BEDLAM #1 by Nick Spencer and Riley Rossmo

We've been gone a while... again. But we will always come back - I promise!

Last time we were here, I ventured into the darkness of Happy #1, and asserted that perhaps that book was in fact trying to shake us out of the darkness. I return this week to delve further into the darkness than ever before, as I look at last week's new offering from wunderkind writer Nick Spencer, Bedlam.

First, context. You may remember my profile of writer Nick Spencer from January this year where I gushed about the man's talents, prior to my meeting him at Kapow this year where I gushed all over him in person. Since then, his magnum opus Morning Glories has reached new heights of insanity and is approaching its quarter-way-through mark, still introducing mystery after mystery. Meanwhile, we patiently await the fifth and final issue of Infinite Vacation, regarded by many to be Spencer's finest work thus far; a nightmarish modernisation of Dickian ideas. In between, we've been treated to Spencer's solid scripting of Robert Kirkman's Thief of Thieves, which despite its flaws was snappy and involving in terms of all-important dialogue. Riley Rossmo, meanwhile, has been one of my favourite artists of the last couple of years, and you may also remember me heaping praise upon the man for his work on Green Wake and Debris quite recently.

Bedlam, then, is the first meeting of these two talents, and does not disappoint. The writing is dense and confident, the art never more suited to the subject matter. Bravely packing a first issue with 50+ pages, Spencer and Rossmo are carving a work of admirable density, not only in terms of plot but thematically too.

There are many sadistic, psychologically damaged villains in comics, whether their psychopathy is overtly discussed or merely implied - although post-Watchmen and post-Miller, we all know that our heroes have been as damaged as our villains. This book takes the deranged psychopath motif and poses the simple question of what happens to such a character after he's stopped being the villain. As the tagline on the cover reads, 'Is evil just something you are, or something you do?' Now upon first reading, I found that tagline kind of trite - maybe it could be put better - but anyhow, maybe we need to just think about its implications. It is, after all, the theme of the book.

Madder Red is our psychopath, straight out of the Batman Nolanverse's deepest unlexplored recesses of nihlistic violence and murder. We're introduced to him in a sequence set 10 years previous, as he performs unthinkable acts. Rossmo delivers in spades with these flashback sequences, a nightmare in black, red and white. Oh yeah, and did I mention Madder Red is absolutely fucking terrifying?

 

We flip between Madder Red's 'heyday' and the present, where our other protagonist. Fillmore Press, goes about his daily business... the awesome hook is of course that Fillmore Press is Madder Red, ten years older and basically a different guy. The stage is set for an examination of what has led this character here - and the possibilities are endless. Having been drawn into believing the character as one entity in the flashback scenes, we're then presented with a character who is an opposite, a complete Other. Not frightening in himself, but disturbing in our knowledge that he is in fact the same person who is performing the unspeakable acts we see as we turn the page. Fillmore Press is more elusive, inviting us to feel ambivalent about him as he remains unassuming and, for want of a better word, 'normal', the only clue to his previous misdeeds being his skewed, masked version of himself staring back from his bathroom mirror.

Spencer has affirmed himself as a writer who is going to ask big questions with his work. With every limited series he gives to Image he not only dazzles creatively but also reassures long term readers of his work that he's got a plan... with Morning Glories becoming more of a headfuck each month it's almost as if he's reassuring us with layered and beautiful work like this that he's got a plan. And maybe, so does Madder Red?