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Underground > Comic Books >

SCALPED now comes with a Money Back Guarantee

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04:15 / 03.11.07

If you're not reading SCALPED, I want to make it as easy as possible for you to at least give the series a shot, so I'm now offering a money back guarantee on the first trade paperback, "Indian Country." That's the first five issues of the series, for only $9.99, and if you don't like it, you can send it to me and I'll give you your money back. It's as simple as that. Here's my address and email:

Jason Aaron
P.O. Box 8620
Prairie Village, KS 66208-0620
everywhere73 at yahoo.com

Try SCALPED, you might like it. And if you don't believe me, listen to these guys:

"This Native American noir is the best crime book you're not reading. If you're looking for a new Vertigo series to try with Y ending in a few months, SCALPED is an excellent place to start. "
--Brian K. Vaughan

"SCALPED is some of the most compelling character work and crime writing I've seen in a long time."
--Ed Brubaker

"The best new series in years. Spread the word. Tell your friends. Talk about it. Blog about it."
--Garth Ennis

05:14 / 03.11.07

Can't beat that deal! I have the tpb, as yet unread, but I did pick up issue one which was fantastic, so I know I'll be keeping my tpb.

12:31 / 03.11.07

I also own the trade.

Haus of Mystery

13:38 / 03.11.07

And I've been talking it up round these parts for a while now.
So if you're not reading this, then please do, before it suffers the Vertigo new series curse. It really is the bees bollocks.

13:48 / 03.11.07

Funnily enough, I have the trade sitting on my desk at the moment. I've been waiting for a time to read it for a week or two now, but I'm going to power through it on Monday or Tuesday. I've heard only good things, and I loved The Other Side, so it's a bit of a no-brainer.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

14:39 / 03.11.07

Yeah, I'll definitely be picking it up.

uncle retrospective

16:02 / 03.11.07

It's a great book but I hate the art, it's just so brown and muddy.

Haus of Mystery

16:09 / 03.11.07

I think the art is brillaintly fluid and expressive. It's the colouring that's 'brown and muddy'.

uncle retrospective

20:14 / 03.11.07

I take your point. I think it hurts the art though.

20:47 / 03.11.07

Okay, I didn't wait till Monday. I picked it up to have a quick flick through while I should have been working and then put it down when I'd reached the other end.

It's a fucking corker and no mistake. The dialogue really rolls across the page and like Mr. Aaron's other work it succeeds in opening out a genre that's usually not of a whole lot of interest to me. It's got me very intrigued to see where it's going.

Guera's art is the shit. Scratchy, sure, but rarely fails to nail body language or ethinicity right to the wall. I'm not sure if the muddy colouring lets it down somewhat or if I actually perversely like it. It kind of counterpoints a lot of the sparkle in the dialogue, bridged inbetween by the loose but solid art.

Yes. I like.

21:32 / 03.11.07

THE OTHER SIDE rocks too. One of the best Vertigo minis ever, IMO.

00:33 / 04.11.07

Scalped is the best book you're not reading. So you should all read it and the it will be the best book you ARE reading.

It's excellent, as I've been saying since issue #1. It continues to impress. And I don't want it to stop. So buy it and read it!

00:38 / 04.11.07

Premise-wise, it does seem quite unengaging, though?

02:52 / 04.11.07

I'll give the tpb a shot. I read the first couple issues and it wasn't ringing true, regionally and such, but that's a bit unfair to fiction, and besides, (a) it may've improved, (b) I may have just been in a mood/not in the mood, and (c) somebody's putting money up against my disliking it, which is fair enough I can give it another shot.

12:06 / 04.11.07

The most persistant and nagging thought in my head as I read the first trade, was why wasn't Dash wearing a condom while having sex with his childhood sweetheart, especially after he spent so long watching her?

I mean, I can think of lots of possible reasons - self-loathing, self-destructive tendancies, the urgency of desire, all of which could be explored more fully, and more overtly later in the story, but it still bothered me. Especially since Scalped is being published from Vertigo, the same imprint that published an AIDS prevention minicomic featuring its own characters that promoted condom use.

Like I say, I can think of many story reasons not to use them, but their absence did jarr with me and knock me out of the narrative...

12:11 / 04.11.07

And yes, $9.99 is a bargain price to try a new graphic novel series on - just £6.50 in the UK a little over the price of two beers, or a packet of cigarettes, and with the money back guarentee above, what do you have to loose?

21:07 / 05.11.07

The most persistant and nagging thought in my head as I read the first trade, was why wasn't Dash wearing a condom while having sex with his childhood sweetheart, especially after he spent so long watching her?

That's a fair point, and one I'll try to address in the future. For the sex scene in issue #5, I think it still makes sense for him to not use a condom, given the intensity of the situation.

at the scarwash

18:35 / 06.11.07

Just wanted to get on board saying that I think that Scalped is one of the few things Vertigo has published recently (since The Other Side, actually) that is in any way relevant or important. The squalor of reservation life and its attendant morass of corruption and organized crime is a subject that I wouldn't even call swept under the rug--there is no acknowledgement that the rug even exists. It's a hell of a good read, a bloodshot clear-eyed crime series that reminds me of Jim Thompson at his bleakest. Thanks for the offer, Jason, but I'm keeping my trade.

18:50 / 14.11.07

Alex: I know what you mean about the premise but it's not really a "premise" comic. What SCALPED is about is just really big, grown-up writing. Plot, character, complexity of motivation, all that.

You know that HBO series... but a comic thing that gets thrown around a lot? Right now, SCALPED is the only thing that really fits the bill, for me.

KG

19:42 / 06.02.08

I bought this last weekend and I hope the offer still stands, Jason. I didn't like it. Maybe I'm getting old, but I'm just not impressed anymore by noir melodrama about volatile sociopaths. The comparison to the Sopranos is particularly inept. The Sopranos presented a nuanced protrait of criminal personalities; you've got some asshole reaming out a roomful of gun-toting thugs with a pair of nunchuks, because, uh, he's really angry about something. Nunchuks, seriously?

I really enjoyed The Other Side. It seemed like the work of a guy trying to tell his own stories. Scalped feels to me like you're channelling the worst market impulses of Garth Ennis and other hacks whose big, sweaty balls keep falling on the keyboard.

06:31 / 08.02.08

Yes, the offer still stands.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

16:43 / 08.02.08

I really enjoyed it. It took a while to "get into it", as it were- not sure I'd have kept it up if I'd been buying it an issue at a time, but I'm glad I bought the trade- by about issue 3 it had all started to gel and I was liking it a lot. I found the first three or four pages very hard to follow, but I don't think that had so much to do with the comic itself as my inability to actually pay attention to what's happening in the pictures- rarely will I buy a comic on the strength of its artist; that's not how my reading brain works. (Actually, that's not quite true- it would be truer to say that many's the time I've loved a comic with crap artwork because I've liked the writing, and the converse happens FAR less often. Bad writing will ruin a comic for me in the way bad art won't).

A lot of people have complained about the art on this book- I really didn't have a problem with it at all. But then I'm never good at saying what I like or don't like about visuals, really. I liked the colouring- yes, it was kind of muddy, but I figured that was what it needed. Bright Preacher-esque colouring wouldn't have worked half so well. (Incidentally, one major criticism I DO have is the logo. Preacher's by no means the greatest comic ever, not by a fucking long way, but even if that were true, I reckon Scalped is strong enough on its own not to have to try to lure people in with a gaudy promise of something which is not at all what they'll get. And the dialogue is WAY more readable, and easier top imagine being said out loud, than much of Ennis's).

I wish someone had told me the trade didn't finish the story, though- I mean, I'm glad there's more out there, and I'll buy that too, but I was all set up for a big finish, and then it didn't happen (insert smutty joke here).

No idea how realistic the setting or dialogue is, as it's all about as far from my life as you can get, but if I saw and heard the same things in a movie I'd believe it.

I preferred The Other Side, to be honest (think that has a LOT to do with my Vietnam obsession, though, so don't take the comparison too badly), but I really don't regret buying Indian Country and certainly shan't be asking for my money back.

22:02 / 08.02.08

I'm not sure if I really enjoyed 'The Other Side', either -I gave it a couple of issues, but it seemed to be a re-tread of 'Full Metal Jacket', pretty much. Whatever else might have happened later wasn't sufficiently flagged-up, perhaps, so I gave in.

I look forward to your run on 'Ghost Rider' though - I'm not being an arse; I genuinely am.

Any thoughts on the rumours (more speculation, really) that you'll be picking up Frank Castle's guns once Garth Ennis has laid them down would be of innarest, also.

00:00 / 09.02.08

Not, of course, that you're beholden to answer that sort of question from some character on the internet.

(Especially one who doesn't seem to have had the moral integrity to have joined up the dots bewtween the skulls, the guns and the bottles, in their personal life ... it all seems so disordered, somehow)

I'm halfway through putting 'Mum's' remains through the blender as I type this. But 'Mum' was a novel - I think almost anyone would say I went too far.

Best with everything, though.

22:00 / 13.02.08

See, I thought the interesting thing about The Other Side was that it used the Full Metal Jacket-ness of the redneck Marine from Central Casting, Missouri as a foil for Vo Dai's story, which is one we haven't seen much of, one of real sympathy with the enemy. What other war stories are about sympathizing with the enemy? The Young Lions? Apocalyps Now? It seemed like The Other Side was, win or lose, at least in pretty good company. But the work I've seen of Mr. Aaron's since--SCALPED, and the really very silly RIPCLAW--hasn't shown any of that challenging sensibility. I'm disappointed, and I wonder if I haven't read The Other Side like a total pantywaist.

04:08 / 14.02.08

(With apologies Jason, if the above seems a bit rough;

I'll be following your run on 'Ghost Rider' with interest. It seems like a good decision to have, as seems implied, Johnny Blaze up as a practising, ineffectual Satanist, rather than this doofus who just got lucky, first time out. He'd be your heavy metal kid, who gets in over is head, like the bass player from Guns And Roses.

Or not; again, goood luck!

15:23 / 14.02.08

Am I being a dick, Grandma?

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

16:07 / 14.02.08

Qalyn-- I think Grandma was referring to hir own posts above yours, where ze says ze wasn't sure if ze really enjoyed The Other Side.

16:46 / 14.02.08

Am I being a dick, Grandma?

I don't think so, no.

01:06 / 15.02.08

Don't know about being a dick, but if you seriously think Garth Ennis is a hack, then I could've told you you weren't gonna like SCALPED or probably anything else I'm ever going to write.

01:44 / 15.02.08

I think Garth Ennis occasionally does some really great stuff, but it's so bogged down in macho bullshit that I haven't bothered with him in some time.

01:54 / 15.02.08

But don't mind me, I'm a notorious hater. I even think Batman sucks. Anyway, thanks for the heads up.

00:02 / 27.02.10

Scalped 35 is an incredible comic on a number of levels.

Buy it and give Jason Aaron and Danijel Zezelj extra money.

11:01 / 27.02.10

Ooh, must phone the comic shop, they probably have a few months' worth lurking. Thanks for the reminder.

17:21 / 01.03.10

It's a fairly simple story about an elderly couple that has little to do with the main comic, but there's soooooo many incredibly clever uses of the medium that you could use it to teach a class.

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