Out of Alcatraz has been a punishing book of constant escalations, damning murders, and an ever-present presence of imprisonment.
It’s been great.
It’s felt, however, as if there was no possible way to wrap things up in five issues – each of the first four issues layered on more and more hurdles the story would have to clear in order to provide anything that felt like a meaningful, powerful resolution. Each twist seemed to cry out for another issue to untie its knotty implications.
Oni Press
What I didn’t take into account that this is a grindhouse type of story – a comic that, like its cinematic forebears of the late 1960s and early 1970s, did not promise a clean and tidy conclusion. For its entire five-issue run, the book spoke of doom and dread, of the cruelty of life in the prison system, in American mores, in sexuality, and race. There are no clean resolutions in a life like the ones being lived, here. Our entire cast, from our thus-far unnamed fugitive wrangling black woman, whose entire sin was attempting to “pass” as white for a mortgage agreement, to our prison escapees, to the gay lawmen trapped firmly in the closet, have lived imprisoned. And no matter how far one escapes from prison, the threat of returning there is too great.
Issue #5 of the series does not swing open any doors for our protagonists; it slams them firmly and finally shut. Even the promise of escape is shown to lead to dead ends. One cannot outrun one’s troubles; one cannot outrun oneself.
Christopher Cantwell and Tyler Crook have delivered a powerful, grueling feature that can stand alongside era-appropriate stories like Vanishing Point and Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry (minus the car stunts) – hyper-stylized, fever-pitched fugitive films spinning their way to impactful, brutal endings. Cantwell’s script winds all that violence and dread tighter and tighter until the reader is happy for whatever tragic release is given.
The true star – as is often the case when Tyler Crook is involved – is the painfully beautiful artwork. Hyper-expressive faces tell voluminous stories while broad vistas express a mournful landscape. The lushly painted panels become a sort of elevated cartooning – when the draftsmanship is as fine as this it seems almost overkill to then layer on masterful brushwork. It’s a visual spectacle.
This final issue of Out of Alcatraz will leave a lasting impact on the reader. All that tension being released – however bleakly – feels like a sort of sad endorphin rush. It’s masterful.
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