SCALPED: BOOK ONE by Jason Aaron

Dashiell Bad Horse resentfully returns to the Prairie Rose Indian Reservation with a pair of nunchucks and a bad attitude, beginning this dark dive into a tough and gritty crime drama and a new world created by Jason Aaron, and I thought this first installment was great.

This inciting plot isn't the newest thing you've probably read, with a guy returning to his hometown sparking a whole lotta drama. We've seen that before. But this is Jason Aaron we're talking about here, and he paints a complex tapestry the same way he does in his Southern Bastards series. He steadily reveals character and relationships and motivations through flashbacks and shifting POV's, and what you originally think you know about certain characters gets challenged constantly.

The art was a little problematic for me though. It was hard to tell certain characters apart and much of the action was messy and difficult to keep track of. Just like in movies, I feel like the rendering of action in comics should be clear and everytime I paused to try and get a sense of what was happening and who was who, it took me out of the story, and that's a problem. With better art I might've given this a better score. But I'm excited about where this story can go.

GRADE: B