One of the things I wanted to do with my first CBR was delve into genres and series that are completely new to me. I went to my local comic shop and stocked up on titles that looked interesting or that I had heard of but had yet to try. That’s how I came to read the excellent All You Need Is Kill, my first manga ( There is no such thing as a battlefield where no one dies ). Next on the stack is Stray Bullets Volume One: Innocence of Nihilism. Holy cow, I had no idea what I was in for.
There are several loosely connected stories, going back and forth in time from 1977 to 1997 and mostly set in Baltimore. The first one, “The Look of Love” was so batshit crazy violent, I had to put the book down for a bit. It was like some Taratino movie where one act of violence, in an already violent setting, is the tipping point that pushes a character over the very edge of reason. I just wasn’t ready for it.
But I was intrigued. Lapham’s black and white artwork is urgent and vivid, sometimes even a little fantastical, as in the story “How I spent my summer vacation”. The stories are n
ot shiny happy ones. Bad things happen to good people and the bad guys get away with murder (and more). What held my interest, what kept me turning the pages were the characters. Little Virginia Applejack, is forever changed when she witnesses a double murder. She tells her older sister, who admonishes “the best thing is to just forget about it and never ever tell anyone”. In this and subsequent chapters, the course that Ginny’s life takes had to most impact for me.
I will definitely be checking out the rest of this series.
