Bedlam #5

Written by Nick Spencer
Art by Riley Rossmo

Just before reading this comic this week, I saw on Bleeding Cool that Riley Rossmo is leaving Bedlam due to 'creative differences' with writer Nick Spencer.  I'm never quite sure where I stand on Rossmo's art - when I started reading Proof, I loved it, but as that series continued, I often found his storytelling to be confusing and hard to follow.  Since then, he's sort of become the ubiquitous face of Image Comics, and that has meant he's drawn some books that I don't feel were well suited for his scratchy style.  Five issues into Bedlam though, I can't think of another artist that would be more suitable for Spencer's strange exploration of madness in a world of costumed vigilantes.  This title, with its disfigured nurses and genitally-scarred angel-wing wearing serial killers, would not work with a more realistic or a more cartoonish artist.  Really, no one is coming to mind right now except possibly Ted McKeever, although I'd kind of like to see Bill Sienkiewicz take over (not that that is going to happen).

Anyway, to talk about this actual issue, I'd have to say that my opinion of this book is continuing to grow.  Mr. Press, who we can all safely assume was once the Joker-like character Madder Red, continues to assist a police detective in her investigation into a string of murders.  There is some proof that these killings are connected to a sex-abuse scandal at a church many years prior, and Detective Acevedo reluctantly allows Press to continue helping her as she heads out to a prison to interview the man at the centre of that scandal.

Press is a difficult character to read, and he makes a few moves of his own this month that make his intent and his sanity rather murky.  We also see a lot more of his final days in treatment.  I did have the thought that Spencer has been playing with us, and that Press is not really Madder Red; it's not like Spencer doesn't regularly upend readers' expectations in Morning Glories.

As I said before, Rossmo's art has grown on me over the course of this series so far, and the news of his impending departure makes me wonder how well this book is going to work without him.

Bedlam #3

Written by Nick Spencer
Art by Riley Rossmo

Nick Spencer's new series is a strange one, but I feel like it's really hit its stride in this issue.  The series is about Madder Red, a Joker-style homicidal maniac, who has gone through ten years of psychiatric treatment, and has been sent back into the world by the strange doctor who treated him.

When this issue opens, he's confessed to a grisly murder that happened outside his building, but we readers know that he didn't commit this murder, or the others in a string of killings involving elderly people.  The cops like him for these crimes and others, and he's interested in helping them investigate the case.  Most of the issue is taken up with him going over homicide files, believing that he's in some sort of partnership with the Detective in charge of the cases, while she thinks that she's got the killer, and that he's toying with her.

It works very well, as Spencer portrays the guy as being off his rocker in a rather simplistic way, like an idiot savant of serial killers.  As the reader knows what's really going on, without knowing why the real killer is doing these things, the story becomes more and more intriguing, as we hope for mysteries to be solved.

I wasn't sure what to expect out of Bedlam, and I don't like it as much as I do Morning Glories, but at the same time that I'm bored out of my skull with the Joker in Batman, I'm really interested in learning more about Madder Red.

Bedlam #2

Written by Nick Spencer
Art by Riley Rossmo

You have to hand it to Nick Spencer - he does know how to put together an incredibly strange comic.  The first issue of Bedlam felt like a Joker story translated into a creator-owned venue, but with this second issue, Spencer reveals that he's going somewhere very different with this book.

Most confusingly, the issue opens with two old friends running into each other at a Somethings Anonymous meeting, and going out for coffee, where they talk about old friends.  Then the one drugs the other, takes him home, strips him, ties him up, gets naked, and puts on metal angel wings and fishnet stockings.  Yes, this does happen.

From there, the book shifts back to Fillmore, the guy we met last issue, who is probably Madder Red, the Joker-analogue character.  Fillmore is back in a medical clinic with the doctor we met last issue, who had Red tied up after his supposed death.  It looks like this doctor is in the business of lobotomizing criminals and reintegrating them into society on a secret basis, for reasons we have yet to understand.  We know he's up to no good though, because his assistants are a mixture of dwarves and women with slashed-up faces.

We also learn the consequences of Fillmore's rather bizarre call to the police last issue.  Things don't get too weird until the end of the comic though, which involves a horse dragging part of a corpse through traffic.

The weirdest part, though, is that as you read the book, none of these things seem all that odd.  Like with his Morning Glories, Spencer creates enough story logic and internal consistency in his tale that you just kind of follow along, and it's all good.  It's only when you try to recap the book that you realize how strange it is.

At the same time, there seems to be a growing interest in brain-experimentation in comics lately.  I'm thinking of the work of the character Dr. Rot in Jason Aaron's Wolverine run (later revisited in Cullen Bunn's), and of what's been going on in Uncanny Avengers.  I wonder if this trend comes out of the zombie-obsession that has gripped comics for years...

I continue to not be overly impressed with Riley Rossmo's art on this book, but I'm used to that.  I'm still not sure if this is an ongoing series or a limited one.  I can see sticking with this title for 6 issues or so - I don't see it becoming a long-term commitment the way Morning Glories has.

Bedlam #1

Written by Nick Spencer
Art by Riley Rossmo

Bedlam is a very strange new series from Nick Spencer, a writer who excels at writing strange comics (Morning Glories is excellent, but almost impossible to predict).  Basically, this is a Joker comic, but featuring creator-owned characters.

Madder Red is very similar to the Clown Prince of Crime - he wears a creepy mask which shows off a toothy grin, and he likes to kill people - especially children.  As the series opens, in a flashback, we see his greatest crime - slaughtering a large group of children on a field trip to the symphony.  This vicious crime ends with his incarceration, after The First (in other words, Batman), beats him down.  This is part of Red's plan though, as he has a broadcast arranged that announces that, if he is not killed within an hour, bombs that have been planted at a number of local schools will go off.  This leads to bedlam in Bedlam, and the police station explodes, killing Red.

There are the usual conspiracy theories that he wasn't actually killed, although after then years, he's never resurfaced.  In the 'now' part of the book, we meet a man who is clearly mentally ill, and is taking a great interest in the murder of a few old men in a series of home invasions.  This man ends up interrupting an internal dispute among some drug dealers, and generally gives us the impression that he may be Madder Red.  The flashbacks suggest that he did survive the explosion, but not in a way that makes a lot of sense.

Basically, Spencer is using some of the same tricks that work so well for him in Morning Glories - setting up some mystery, and effectively using flashbacks to lead our thinking in one direction, without ever revealing the truth.  It works, as I'm very curious to see where this goes next.

Riley Rossmo has become Image's go-to guy for mini-series.  Since Proof, his ongoing series, went on what looks like a permanent hiatus, Rossmo has been involved in a large number of books, often having more than one comic on the stands in any given month.  That's pretty impressive, especially considering that this first issue is double-sized.  He's never been a favourite artist of mine - his work is pretty scratchy and hard to follow at times, but I do think he did a great job of constructing a sense of dread in this comic.  The use of colour (the flashback scenes are coloured only with some reds) works well to support the dual narrative of this comic.

I'm not sure how long this series is set to run, but they've got me on board for a mini-series at least.