Southern Bastards

Volume 1 Here Was a Man
Volume 2 Gridiron
(next 2 volumes next week)

Written by Jason Aaron
Artwork by Jason Latour
Lettering by Jared K. Fletcher
Buy them HERE.

Fall is here!

Football's coming up quick in the windshield.

There's always a buzz in the air and expectation of your team winning it all!

In the case of Southern Bastards, it's all they have, in this bilge water back roads area known as Craw County, home to The Running Rebs. Coach Euless Boss runs his team harder than any known high school in the south, and he's got the support of every low-life hoodlum to enforce his will.

The ticking clock.

There's a very clever device used early on with the few remaining games on The Running Rebs season, and how Coach Boss needs those wins to keep the State Championship streak alive. Being there's nothing much to live for around there, the looming fate of the team enters in every so often to bear weight on anyone connected to it.

A swirl of angriness and ignorance twines its way through the people in this story. This is the depressed South, stripped of wealth, scrabbling after what little commerce runs its way through Craw County. Amidst this dirtiness and low stature is the hope of winning State Championship (which they've done 5 years straight). The Running Rebs High School football squad is the closest thing Craw County comes to validation for the state of Alabama, with Coach Boss as their appointed high priest to Bear Bryant's uncontested Sainthood.

There's a series of twisted back stories here, but not to the point of confusion. Earl Tubb, first shown as an old man, left at the onset of Viet Nam, joining the Marines. His father was a Sheriff who got killed in the line of duty.

Visual clues.

Part Two delves deeper in Coach Euless Boss' humble beginnings with a very crude violent moonshine dealing father. Euless tries to make the team and is too scrawny and weak. But with the help of a blind black Defense coach named Big he gets trained the right way and begins to get tougher and meaner. Eventually he becomes coach, after not quite staying on the team as a player.

Cracking this book open, the first page you see is a dog taking a shit. With sound effect of the fece dropping. Most of the people in Southern Bastards are drawn hard and mean, but it fits the tone of the story so well that art and writing look seamless. Hats off to Jason Latour!

Next Tuesday:

The remaining two volumes of Southern Bastards on my shelf:

Homecoming

and

Gut Check

again, by Jason Aaron and Jason Latour.

10454 Lomita Ave #B, Felton
United States

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