American Carnage #6 Review

Writer: Bryan Hill / Artist: Leandro Fernandez / DC Comics I started reading Bryan Hill during his run on Wildstorm: Michael Cray. His twisted interpretations of the DC Universe’s heroes demonstrated such a key mastery over what made the characters endearing and frightening. He had a way of making the familiar unsafe and the different alluring. I started following him on Twitter and paid exceedingly close attention to his On the Outside of Detective Comics. Hill is one of the most intriguing writers to me because of how calmly he can ask us to stare into the abyss, and no better example of this skill exists than American Carnage. The opening act of American Carnage #6 is Wynn Morgan expositing the most vile, hateful things that we have always known him capable of since his debut, yet juxtaposed against the typical American dream and his figure encapsulated in shadow. It’s honestly one of the more horrifying things I’ve read, simply because it sounds all too familiar, all too real. And like the audience, Richard just takes it all in, slightly dumbstruck by the sheer audacity of Wynn’s world view. Jennifer is perturbed by her father for entirely different reasons, but also embodies a different sort of extreme mentality that comes into play later. This is a book that could only ever exist in the current political climate. The zeitgeist is complex and rooted in the very deeply conflicted world where the framework of morality seems to have just failed everyone and everything. Hill…