Southern Bastards #1 by Jason Aaron and Jason Latour

Writer: Jason Aaron
Artist: Jason Latour
Publisher: Image Comics
Release Date: April 30, 2014

Fuck you: I’m from the South. Like any right-thinking Southerner, I’m proud but embarrassed, defensive and a little indignant. Mostly proud, though, and nothing you say and nothing the many horrible people who live in the South can do will change that. Horrible people are everywhere — good barbecue isn’t.

I would’ve ignored Southern Bastards if Jason Aaron hadn’t written it. He’s from Alabama. I can make fun of Alabama all day long (it’s cool, I’m from Georgia), but in the end it’s hard to be humble when you’re from Alabama, as a dude who skipped Alabama for Georgia once sang. Aaron and artist Jason Latour (who bounced from Charlotte to Atlanta to Florida) are natives, and thus know how to look harshly at the South without unfairly belittling or stereotyping it. Southern Bastards comes from a place of love, but it’s fully aware of how depressing and backwards the South can be.

Set in fictional Craw County, Alabama, a place so small its residents call Birmingham the “big city”, Southern Bastards hinges upon a past that Earl Tubb has tried to forget. A gruff old man returning to tend to family business, Tubb remains in the shadow of his long-dead father, a local lawman in the Buford Pusser vein, handy with a big stick (signed by Bear Bryant) and the deliverance of violence under the guise of justice. Craw’s now running drills for a heavy named Coach Boss, whose tattooed Stars and Bars-bedecked thugs pee on dogs and brutalize down-on-their-luck old acquaintances of Tubb’s. Something bad has happened in Craw, much like something bad happened to Tubb’s dad, just as something bad, something unspeakable, something absolutely unforgivable, forged the South. I’ll bet you a slice of pecan pie that everything’s connected.