SCALPED is too much

It Came From the NYPL:  Scalped vol. 1: Indian CountryUnfortunately, the story’s just not clicking for me. Bad Horse is just too much--too much posturing, too much cocksure smartassness, too damn superheroic for a down-on-his-luck loser. At one point, he get ambushed by a half dozen gunmen--he walks through an open door into a barn, everybody is training a gun on that doorway and is sheltered from his direct line of sight--and he still manages to kill or maim every one of them. It’s so over the top, completely ludicrous and out of place with the hype I’d heard about how gritty and realized the series is. Again, perhaps it’s my expectation just being too jarringly off from what Aaron’s delivering here.

Then again, the character arcs aren’t doing much to overcome the over-cooked hard-boiled absurdity of it all. The characters’ language is like Raymond Chandler dialogue on anabolic steroids. You can guess six pages into the story that Bad Horse’s mom has a secret history with his nemesis Red Crow, just as you can count pages until Bad Horse and Red Crow’s daughter get down in violent fashion. It could be cool and shocking, but it’s all just laying there on the page, predictable, obvious.Comment:  I'm glad someone else hasn't fallen for the SCALPED hype.

I didn't address much beyond the Indian issues in SCALPED, but this review complements mine. Writer Aaron does what he does well, but it's still "over-cooked hard-boiled absurdity."