Regardless of the setting and characters, this series is absolutely some of the best crime noir I've read. It's dark. It's bleak. It's hopeless.

And it's mesmerizing. ( )

Bad Horse believes Red Crow killed his mother, intervenes in life of another victim's son, unsuccessfully, Red Crow determined to find Gina's killer

Excruciatingly poignant, with some of the best wordless panels I've ever seen. ( )

Dash's mother's spirit takes him through Lakota history in order to get him to face his Indian heritage; when faced with her, demise Red Crow is forced to take inventory of his history with and feelings for Gina; Dash has a group of orphans temporary land in his care at the same time as he gets news of his own mother's death and is forced to betray the children because of other people's decisions, Mr. Brass comes to town with his bag of horrors, and Officer Falls Down starts investigating Gina's murder. 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. ( )

http://geekylibrarian.wordpress.com/2008/11/01/review-scalped-vol3-dead-mothers/ ( )