Is It Good? Southern Bastards #5 Review

Southern Bastards #5. Gridiron part 1. Reckon it’s about to get mighty dark. Is it good?

Southern Bastards #5 (Image Comics)

I’m always pleasantly surprised when things don’t travel down the projected road I assume they will, and Southern Bastards #5 don’t.

Jason Aaron decided to switch the perspective on us, and start up the new arc from Coach Boss’ viewpoint. We get to see the Coach, who runs most everything in the town of Craw County, Alabama. Suddenly we don’t just get to see the villain’s point of view for a brief moment, but are stuck in it. This is a bold move, especially after Boss killed our hero, Earl Tubb at the end of the first arc. It appears that now we are indeed messin’ with a… son of a bitch.

And holy sheeeit, does Aaron not shy away from gettin’ nasty. It’s southern gothic chili with a damn handful of ghost peppers, ready to burn your throat on the way in, and hurt even more on the way out. Oh, and another great thing is we get to see a few panels of some of the townsfolk we’ve previously not been privy too. All in all, it’s a vicious, surprising issue. I figured he’d go straight to the revengifying.

Jason Latour keeps it rough and tumble with the art, full of hard glares and hard tackles. In the flashbacks, er’ything done been tintified red, which suits me just fine. It works with the picturey magic. It’s a wondery beauty to beholdify.

Is It Good?

Right on J squared, y’all done subvertified my expectations. Southern Bastards #5 is mean. It forces you to look into the motivations of a man who just four issues before, we were led to despise. But it makes you wonder, is Couch Boss the problem? Or is the town which allows him to reign over them the real issue at hand? The art is great as ever, very red as a lot of the issue is in flashback. Only hang up is the action slows down. You get a few bits of intensity in the flashback, but otherwise Bastards is back to its character study roots. I ain’t got no problem with that, but mayhap some of y’all might not like the shift in pacin’. Either way, this Southern Bastard is intense.