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BAJA GN
Recommended (7/10)
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Top Shelf Productions
Writer/Artist: Steve Lafler
Editor: Chris Staros
Price: $9.95 US |
Steve Lafler's Bughouse was a rumination on 50s-era jazz, along with an examination of drug use and musicians, and Baja is, in a way, a sequel. However, while the characters are the same, and the music remains an important part of their lives, I was reminded more of Jessica Abel's La Perdida than Ken Burns's Jazz in this one, as Lafler uses a quick plot development to shunt one of the characters off to Mexico, where he, along with the readers, gets to see a bit more of that land to the South. As with Abel's work, Lafler's appreciation for Mexico is infectious, and I found myself really enjoying the tour. The writing was sometimes uneven, particularly when we got into the characters' heads, but overall I found this to be an enjoyable read, not unlike my reaction to Bughouse
in the first place.
The use of anthropomorphic insects instead of people was a nice touch in Bughouse, as it allowed Lafler to delve into the gritty world of drug use and crime without making the book overly dark. In Baja, the story is a little lighter, but I still found
that the main characters being bugs instead of humans didn't really distract me
at all. Part of that is down to the distinctive appearance each character gets,
which generally gives us a good idea what they might look like as a human, but a
fair amount of it is down to solid characterization.
The lead of this story, Bones, was one of my favorite supporting characters from Bughouse. Though he is the youngest of the band, he has
a kindness and an outgoing nature that makes him feel older. It was interesting
to see the story of a young man in Mexico that didn't revolve around getting
over youthful stupidity or acting the part of an ugly American. Bones definitely
undergoes some changes here, growing up in many ways, but it's more a story of
romance and musical development than a story of maturation, and it makes for a
very sympathetic protagonist.
While Lafler's characters are
well-developed and interesting, it mainly comes through in the dialogue and the
visual designs. His weakness is in the use of thought balloons, most of which
come through as blatant exposition and read like something out of an Archie
book. While they're informative, they don't seem natural, and they interrupt the
realistic feel that I get from the settings and the dialogue.
Interestingly enough, Baja doesn't really revolve around a strong conflict
structure. While the characters definitely grow and change, there's not a great
deal of tension regarding these changes, and everything from Bones's musical
awakening to the storyline of Muggs the drug dealer plays out on a relatively
slow and calm level. However, this relatively leisurely pace doesn't hurt the
story at all; rather, because the tension is lessened, the reader is pulled
along largely by an interest in seeing where the story goes next, rather than
following up on an artificially tense cliffhanger structure.
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