David Lapham’s long-running crime comic gets another monthly installment. Read on to see whether the series still has a reason to exist, and note that there may be some mild spoilers.
Written, Illustrated, and Lettered by David LaphamAn unholy (and objectively quite icky) union leads to a massacre in a small town.
Upon first finishing this issue of “Stray Bullets: Sunshine & Roses,” I stopped and thought: Did I make a mistake? The previous issues of the series that I had read, including the entire “Killers” arc, were all stand-alone stories that could connect into a larger narrative. For that reason, I thought picking a random issue to review would be okay, despite not having kept up with the current “Sunshine and Roses” series.
After finishing, I went back and read some previous issues and researched others. Yes, the series still mostly works the same way I thought it did. Yes, this issue was designed to be read as a stand-alone, as it takes place a few years before the main “Sunshine and Roses” story. Yes, I already knew any information about these characters’ pasts that I needed to. So after hours of double-checking, of covering my tracks in the interest of providing a fair review, I finally feel comfortable saying:
It’s not me, “Stray Bullets.” It’s you.
So how did things get this way?
This issue focuses on the background of Kretchmeyer, who has become a big player in other issues, and some of his history with three other major characters: Beth, Nina, and Scott. Lapham’s character work and dialogue work well enough for me. There’s some nice subtlety in the brutal dissolution of Kretchmeyer’s home life, where we never quite find out why his parents hate him. Instead, the intensity of the scene comes across exclusively through the dialogue’s intensity and the brutality of the characters’ actions towards one another. We’re always given enough information to understand a scene, and enough of each character’s personality shines through the dialogue to help us understand who they are, whether this is our first time with them or not.
The big problem comes with the pacing. I get the feeling that Lapham wasn’t completely sure how to plot out this issue. The flashbacks to Kretchmeyer’s past are interspersed between the further scenes of him trying to set Beth and Scott up together. The hook of the flashbacks, whether or not he will shoot a gun, is resolved fairly quickly, leading the rest of those scenes to feel excessive. The present-day scenes have a bit of tension in Beth and Scott’s will-they-won’t-they, but beyond (and even including) that, the scenes fall flat. Prior issues have been masters of suspense, of slow escalation, of setting up dominoes and letting everything fall down by the end. There wasn’t much of that here, so we end up with a bunch of savage moments strung together with little resonance.
An aspect of “Stray Bullets” that I think hasn’t changed, and a big boon to the enjoyment that I did get out of the issue, is Lapham’s singular vision. As writer, artist, and letterer, he is able to maintain a clear visual style which works in perfect concert with his gritty scenarios and morally black characters. The book’s choice to remain black and white reflects this dark, cruel world, and his reliance on the eight-panel grid sets up a certain rhythm. Because that means there are so many panels on each page, each panel is also smaller, meaning not as much detail can go in them and each panel’s purpose has to be small and clear. With that, he largely succeeds.
Lapham’s hand-lettering adds to the independent, made-by-one-person vibe, and I did appreciate that. There is the occasional imperfection: an ‘O’ that doesn’t completely connect at the top, the word ‘FUCK’ reading at first like ‘FLICK,’ a letter that was messily scratched over instead of being whited-out and replaced. But these are ultimately nitpicks in an otherwise great lettering job where different styles can be used depending on character mental states or volume levels, and where sound effects embed themselves into the images.
While this all does provide some nice consistency with the rest of the series, it also means Lapham doesn’t experiment much with his visual style; he simply goes with what he knows can work. With nothing of particular note from issue to issue, that leaves only the story to make each issue stand out, and this one was underwhelming. If the creative vision came from multiple creators, one of them might have helped salvage the other. Here, though, having one creator meant that everything simultaneously fit together and failed together.
Maybe, even after all of this analysis, it really was just me and my personal tastes reacting the wrong way here. Maybe reading this issue after having fully read every issue up to this point would have changed my opinion. Maybe this issue was a rare flub in an otherwise fine series. And maybe it’s just time for Lapham to move on to something else.
Final Verdict: 5.5 – I want to keep liking you, Stray Bullets. Looks like this issue wasn’t the one to convince me.