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	Scalped Vol. 2: Casino Boogie Jason Aaron Vertigo, 2008 - 144 pages average customer review:based on 2 reviews view larger image
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This volume explores Dash Bad Horse's troubled origin and chronicles his day-to-day life on "The Rez" working for Chief Red Crow.

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Perfection would be an understaement.

No doubt about it. Jason Aaron is the one to watch.

I read Scalped Volume 1 and liked it. I didn't love it, but I liked it enough to purchase Volume 2. I am so glad I did because this is "Grade A" writing and beautifully "gritty" illustrations that help tell this perfect story.

Jason Aaron holds nothing back while giving us new perspectives on the characters he introduced us to in Volume 1. Written in the same fashion as "Reservoir Dogs" and "Pulp Fiction", the reader is lead through the story from all viewpoints and through a time line line that bounces around, but is in no way hard to follow.

This is the perfect comic book.

SC

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"...My dreams might again outnumber my regrets."

Casino Boogie collects Scalped issues #6-11 and serves as the volume two trade paperback. The much talked about casino opening from volume one (Indian Country) is the larger focus of this volume as each story part takes place on opening night of the Crazy Horse Casino on The Prairie Rose Reservation. Jason Aaron handles the scripts with a deft hand as he uses this event as the backdrop for supplying the reader with back-story for a number of characters including Dash, Lincoln Red Crow, Diesel, Catcher, Gina Bad Horse, Lawrence Belcourt and Dino Poor Bear.

Originally six issues, the story is divided into six parts. Aaron devotes many of the chapter's opening pages to flashback sequences which setup the focus of each part on a particular character. The reader is treated to scenes from Dash, Red Crow, and Diesel's childhood, for instance, before being brought back into present time to see where each character is on opening night. Red Crow's grim and murderous determination is really the center piece in my opinion, as his actions have a grand, sweeping effect on all the other characters to say nothing of the fact that it's HIS casino that's opening. That isn't to say that each of these other characters are necessarily caught blind in his wake though. Each chapter is written from the perspective of the focus character so the reader is granted a better understanding of their personal dilemmas and motivations. More is revealed on the murders of the two FBI agents from some twenty years back; Scalped's watershed moment and impetus to many of the book's current events. Read in their original, single issue format, each of the chapters succeed as stand alone stories.

The larger tapestry of the ongoing story is fleshed out as well with a few new wrinkles added to complicate matters for the residents of The Prairie Rose Reservation. Is Dash the only undercover FBI agent operating on The Rez? What is Red Crow's involvement with Hmong ganglords hailing from St. Paul, Minnesota and who is this "Mr. Brass" they've sent out to "help" him with his local troubles? What does Catcher's vision mean and what can we possibly expect from such bizarre individual as he? In the young Dino Poor Bear, do we dare admit to the similiarities between his and a young Dash's yearnings? All these personal stories are interwoven skillfully and the variety of characters and settings within really give R.M. Guéra an opportunity to shine as an artist and really define the look of the world he and Jason Aaron are masterfully depicting. The conclusion of this volume is nothing less than a visual, emotional gut punch it's so cold-blooded and callous; leaving so many character issues fatally unresolved while at the same time, serving as the lightning rod to drive the story foward to the dark days ahead.

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