Because I've been reading it almost from its inception, I sometimes forget that Stray Bullets isn't really a high-profile book, and there might be some crime aficionados out there who haven't yet encountered Lapham's dark and intricate world of crime fiction. If you are one such person, someone who has enjoyed 100 Bullets, Jinx, Sin City or one of the other crime gems modern comics has to offer, you should rectify this immediately. While the ideal starting point is the oversized hardcover of volume one, Lapham has kindly made issue #31 a jumping-on point, a high school story that carries the somewhat dark and twisted sensibilities of the book into new territory and shows that sometimes danger doesn't just lurk in alleys or smoky clubs, putting a familiar face on breaking the rules for anyone who attended public school. Think of it as Ferris Bueller meets Taxi Driver. Or the Breakfast Club with more broken bones. Whatever you compare it to, check it out, as Lapham is really on a roll with Stray Bullets lately.
Now, to be fair, there is a little bit of unfortunate continuity baggage with Stray Bullets, but I may just be reading into that because I recognize these characters but can't quite recall everything that has happened to them. Astute readers will note that Stray Bullets carries page numbers in the high hundreds, and yet other issues carried lower numbers, and the reality is that Lapham jumps around in time quite a bit in telling his story. Like the work of Quentin Tarantino (most famously), Chris Nolan or Steven Soderbergh, these time jumps aren't meant to confuse, but instead to give the viewer a different perspective on events. So while a new reader coming in might see a somewhat deranged high school girl forming an unusual bond with an outcast in a violent manner, the rest of us know both where this girl has been (thanks to early issues) and where she's going (thanks to the more recent ones.) Or at least, have some vague recollection of them, since it's hard to keep all the characters straight in your head all the time.
At any rate, Lapham's work here isn't really in a straight crime vein. There are no hard-boiled mobsters, down-on-their-luck PIs, corrupt cops, scheming con men or other such familiar archetypes of crime fiction to be found here. Laws are broken, but that's not really the point. What this story features is a sort of brutal sensibilities that shows what lurks beneath the rules and common ground of society. What happens when you have people who aren't bound by the rules so much as their own (often screwed-up) personal codes, and certainly don't have a problem using excessive violence to get what they want. Virginia Applejack is someone headed down the road to being a full-fledged criminal, but that's not what she is here. Instead she's someone who wants to help someone out but can't do it in a normal way thanks to a deeply screwed-up upbringing.
Lapham succeeds not only in demonstrating the unusual, but by contrasting it with the norm. The conversations between Virginia and Leon ring absolutely true, and the notion of cliques and bullying in high school is certainly one that is easy to relate to. Virginia's reactions may be out of the norm, but Lapham manages to make her antisocial behavior understandable and at times even sympathetic, even though we know in our hearts that it's probably wrong to be rooting her on.
Stray Bullets really is unlike any other book out there, and I sometimes hesitate to call it a crime book for fear of pigeon-holing it into an easily understood category where it really doesn't belong. The book is unpredictable, at times unbearably dark and at others surprisingly funny, and it carries with it the developed professional skill of a creator who has put many long years into working on his craft and shaping this book, not to mention an array of some of the most twisted characters in the comic-book medium.
