I can say, without hyperbole, this is the most heartbreaking comic I’ve ever read. This single story focusing on Poor Bear is quite sad, but it is the layers of almost palpable despair that hit me like a punch to the stomach. Halfway through this issue I started to feel queasy, not just because of the specific situation, but because of the way Aaron weaves it into the bigger 4 part story. We know what is going to happen (sort of) in that bar, so it is the anticipation that gives weight to the pieces leading to the final interaction.
It strikes me as the depressing equivalent to a Laurel and Hardy short. If Ollie and Stan are standing around in a room and a chef comes in and sets a tray of 20 cream pies on a nearby table, we know someone will get a pie to the face. The entire point of the scene is for Ollie to get flustered as he is wont to do, then have matters made worse by somehow getting a pie to the face. Yet the whole scene continues as if the actors don’t know what is so maddeningly obvious to the audience, so when Ollie takes a pie to the face 5 minutes later, the gag still pays off. A quick and formulaic story. Only imagine is we spent a few minutes with one of the pies and were told about how much hope this pie had to be the centerpiece of so magnificent ceremony for the Mayor later that night, only to end up all over a fat man’s face. Okay, so maybe it makes less sense outside of my head, but the connection remains that we know that nothing good will come of Dino’s time with his new employers and it is made all the more painful by this issue giving us more insight and empathy for Dino’s life.

There so many layers to Scalped, we have the specific plight of Dino Poor Bear, the tense situation leading up to the final interaction in the run down bar, the different layers to Chief Redcrow, plus the general despair of everyone on the reservation. The difference in this story is that we get to see Dino’s shattered hopes for his life, not just his general situation. Despair is so much more devastating when it is painted across a canvas of hope and Jason Aaron is  master painter…er, writer…er, whatever.