Stray Bullets vol. 6: Killers
As it turns out, you can go home again.
After a very lengthy gap between issues, David Lapham released issue #41 of “Stray Bullets” and completed the fifth volume of his signature crime series. He then bundled it, and the other forty issues in an omnibus edition that wound up being my favorite comic from last year. At the same time, he also started a new miniseries for this series. Subtitled “Killers,” it was also the latest example of a creator returning to their most famous work after a lengthy absence. That’s something which has produced, uh… decidedly mixed results over the last few decades. For every Ostrander/Truman “Grimjack” and Yukito Kishiro “Battle Angel” there are far more works like Frank Miller’s “Batman” and Kenichi Sonoda’s “Gunsmith Cats” that either don’t measure up and show that their creators have lost the thread. He lets us know that it took a lot of work to get here, but Lapham’s work on this latest volume of “Stray Bullets” belongs in the former category.
When we last saw Virginia Applejack, she was on her way out of town to carve her own path for the future. That path has now led her to her Aunt Jane in Sandcastle, Maryland, and a respite from life on the road. It’s here that she meets up with Eli, a teenager who lost his leg and his dad after a run-in with Spanish Scott many years ago. The more Virginia and Eli get to know each other, the more they realize they’ve got something special together. Problem is that between Eli’s friends and family and Virginia’s very checkered past, it would seem as if their relationship is doomed from the start. This being a “Stray Bullets” story, calling their relationship “doomed” is probably more optimistic than it deserves.
Virginia’s growth from willful Daddy’s Girl to justifiably world-weary teenager has basically become the spine of this series. Lapham continues that thread here as the girl tries to make one more stab at normalcy and get away from the craziness of her life so far. What makes this volume work as well as it does is that her experiences here really make you hope that it sticks this time. The romance she strikes up with Eli feels credible as they’re both damaged, lost souls who see a good deal of each other in themselves. At the same time, you know that it’s never going to work because Eli’s basically a normal kid with a bright future ahead of him and Virginia couldn’t stay out of trouble even if she tried. You really feel for these kids and their trials even though it’s obvious how this is going to end. That’s a sign of good writing.
Another sign is how memorable Lapham manages to make the rest of the cast. Whether they’re scumbags like Eli’s strip-club-frequenting dad, lost causes like Aunt Jane’s husband, or wannabe rebels like Finger’s daughter Bev, they’ve all got their own little arcs to make sure you remember them. Even the two killers who show up in in the final issue stand out if only for the fact that one of them’s a toupee-wearing perv and the other has been a victim of Finger’s handiwork. A very colorful cast populates this volume and only adds to its unique appeal.
While the characters and story have that distinctive “Stray Bullets” feel to them, there are also other effective stylistic touches that are effectively reprised here. The traditional eight-panel grid approach for each page is kept, and its use is so unobtrusive that you probably wouldn’t have noticed it if I hadn’t mentioned it here. You’ve also got the self-contained, yet part of an ongoing story approach for each of the eight issues here. While that was probably more of a necessity due to the irregular serialization of the original series, it works here because it allows Lapham to play around with the progression of time without losing the reader. The opening issue is basically a flashback to introduce Eli and give us some more time with the much missed Spanish Scott. Then, after setting up Virginia’s life with Aunt Jane, things jump back a bit to show us the adventures in babysitting the girl had with Finger’s family which winds up paying off later. Another “Amy Racecar” story is also sandwiched in, and it wound up being less annoying than her previous adventures since it’s a darkly entertaining allegory for the story as a whole.
Getting the vibe of this series just right was also something that Lapham struggled with early on. He lets us know about this in the behind-the-scenes section at the end of the volume. The writer/artist is quite candid about the struggles he and his wife/editor Maria Lapham went through to make this series work. I doubt many other creators would say that they had to work to unlearn all of the bad habits they picked up in doing other projects for major publishers. That’s just one of the tidbits of info Lapham has to offer in this section, which is an illuminating look at the creation of this series and the man’s creative process.
Are there any issues here? Well, you probably could start reading this volume without prior knowledge of the previous ones, but you’d be missing out on a ton of the context for the returning characters. This isn’t a story for the faint of heart, or anyone looking for a nice life-affirming read either. That last bit was probably obvious, yet still worth mentioning. Then there’s the ending which some would call abrupt. It wasn’t a problem for me since it also winds up being a watershed moment for Virginia and likely to define her future as well.
I’m basically nitpicking here in an attempt to maintain objectivity. “Killers” is a fantastic return-to-form for Lapham after years of mixed results in doing projects for the likes of Marvel and DC. Getting back into the “Stray Bullets” mindset may have been difficult for him, but the results were very much worth it. Particularly since it lets us know that we can expect great things from the next volume, “Sunshine and Roses.” Yeah, most of the time a creator stumbles and shows us that they have nothing left to say when they try to go home again. Lapham uses the opportunity here to show us that he still has it after all these years and the results are very much worthy of this great series.