Geoffrey vs. Nick Spencer's Bedlam: Volume 1

Another kinda sorta violation, but this one hinges on a personal hang up rather than anything in the work itself that may read to me as an objective flaw.

I am talking about the first trade collection of the Image Comics series Bedlam, by Nick Spencer, Riley Rossmo and Jean Paul Csuka. Covers by Fraser Irving.

I am currently really enjoying Spencer's work on the Marvel Comics series Secret Avengers (and Avengers World, though I have only read issue 1) so I thought I would give this a try.

The high concept here is what if a villain somewhat like the Joker got cured and turned to crime fighting instead of crime doing. Solid enough premise for my tastes.

The art by Rossmo is scratchy and sketchy in a very appealing way. The book looks really nice. The story was good. The lead, Fillmore Press, is likable (after he is cured anyway) and the mystery surrounding his cure is honestly quite compelling.

Here's where it lost me. The opening scene is Madder Red (Fillmore's supervillain name) in his last stand. He kills a bunch of kids on a school field trip at a concert hall. This scene seemed to be a call back to the Joker's actions in The Dark Knight Returns, where he kills a studio audience and later a bunch of  boy scouts. It's chilling and frightening and very effective.

Ever since I had my daughter though, I can't stomach violence against little girls. Fiction is supposed to be fun to read and I can't find any fun in it. I can think of other scenarios that might have the same emotional resonance without killing a little girl and I have to wonder why, why specifically it had to be a little girl killed.

This has thrown me out of other fiction too. The Night Lords trilogy, a Warhammer 40000 book series by Aaron Dembski-Bowden, has two different scenes of little girls getting killed by giant cybernetic warriors. Why? I am really not sure. All I know is it threw me out of the work, which I had been loving, and after the second scene I only slogged through to the end to finish the book. The enjoyment was gone. It threw me so far out that I have not since been able to bring myself to read any more books by Dembski-Bowden because I don't want to read about the murder of little girls in my fiction based on a game of little plastic spacemen fighting each other.

Anyway. Not to slag on that dude. He's a really good writer. As I said at the start, this is really a personal peccadillo.

So. Dead little girl. I kept reading and I really did like Bedlam. I would like to see where it is going. I just hope that Spencer can maybe kill someone other than a little girl next time we need to see just how awful Madder Red used to be.

I think Nick Spencer is definitely "One To Watch". He seems to tap into the Big Ideas I really love in comics (like Grant Morrison and Jonathan Hickman). I will have to explore his other creator owned works when I have the money.

EDIT: Totally forgot to shout out Superior Foes of Spider-Man. That is an AMAZING series.