Davide FurnoCritiques

So, I'm just going to paste the following review to Volumes 5 through 8.

If there's anything good about this enforced COVID social abandonment experiment we're all in the middle of as I type this (almost into week five), it's the ability to binge read a series of graphic novels like one would normally binge a Netflix series.

And this feels like a Netflix series. This is the darkest parts of Breaking Bad or Better Call Saul, but set on a dying Native American reservation, where everyone is stretched to their limit, doing the most horrible things to just get through the day. There's a corrosive bleakness and despair that runs through every page, and even when Aaron and company let a little light in, it's only so he can slam the door shut and cast the reader into an even more depressing darkness.

These are probably the most real characters I've ever read in a graphic novel series. I'm invested in every one of them, and I'm desperate for someone to find some hope to cling to before this all wraps up, but I really doubt that's going to happen.

This is one of the best pieces of fiction—in any medium—I've ever experienced.

I think one of the more satisfying elements of this ongoing story is the surefootedness of Aaron's world-building. This isn't a story told in real-time, it bounces around through all of the characters' backstories, and how those equally terrible histories echo down through time to present day.

I can't get enough of this.

I love, love, love Francavilla, but his issue of this looked weird. Beautiful, but it didn't quite fit the overall series aesthetic. Huh.

This is devastating, depressing, why-the-hell-am-I-reading-this stuff. I'm already on volume 5.

A hustler who has a history with Dash comes to the casino and Dash's hand is forced, Diesel's history and dark soul is revealed in detail, Nitz visits with family and dead friends, and Gina's murderer and his motivation is unveiled. It's dark, it's gruesome, it's violent and cruel, it hits you in the stomach and, before you have caught your breath, comes back and punches you again. It's about humans, trying to survive in the harshest of worlds, desperately clinging to some ideal that they've half forgotten, partially due to an all-encompassing cynicism and partially due to their own growing coldness, but humans at the core, hurt again and again by their hope for something good that, seemingly inevitably, always turns to bad. It's a story that won't leave you alone for a long time after you've closed its pages. It's one of the best examples of noir I have ever encountered and I can only hope I encounter something as good again.½

Dash and Carol continue their destructive relationship, Dino gets a new job which leaves him homeless, Mr. Brass continues to wreak havoc on the Rez, Red Crow is charged with taking care of Gina's spirit and continues his trip down memory lane to face the many demons in his past, and is driven to take a possibly unwise stand against the Hmongs. It's dark, it's gruesome, it's violent and cruel, it hits you in the stomach and, before you have caught your breath, comes back and punches you again. It's about humans, trying to survive in the harshest of worlds, desperately clinging to some ideal that they've half forgotten, partially due to an all-encompassing cynicism and partially due to their own growing coldness, but humans at the core, hurt again and again by their hope for something good that, seemingly inevitably, always turns to bad. It's a story that won't leave you alone for a long time after you've closed its pages. It's one of the best examples of noir I have ever encountered and I can only hope I encounter something as good again.½

Don't like this one quite as much as the others in the series, still dark and gritty but felt like it was lacking in actual interesting character development or something. Can't put my finger on it. The ending promises some good changes. Some important info to the overall storyline comes out, but mostly feels like a break from the main story.