Written by: Jason Aaron
Art by: Jason Latour
Publisher: Image
At its core, Southern Bastards is a fairly simple story. It’s a story about a man and his home, what that home means to him, and how it’s changed in his absence. That’s really all there is to it, and yet, the story has a lot of intricacy, and is filled with nuance. It feels like it would be very easy for a series like this to fall flat, and shallow. Instead, in Jason Aaron’s very capable hands, the Southern Bastards – the world, the characters, and the plot – come to life. Even for those who may not be able to identify with the story (myself included), there’s still a lot to love about it.
Southern Bastards #4 gives us a conclusion to this chapter in the story of Craw County. The best part about this issue is that it makes the reader just how little Earl Tubb really matters, at least in the grand scheme of things. This is the story not of one man, or even a large group of them. This is the story of an entire town, as evidenced by Earl’s monologues throughout the issue. Sure, he tends to make it about himself, saying that it isn’t the place that he remembers it being, it’s changed since he left. But it’s about so much more than him. Sure, he plays a role, but he isn’t central to the story, which can continue without him. As long as Craw County exists, so to will the stories of Southern Bastards, and that’s really what this issue is about.
To be clear, none of that is a bad thing, and it’s not like the actual human characters are weak characters in any way. In fact, all of them, Earl included, are great characters. Coach Boss, who we finally get to meet in the issue, is the perfect example of this. He’s an exceptionally well written character, and just the little characterization he gets in this issue makes him extraordinarily dynamic. Sure, he may be based off of a well-known character archetype, but that doesn’t make him any less interesting. It’s a testament to Aaron’s skill as a writer that at this point in the story, it’s easy to care about the characters, despite their development (barring Earl) actually being fairly minimal.
The bottom line is that Southern Bastards #4 is a great conclusion to Earl Tubb’s character arc, and a great end point to this chapter in Craw County’s history, for which Earl acts as a synecdoche, which is used to shocking effect in this issue.. The amount of critical analysis that could go into a story such as this makes it simultaneously one of the best comics to review, but also one of the hardest. Because Southern Bastards is so layered, it becomes hard to separate reviewing it from analyzing it. Sure, some may just be in it for the story, but this book is so much more than that. It’s a perfect example of how comics can be every bit as worthy of analysis as prose novels, and that makes this book a success, not only for itself, but a larger success for the medium as a whole.
