Get “Scalped,” get intense

I wouldn’t want to grow up on an Indian reservation.


Now, I don’t have any personal experience with this. I’m certainly not
traveled enough for that, but experience in the newspaper business has
given me enough accounts of the Third World-nature of reservations to know that they aren’t exactly a great place to live.

Sure, there’s been a few movies about life on the reservation — Val Kilmer’s “Thunderheart” comes to mind — but most have had an artificial feel to them.

The new comic series, “Scalped,” written by Jason Aaron, offers that bleak world in full force and — most importantly — without the “Feed the Children” mentality.

Who’s Jason Aaron? He’s the guy writing another comic book called “The Other Side.” That comic, offering a dual point-of-view look at the Vietnam War, is jolting, intense and surprisingly revealing.

“Scalped” offers much the same, following the journey of Dashiell Bad Horse, a runaway returning to “the rez” after 15 years. He has a run-in with slimy businessman and tribal leader Lincoln Red Crow as Red Crow struggles to get the tribe’s casino off the ground.

Rather than running him off the reservation, Red Crow hires Bad Horse,
an outsider with the look of a death-metal rocker, to  lead the
tribe’s law enforcement wing. Door-busting commando raids with
questionable motives ensue. Family tensions brew. Old flames return.
Federal agents show up.

And that’s all in the first issue. I must say, I can’t wait for No. 2.