Southland, Where Everything Goes South
Writer:
Cary Phillips
Artist:
Elena Casagrande
Colors:
Giulia Brusco
Letters:
Todd Klein
Cover:
Mitch Gerads
Cover Price:
$3.99
On Sale Date: October 26, 2016
**NON SPOILERS AND SCORE AT THE
BOTTOM**
Authorities often take a hard-line stance against
vigilantes, but considering the popularity of superheroes, it seems like a lot
of the public would be okay with a couple of people taking the law into their
own hands to fight injustice. I mean, pretty much every superhero is a
vigilante, and those that aren’t usually work for some shadowy organization
that is secretly funded and answers to no government agency. Of course, you
can’t right tell a guy like Superman not
to fight crime, but it rarely even comes up in conversation. So I want everyone
reading this now to put on some kind of disguise and start patrolling the
neighborhood for miscreants. The power is in your hands, people! Just don’t use
my name if you get caught, I will disavow all responsibility. I have the
perfect alibi, anyway: I was reading Vigilante:
Southland #1 while any chicanery transpired. Don’t believe me, officer?
Well check out my recap and review as proof!
Explain
It!
Donny is living the lifestyle. He can dunk a
basketball, he’s got a medical marijuana card, and his superintendent’s job at
Del Pueblo University in Southland—that’s South Los Angeles, to the
uninitiated—is a piece of cake. His girlfriend Dorrie works there as a
professor, and pays most of the bills, leaving Donny plenty of time to play
video games and get baked. Yes, life is good, despite the occasional harassment
by the cops, but every black man goes through it once or twice in their lives,
right? Just be polite, don’t make any sudden moves, and things will work out
fine. Dorrie, though, she’s always going on about some kind of injustice this
and revolution that, it’s such a come down. Donny loves her though, and so his
world should be shattered when she is hit and killed by a black sedan while
riding her bicycle to the university. Donny takes it in stride, though. Must be
some good bud he’s smoking.
The funeral is a somber occasion, as would be
expected, but Donny spies a familiar cigar-smoking figure in silhouette
standing nearby in the cemetery. First, however, is the mourning period, and
Dorrie’s family is receiving visitors and well-wishers as per custom. At
this…what do non-Jewish people call this? In Judaism it’s “sitting shiva,” but
I have no idea what this is to non-Jews. Someone help me out. Anyway, during
this time, Donny greets a fellow in a wheelchair—someone he’s met before,
apparently, a colleague of Dorrie’s named Mike Regalado. He’s some kind of
scientist. That evening, Dorrie’s mom goes through some of her personal effects
and finds evidence of…something. And she really doesn’t look too broken up
about the unsolved murder of her daughter. Donny pays a visit to the
cigar-smoking chap from the funeral, and it turns out to be his estranged
father, who is a club owner and maybe a pimp too? Donny needs his dad’s help
solving the mystery of Dorrie’s death, for some reason, which he also thinks is
a mystery, for some reason. Maybe for that same unknown reason, Donny’s pop
thinks it was calculated murder, as well. This is when I wish comics still had
thought balloons.
That night, a really not-upset Donny is searching
through Dorrie’s personal things, and he finds an electrified mace—though when
he finds it, he asks no one, “…was she taking kinky kung-fu lessons?” What the
hell is that supposed to mean? Was the relationship that strained that you
wouldn’t even know about the sex toys in your home? Later, Donny and his dad
smack the crap out of some junkie who witnessed Dorrie’s hit-and-run, and he
confesses that the guy that hit her stopped and stepped out of the car to confirm
her death before speeding off. Later, Donny gets dropped off at home, but the
junkie dimes him out and the apartment explodes just as Donny enters!
This book…is kind of a mess. There are some cool
interactions that would probably play out well on screen, but here they just
seem unnecessarily prolonged and gratuitous. And while I appreciate that we
don’t need to know everything in the first issue, there’s too much left to
question: what kind of information did Dorrie find and what does it implicate?
Why is everyone so sure that Dorrie’s murder was calculated? How come none of
Dorrie’s loved ones seem genuinely upset at her death? Why do we get Mike
Regaldalo’s full name, but several other characters remain nameless? Some of
this may be revealed in the next issue, but by then it’s too late: you lost the
audience already. The art is pretty good, nothing sublime but certainly skilled
and well-suited for this noir type of story. The story, however, has problems.
Bits and
Pieces:
Whatever intrigue this book might have contained is ruined by poor storytelling and expanded scenes of conversation. The dialogue is okay, but the character work is overdone and the plot is sacrificed for it. The book looks good, but as a singular issue it isn't enough to make me too excited for the next issue.
4.5/10
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