Spoilers!
A place ripe for grimy, unflinching storytelling is the Native American reservations throughout the United States, owing to the federal government-induced poverty and addiction rates disproportionately deleterious to that demographic. Jason Aaron’s 2007 graphic novel with Vertigo Comics, Scalped: Indian Country (this volume also contains the next issues, Hoka Hey), is as grimy a comic as I’ve ever read. R. M. Guéra provides the raw, in-your-face artwork to reflect Aaron’s acerbic writing.
The story follows Dashielle “Dash” Bad Horse, who left the fictional Prairie Rose Indian Reservation at 13 looking for a better life only to find himself right back in the thick of the crime and family drama preserved as if it was still 1975 after 15 years away. In 1975, Dash’s mother, Gina, and other protesters, were protesting the federal government’s treatment of Native Americans when two FBI agents who came on to the reservation were gunned down by a rogue protester, Red Crow. Red Crow let a younger protester, Lawrence, take the fall for the murders. Ever since then, FBI Agent Nitz has been hellbent on bringing down Red Crow. Those intervening years were a boon to Red Crow, though: he’s essentially the king of the reservation, being the sheriff and the benefactor behind a new nearly $100 million casino. Red Crow wants the opening of the casino to go well. His daughter, Carol despises him and sleeps around. She was once Dash’s love interest before he left the reservation.
When he left the reservation, among other things, Dash trained in fighting and fought in Kosovo in 1999. Upon coming back to the reservation, Dash joins Red Crows “Dog Soldiers,” i.e., a police officer tasked with taking down meth houses and such. Ostensibly, Red Crows wants the reservation “cleaned up” in time for the casino’s opening. Then, in a shocking twist at the end of the first chapter, we learn Dash is Agent Nitz’s undercover agent. That is, Dash is a federal agent. He joined the Bureau after the military and from the get-go, Agent Nitz was steering him back toward the reservation, Gina, and the “terrorist organization” there. Dash wants nothing to do with it. He wants out of the assignment before he’s killed. However, he’s not the one that’ll be killed. A shocking conclusion to this first volume is that after Dash and Carol hook up, she’s murdered in the desert. As for Agent Nitz, he sees Dash as his sociopath.
This was a fantastic first outing for Aaron and Guéra. I particularly loved the artwork for Dash because he somehow embodies the juxtaposition where he is of the reservation, but he’s like an alien life force among the people now. He’s depicted rather hideously, like a walking corpse who can fight and outshoot anyone. One of the more fun action set pieces is when he and an actual good cop, Falls Down, infiltrate a meth house and engage in a gun battle with Lister and his fellow burned baddies. It turned out to be a set-up from Red Crow either to kill Falls Down and/or to kill Dash and/or to test Dash. Who can say?
I also enjoyed the unmoored from niceties of Aaron’s dialogue. Everyone talks dirty and violently. This is a crime world in a world purposefully left behind. It reads authentic to me, at least. I don’t think Scalped is going to be for everyone. It’s not a superhero comic. Dash is hardly a white meat babyface hero either. He’s the quintessential antihero willing to walk in to a town council meeting and put a gun on the back of Red Crow’s head after the aforementioned Lister ambush. (In a chilling moment, Red Crow has Lister killed for failing, and tells his boys to “mind the carpet.”) But you root for Dash, nonetheless, because you know there’s unpacked trauma and baggage in his history, seeing what he saw growing up, and his conflicting emotions around his heritage and his attempt to untether himself from it. Plus, Red Crow is worse.
After this first outing, I’m looking forward to continuing the series.
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