: Self contained, noir storytelling at it’s very best.  This is quite literally the best book you aren’t reading, so get to it!

- Josh Fialkov