More of this near surreal, yet at times darkly comical, and I mean darkly comical, grifter crime mystery thriller with a heart. Nina, Beth and Orson are hiding out in a town in the middle of nowhere after an unspecified run of events against Harry's mob that sees them with a lot of his Cocaine! In monochrome and at times sparse dialogue and/or visuals Lapham teases out the relationships between the main AND secondary characters so well. But what this series is more than anything else is story. L...

'Stray Bullets Volume 1: Somewhere Out West' collects issues 8-14 of the comic book series by David Lapham. It's another over the top tale of violence and low lifes and I liked it.The town of Seaside has a boardwalk, but no waterfront. They live in the hopes of a big California earthquake that will bring them the beach and make their property valuable. It's a town in the middle of nowhere populated by nobodys. This makes it the perfect town for Orson, Beth and Nina to hide from the mob in. They'...

The first volume had its moments, but this collection is just plain bad. Hard to believe this artwork won Lapham an Eisner as best artist. The interconnected stories are just bleak and depressing and, really, rather pointless. I had to force myself to keep reading and not sure why I bothered.

Well this was bad volume

More slice of gutter sex, drugs and violence, and not one is beautiful, not one is admirable, not one escapes in this gritty rough monochrome pulp throwback to sixties crime comix. The fifties Comics Code was right, these stories corrupt you, and will drag you down, down down into depravity. Let the reader beware! Somewhere Out West is the second larger collection, including #8-14, of David Lapham’s Stray Bullets series from the nineties. Once you’ve seen Pulp Fiction, you can’t help but think o...

So here's what's great about Stray Bullets: we last saw Nina back in 1980, about to get her one-night stand killed, and we last saw Orson back in 1981, witnessing the street violence of Harry's crew. Beth threaded the stories but wasn't a major actor. Now we're suddenly in 1982, and the three have fled to California after some type of heist against Harry. Lapham doesn't feel the need to tell us the story in between (though he circles back to it decades later in Sunshine & Roses), instead he just...

This is one of - if not THE best Graphc Novels out there. I can't recommend this entire series enough. The way Lapham weaves together a tapestry of characters all revolving around the Baltimore mob scene is compelling.

Hovering between 4 and 5 stars. Rounding up instead of down because Nick's character arc is fascinating and plausible (his story perfectly captures a false man who presents himself differently to everyone, which he does effortlessly because he's as hollow as a chocolate Easter bunny). And because of a superb plot device involving a head-sized hole in a mobile-home bedroom floor. As the connections between the large cast of characters becomes clearer, this series becomes more riveting.-----------...

I can only see 3.0 meager stars "Somewhere Out West."Buttons pressed:Unlikable characters? v1=yes; v2=yes.With redeeming qualities and/or moments? v1=yes; v2=not so much.Senseless violence? v1=almost too much; v2=a bit less than that.With plot or character justification? v1=mostly; v2=only occasionally.Ugly visuals? v1=yes; v2=even more so (Lemmy is almost sufficient reason never to open this book).For seemingly good reason/s? v1=i think so; v2=i don't think so.Stereotyped behavior for many char...

This is just such an exemplary series, I don't know what I can say about it. It's wild and weird and touching and strange and confusing and violent as hell and twisted and cute and just all over the map. Taking place over decades, each issue bounces around. In issue 11 you might be in the 80s while in issue 12 you're in the 70s with a whole different bunch of characters. I should not have set this aside and read slowly along from time to time because I had to go back and skim through a few previ...

Stray Bullets Vol. 2 was enjoyable on some levels and not so enjoyable on other levels. I enjoyed some of the story lines better than others. I didn't read the first one so I am not sure if that is part of the problem or not. I think it was a decent comic book and would probably read other installments in the series.

Nearly gave it a 5 just because the last part was so engrossing and dramatic, but the rest of it was a jarring departure in a number of ways and took a while to adjust to.

The first Stray Bullets book is a masterpiece – is there anything higher than that? The second volume is a double-masterpiece! I LOVED this book. I might run out of superlatives, this comic is that good, so get your umbrellas out because I’m gonna start gushing! It’s 1982 and Orson, the kid we met in the first book who’d just graduated high school, has fallen into a life of crime. With his girlfriend Beth and their friend Nina, they’ve ripped off Harry, stealing a suitcase of blow and heading so...

You first notice the hole in the bedroom floor when the protagonist steps in it on page two -- it's covered by a rug, so he doesn't fall through. But you know that David Lapham isn't gonna let a floor-hole be a mere trivial inconvenience. Later you see the rug above the hole waggling in the air -- some voyeur's head is poking up? At some point the rug clears away so that a runaway girl can prop herself up just enough downstairs, so that her head appears as an angelic apparition for her drug-addl...

(Zero spoiler review) Read my previous reviews for additional context.Lordy, this series just keeps on keeping on. Twenty issues in now and this series is still effortlessly engrossing and brilliant, without a filler issue in sight. The newer characters being introduced punch just as hard in the compelling department as any ones have previously, with the longstanding characters continuing to build a repour with the audience only capable of in the best stories. Each new issue, it's a bit of a thr...

Couldn't even finish it. Tedious, disjointed to the point of needing a map - at which point it feels more like work than enjoyment.

What a mess! I need a map to keep track of the many different characters and the many storylines. I have read comics and novels before with many storylines, going back and forth in time, but this one is too chaotic. I have completely lost track. And I don't like the artwork.I got the six volumes via a HumbleBundle, but I doubt I will ever read the rest.

Good god I love this series.

The graphic novel's answer to Pulp Fiction continues with another set of loosely connected stories all set in an absolute dud of a town out in the middle of the desert. There, a familiar casts of lowlifes, oddballs and outcasts intersect and manage to come together in a kind of chaotic jumble that offers no easy conclusions or moralizing, just a Darwinian case study in how the dumb get killed, the stupid get pinched, the tough still don't live forever, and that everyone has the ability to fall f...