{"id":852,"date":"2010-02-10T23:23:00","date_gmt":"2010-02-11T07:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/2010\/02\/10\/comic-book-report-scalped-vol-4\/"},"modified":"2010-02-10T23:23:00","modified_gmt":"2010-02-11T07:23:00","slug":"comic-book-report-scalped-vol-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/2010\/02\/10\/comic-book-report-scalped-vol-4\/","title":{"rendered":"Comic Book Report: Scalped Vol. 4"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/snout.org\/hotsheet\/uploaded_images\/11380_400x600-703382.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/snout.org\/hotsheet\/uploaded_images\/11380_400x600-703345.jpg\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Kurt Busiek himself recommended <span style=\"font-style:italic;\">Scalped<\/span> to me last year, and he was not wrong.  (That in itself is a bit of a story&#8211;he was signing at Excalibur Comics on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.freecomicbookday.com\/\">Free Comic Book Day<\/a>, and when I stopped by during a lunch break from <a href=\"http:\/\/2009.barcampportland.com\/\">BarCampPortland 3<\/a>, I was the only customer in the store and thus able to actually have a substantial chat with him and some of the very friendly staffers.  I also picked up a copy of <span style=\"font-style:italic;\">Arrowsmith<\/span>.)<\/p>\n<p>Every trade paperback collection of a monthly comic needs a title&#8211;usually taken from the main storyline therein.  &#8220;The Gravel in Your Guts&#8221; arc comprises the last four issues in this collection, which focus on the &#8220;big bad&#8221; of the story, Chief Lincoln Red Crow.  Previous issues have referenced his backstory, especially his connection to the protagonist, Dashiell Bad Horse, but here we see things from Red Crow&#8217;s perspective in the present day.<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t read a lot of crime fiction or watch much <span style=\"font-style:italic;\">film noir<\/span>, so maybe a lot of the stuff here is playing off standard genre tropes.  It still works.  I suspect this story would work just as well if it were set in an urban ghetto instead of a South Dakota Indian reservation, but there are certain things you could only do with these particular characters and this particular history.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s dark and raw and sometimes tough to read, but always compelling.  Check it out:  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.scalped.info\/\"><span style=\"font-style:italic;\">Scalped<\/span> web site<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ISBN=1401221793\/curtiscchensfree\"><span style=\"font-style:italic;\">Vol.4<\/span> Amazon link<\/a><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/snout.org\/HotSheet\/CKL.jpg\" alt=\"CKL\" title=\"CKL\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Kurt Busiek himself recommended Scalped to me last year, and he was not wrong. (That in itself is a bit of a story&#8211;he was signing at Excalibur Comics on Free Comic Book Day, and when I stopped by during a&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[51,62,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-comics","category-pdx"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=852"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/852\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}