This may strike some readers as an easy out (at one point I started thinking about Peter Milligan's Shade with its obsessive Kennedy Conspiracy Theorist and decided that said theorist could poke plenty of holes in Badlands), but within the context of the story, it's thoroughly believable. There's no way a disposable figure like Bremen would be given more mis/information than he needs to make the wrong decision. Yet for all he doesn't know, Connie is the only character to make it out of the book alive. The last we see him, he's boarding a bus packed with Merry Pranksters, heading into the future.

On its website, AiT places Badlands (which originally appeared as a six-issue Dark Horse mini-series in 1991) under the banner of "Historical Fiction," but I'm not sure that's entirely apt. It works more as a pulpish tour of history's skuzzy underworld, but on those terms, it's a mordantly entertaining read. Vince Giarrano's black-and-white inkwork is packeded with squinty-eyed expressions (both a reflection of the characters' shiftiness and the bright Texas setting) and does a great job capturing the period (though I'm not sure that the free-wheeling bus riders that we see in the end of the book would look quite so hippiedippy in 1964). He's also got the knack for a good sordid sex shot - of which there are several in this book. In the end, the blurb at the top of the cover sez it all: "A story of lust, betrayal and America."

Yup, that 'bout covers it. . .