1. This is the most emotionally affecting comic book I’ve ever read. It relies upon tragedy throughout, rather than the Shakespearean strategy of setting up a happy situation and then tearing it apart piece by piece. It also does some things with comic tropes that really work well. These notes result from my second read-through of the whole thing.
2. The single most amazing thing this book does here is in showing the evils and virtues of all sides of this complex, desperate situation. Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, in the Badlands of South Dakota, is a place with 80% unemployment, rampant substance abuse problems, per capita income of less than $6,500 a year, diabetes and infant mortality higher than the national average, police and government corruption, organized crime, the horrible ecological effects of uranium mining, and a life expectancy of 50. Jason Aaron’s fictionalized Pine Rose reservation reflects these numbers and discusses these issues, but throughout the sixty issue arc, he shows a bunch of sides of this extremely complex issue, and delves into the history of the Pine Ridge Shootout, the Wounded Knee Incident, the Wounded Knee Massacre, scalping bounty hunters, Custer, the battle for Whiteclay, the American Indian Movement, et cetera. There are a lot of parts to this story and they are all fictionalized to varying depths to fit the narrative arc. What results is an extremely multifaceted approach to this complex issue, and Aaron shows the evils and virtues of each side that he portrays: tribal council, meth labs, liquor sellers, air force, tribal police, tribal activists, young people trying to survive, old people trying to get by, crime gangs, adjacent county police, the FBI, casino workers, doctors, et cetera. What astounds me is how he successfully shows so many angles that he never dismisses anybody outright, except maybe Rath and Nitz. But even they are humanized to some extent and allowed to be characters that are somewhat sympathetic. This is a masterful job of research, even-handedness, and writing. There are no perfect characters, none either wholly evil or wholly good. And it’s so stinking engaging and fascinating.
3. But I want to talk about sensationalism again. On one hand, you pick up almost any single issue and the comic will seem sensational: sex, drugs, and murder fill the pages of this long book. But if you read five or ten issues, you also start to notice the virtues and good intentions of these characters. The sensationalism is at times off-hand, but even that serves to establish a character like Brass or Red Crow. Aaron never loses sight of why he is writing the killing of a thirteen year old boy by the man who strangled his prostitute mother to death during sex in the next room, or the tribal cop who watches his wife bleed out before arresting the drunk driver who killed her, or the air force pilot who crashes in a snowstorm and demolishes the house of a dying old couple. So it is filled with things that are typically sensationalized—boobs, heroin, gunfights, robbery—but they’re used in order to set up the plot and story and characters. And not in the typical way, where a writer usually uses a gun to escape a corner he's written himself into. I can’t quite say the book is sensational, but I also have a hard time recommending this book to people because it is bloody, there is a lot of nudity, and it discusses tragic situations and circumstances that are clearly uncomfortable for a lot of people.
4. The writing is good. I could’ve written down a hundred quotes from this, but I was too busy reading. He does a great job of writing in a way that seems honest to how people talk, while still creating characters. Too often in comic books, the drawing is not worthy of being relied upon to communicate the action, but RM Guera has keyed each character to a set of accessories that really shows who is who at all times. Tattoos, necklaces, distinctive facial structures, and dialogue all align to communicate characters and what they’re struggling with inside without delving too often into interior monologue. Though when Aaron does use interior monologue, it never conflicts with the actions of the characters.
5. The theme here is coming to terms with mistakes. Everybody makes mistakes, even from their own points of view, and it’s how they respond that defines them. This theme is played out through endless examples, and influences the overarching investigation of life on this fictional reservation. When I was done the first time, and I did some research on the Pine Ridge reservation, I was blown away by this story and deeply saddened. It’s a poignant part of a greater mistake the US government and people made regarding Native Americans. And the characters within this book play this whole thing out fully. It’s a clear case of theme and plot matching perfectly, told like a detective story. It ends on yet another tragic note, but a slightly more optimistic one. In some areas, things are looking up by the end. But not up towards utopia, up towards better. And it’s not saying much to say better than what came before.
6. The plot is paced very well. There are two main time periods being shown: the 1970s with the scalping of the two FBI agents, and now, trying to live with the repercussions of that incident. The earlier time is handled largely in flashbacks. But once the present story really gains momentum, Aaron is able to do a bunch of comics in the middle that deal with specific characters and their stories within the larger context, leaving the main plot almost aside for a time. Then, once the characters all get their moment in the spotlight, he gets back to the main arc and finishes the tale This is an interesting structural move for me. It's like he gets sixty percent of the plot done in the first twenty-five books, then progresses the plot ten percent over the next twenty-five books, then finishes the last thirty percent of the plot in the last ten. It's a good plot structure for this story because it allows him to explore the tangents necessary when looking at an issue as complex as this one.
—This structure is supported by Aaron's reluctance to adhere to the ridiculous last-page-reveal/cliff-hanger structure of almost every comic book—"Tune in next issue for the thrilling conclusion of—". I understand that's how the big two sell comics, but because Aaron has so many of these little one-off pieces that explore a single character or two, the last page is tying up a thread or plot more often than not. It may hint at something more to come, like at the end of issue forty-seven when Aaron lets slip that the character or characters passing each other on the road at night will engage in "All the killin'. Well... That'll all come later." That's not a literal cliffhanger, they're just walking down the road. There's no bullet stuck in midair, no knife swinging through the night sky, and by this point in the series I had better already know that there's a bunch of killing still to come. The way Aaron treats the last page supports the overarching plot of the series as a whole and I hope it's the way forward for comics because the last page reveal is played out.
—The flashbacks are generally short and tend to build on each other—for instance, it’s quite a while before we learn who killed those FBI agents, but flashbacks keep showing small aspects of that event, showing more and more every time it repeats. I'm really enjoying this type of repetition right now, and it works brilliantly here.
—The one thread that is a little discongruous is the Hmong thread. Though it ties into the crime and racial aspects of the tale, it distracts the focus somewhat from the Reservation and I’m not sure what all it is intended to add.
7. In short, this is one of the best comic books I’ve ever read. It’s a difficult book in terms of context, content, and emotions. I end up numb and utterly gutted. It’s a book I will return to again and again. But I also have a hard time recommending it to just anybody.
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