The bulk of Scarred for Life is devoted to our anti-hero as he worms his way back into the Miami drug trade, working his way up toward Alejandro Sosa, the Bolivian Connection responsible for his first near death experience. Tony's former main squeeze Elvira is now Sosa's wife, but if our protagonist has his way, the cocaine kingpin will soon be dethroned. First, of course, there's a trio of lesser drug competitors to dispose of – gluttonous El Gordo and the smarmy Diaz Brothers – which our man does with an EC-ish eye toward the grisly ironic, then there are the two crooked DEA agents to dispatch, which is done in a manner that nip/tuck viewers will recognize. The graphic novel ends in a showdown in South America 'tween Tony and Sosa, an ambivalent Elvira on the sidelines, an ambiguous blood-flecked final panel leaving plenty of room for yet another sequel.
Laymon's script plays his story for broad dark comedy – each volume on the mini-series ends with the promise that a whole lotta expletives are gonna die – while Crosland's art is packed with energetic caricatures and nice little grotesque details. In one panel, for instance, we see Tony stunned to hear Elvira's voice on a work-related phone call, so surprised that the wax he's been picking in his free ear flies out in visible chunks. Now there's a detail you don't get in a lotta comic books!
Clearly, both writer and artist are having a blast working this skuzzy side of the street – getting as big a charge out of rolling around in the muck as movieman De Palma does in his more extreme genre works. Layman even gets to do a suitably nasty variation on the eighties Scarface's most quoted line. You'll never hear it quite the same again afterwards...
Article comments
1 - Natalie Bennett
This article has been selected for syndication to Advance.net , which is affiliated with newspapers around the United States, and to Boston.com. Nice work!