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Southern Bastards #8

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    Ian Jane
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  • Southern Bastards #8



    Southern Bastards #8
    Released by: Image Comics
    Released on: April 1st, 2015
    Writer: Jason Aaron
    Artist: Jason Latour
    Purchase From Amazon

    Read our review of the last issue here! The ongoing story of the early years of Euless Boss continues in this eighth issue of Image Comics' Southern Bastards, courtesy of writer Jason Aaron and illustrator Jason Latour.

    Euless, no longer a skinny teenager, walks out into the woods to find his father, who has been living out there, only for the old man to pull a gun on him. Euless wants his help and tells him as much, but not surprisingly he's not having any of it, at least not at first. Euless catches him up on how Big made him into the best damn football player around, until it all ended. Euless wants it back, he doesn't want to work as a ball boy anymore, but his dad? He just clocks him upside the head with the butt of his shotgun. They fight, it's been a long time coming and they just let it all out, but once they work it out of their system, they get to talking.

    The old man would like to help, but after robbing three of Mozel's juke joints, he's got to stay in hiding, or so he says… and then BLAM! Euless does something so cold blooded your jaw will hit the floor. Damn! Euless returns to a certain someone, who addresses him for the first time as Coach Boss, and the next day on the field, that's exactly what he is and how everyone else in town addresses him. Big is no fool, he figures out pretty quickly what's happened and how, but Euless reassures him… “it's football, it's worth the blood.” From there we cut to the present day, and… we'll leave it at that.

    After a few issues that were, comparatively speaking, a little on the quiet side this latest chapter in the ongoing saga that is Southern Bastards kicks like a mule and bites like a crocodile. Yeah, fine, it's about football and not all of us give a good God damn about football, but it's only about football in that football happens in it. Really, this issue is about a man's ambitions, a man's attempts to pull himself up by the bootstraps and make a go out of what he wants in life. If he has to get his hands dirty, and good golly miss Molly do Euless' hands ever get dirty this issue, then so be it. While the shock value inherent in a few different scenes in this issue is worth its weight in gold, in the grand Southern Bastards tradition, this isn't just blood and guts but serious character development, tense and sweaty poor southern American atmosphere and gritty, hardboiled storytelling done right. Jason Aaron knocks this one out of the park (or kicks it over the goal posts, choose whichever analogy you prefer) and not only that, but he ties it into the first story arc beautifully. If you've been following this series at all there's no way, once you make it to those last few pages, that you won't be chomping at the bit to find out what happens next.

    Jason Latour's artwork is as fantastic here as it has been in issues past. It suits the earthy writing really nicely and still relies heavily on lots of reds to keep that sort of hot tone that we've seen from the first issue a big part of the visuals. Thick line work helps to create some stocky, tough looking characters, the kind that you'd expect to populate a world like this, and the way that the big surprise of the issue is illustrated and laid out couldn't be more perfect.
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