Southern Bastards #15 Review

Writer: Jason Aaron / Artist: Jason Latour / Image Comics Fresh off of winning the 2016 Eisner Award for best new comic book series, the Brothers Jason are finally back to continue the story of the most textured and corrupted town in the south. For as good as this book has been, issue #14 that welcomed in earnest Roberta Tubbs might have been the most anticipated issue of the series and it didn’t disappoint. Now, after the Running Rebels got utterly embarrassed by their rival on Homecoming Night, Coach Boss is probably the lowest that we’ve seen him. And this man has seen some things. The aftermath of the loss of the game is paralleled by the loss of some really important folks along the way as the void is felt far and wide.

The pressure isn’t just on for Coach to win and keep his job, you get the sense that some much bigger things are at play as we welcome back some members of the community we haven’t seen in a while. And frankly, good or bad, these folks tend to only poke their head up when some bad shit is about to go down. The narrative carries this book forward with such a swift momentum. Things were a slow burn for a while, but this issue changes the pace up quite a bid, giving the real feeling of a boulder rolling down hill that Coach can’t stop. There has been a good reversal of how featured Tubbs was in the previous issue, to her lingering presence in this one. Her demeanor and approach are much different than her father’s which might make a difference when the conf…