ESSENTIAL // 2.20.03

BADLANDS
by Wil Moss

BADLANDS
Steven Grant/Vince Giarrano
Published by AiT/Planet Lar
US $12.95
ISBN: 0970936087
STAR01284

Sex and violence. That's what this book is about. Dirty sex and dirty violence. Dirty America, basically. Badlands indeed. And damn if that doesn't make for a gripping story.

This is the tragic, tragic tale of a Southern fuck-up. You feel that sense of Southern tragedy prevailing, the sense that you get from a Flannery O'Connor short story; that the Civil War may be over and lost, but the South can still a place of horrible atrocities.

Taking place in 1963, BADLANDS is about Conrad "Connie" Breman the fuck-up, a no-luck loser who gets out of prison only to find himself pulled deeper into the world of sin that put him in prison in the first place. His "buddy" from inside, Janetty, has a nice gig all lined up for him and all Breman has to do is do what he does best-fuck up. When things become increasingly apparent that what he's supposed to do involves President Kennedy on a bright November morning in Dallas, Breman must decide what he's going to do-finally make a stand, or stay the course and fuck it all up.

BADLANDS is a tale of horror. One of lust, greed, deception and the downright lowest humans can go. But that's what makes it so interesting to read-you know what's going to happen, but you have to know how it gets there. And not because you want to know who shot Kennedy, but because you want to know how this fuck-up who's going to do it brings himself to get duped into pulling the trigger when he knows damn well he shouldn't.

The brilliant thing about BADLANDS is that it's not about the Kennedy assassination at all. It's about how low you can go. How twisted people can get, how they can be abused and used, even become aware of what they're being used for, but lack the basic decency to put a stop to it.

That's easy for Breman, though, because Breman isn't a man. At first, he looks like he could be actually be a good guy, a hero of some story set some place far, far away from this one. He wears a suit sometimes, a leather jacket and sunglasses other times-clean cut and normal looking basically. But that just disguises what he is deep down. He looks like a straight-up guy. But no. He's curling under a staircase crying. He's getting punched in the gut. Hit by a car. Arrested. Beaten up. He's a grade-A loser with patsy written all over him.

In Janetty, the worst in this country is personified. Check that grin on his face at the beginning of the story when he's murdering an old woman. Giarrano sure knows what a creepy motherfucker looks like alright. Janetty is the drive that keeps this story going, that keeps the bloodstains of this nation from slowing anything down.

The ending is wonderfully violent and sick for such a tale as BADLANDS. It's vicious and unrelenting, but in a way that moves so fast it's like it's over before it starts. Breman may finally have an out, but based on the life he's lead so far, he'll no doubt just fuck it up all over again.

And sure this is all an elaborate fantasy/conspiracy, but Grant and Giarrano make it believable. They make it real. Breman could still be out there, being used by no one in particular, just whomever in this country that needs bad things to happen. Grant has said that a sequel is in the works, but I have no idea how he could top this dark tale of taking the easy way out.

Steven Grant's characters are so vile and putrid that you're just fascinated by them. The way the story is told, all from the eyes and ears of what Breman is privy to, works well, with Grant providing little hints and clues along the way as to what the bigger picture is, eventually letting the reader in on more than Breman will ever know despite key details being right under his damn nose.

Vince Giarrano is a name I'm unfamiliar with, but comics is certainly lacking for not seeing his work more frequently. Here, he captures the look of everyday things like cars and building that are so crucial to establishing that this is a story set in the America right down the street, the real one. His characters are a little stiff, but his linework is reminiscent of a cross between Alan Davis and David Lapham.

The collaboration between the two worked out beautifully. Giarrano's deceptively innocent and simple pencils compliment the dark and disturbing aspects of Grant's script. And Grant's script plays to the strengths of Giarrano, setting the book in many different locales, with many different types of characters, giving Giarrano a chance to show off what he can do.

This book is reason enough for AiT/PlanetLar to exist if they didn't have such a respectable library already. They brought BADLANDS back into print after it laid in obscurity for years, and the comic community is all the better for it. Plenty of stories out there are uplifting and end happily. This type of book needs to be out there to balance all that goodwill out, to provide a more well-rounded industry in general.

AiT also published the movie script that Grant wrote in a separate volume that complements this collection nicely. It'll be a dark day if a movie version of BADLANDS ever gets made, but handled right, it'd be a hell of a day.

In the end, the most disturbing part of this dark tale is the revelation that this story is about America. Not one that once existed, but the one that always will. Because success is only possible through the failure of others. And there will always be failures like Breman, and there will always, always be the wrong type of people ready to take the success. We are the Badlands and the Badlands are us.

BADLANDS is available from your local retailer with STAR code STAR01284 or the ISBN code 0970936087. If your retailer won't use this handy dandy code to order you this fine fine book, we strongly suggest you find a better retailer who will.