Sons of Anarchy (review part 1 of 2)

Sons of Anarchy (Book 1)
By Christopher Golden and Damain Couceiro.
Takes place Season 5 and on of the TV series.
Graphic Novel, 144 pages.
Published by BOOM! Studios

(Buy it here)

Part two Tuesday next week.

It starts out with a sad cemetery scene at night. 'Tig' is mourning his daughter's death. It ends with Tig rescuing another young lady.

Bodies disappear in dumpsters. Cars crash. Lots and lots of gunfire. Early on I understand that Clay (Ron Perlman's character), the former head of 'Samco' has surrendered his leadership to Jackson (Jax) Teller, who now calls the shots. In its six chapters Jax doesn't do a lot of 'shot calling' but I guess that's a set up for later stories. Okay.

I'm first taken aback by how clean the whole comic is. The head bad guy, the Sons of Anarchy biker gang, their Asian gun buyer customers-- all of these people speak and act as orderly as corporate cubicle dwellers. Everybody stands straight and has clean well-tailored clothes like department store mannequins. Even the blood is clean. When somebody has a fight, it ends in a mutually-agreed upon truce right on the spot. Everybody explains their actions, "If you're gonna, then I'm..."

The good parts of this comic are when the action picks up and we see the crazed fury in their (Tig's) eyes.

But it doesn't seem like there's any reason for them to be in a biker gang. What little I've read about 'outlaw' motorcycle clubs is that they exist solely for the purpose of certain individuals to escape the oppressive day-to-day hassles of the civilian world, and be able to head out on weekend (or longer) excursions to raise hell on a moment's notice. The one or two 'expose' type novels took a different approach, wherein an undercover cop would infiltrate a biker gang to uncover a (supposed) vast network of organized, illicit activity. Of course, the same police who shame these outlaw people make a bundle telling their story, and so it goes...

(Here's a question I have with a lot of comic books drawn since 1988... what's with the mohawks? Are they fun to draw? Since the '80s I think I've seen maybe 2% of all people I've run into sporting one. Yet in comics every time there's a 'tough' gang you see one of them wearing one.)

Part two next week. Thanks for reading!

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