Bedlam #4

"If I Started Talking About Religion"
written by Nick Spencer
art by Riley Rossmo

Would you believe me if I told you a comic about a reformed child-killer was funny?  Certainly, a wry brand of cynical absurdity fueled earlier issues of Bedlam, but "If I Started Talking About Religion" transformed this undercurrent into a quiet, slowly burgeoning humor, a humor in which Spencer and Rossmo are in close collusion, most of which relies on the emerging ad hoc threesome-in-crime-fighting of Det. Acevedo, the brawny city hero the First, and scrawny, socially awkward, supervillain-turned-unwanted-police-consultant Fillmore Press.  When the First, all fist, lays out Press, it owes as much to Looney Tunes-style slapstick animation as action thrillers.  Or later, having just been cleared as a suspect but still quite literally in the grasp of the First, an unresisting Press quips, "Not gonna ask for an apology..." (p. 16), and shortly after finds himself allied with his super-hero counterpart in demanding an answer from Det. Acevedo.  In a masterful use of the page-break at 17-18, once a slightly smug Press interjects--"Two to one!  Tiebreaker!  That clinches it!"--into an escalating confrontation between the detective and the First, they both whip around to stare menacingly at Press, who backs off a little, "Well I don't see how else we'll resolve this...".  Each time I re-read Bedlam #4, something I've found myself wanting to do again and again, it's funnier, more nuanced, and more rewarding.

But its humor doesn't blunt the eeriness of the series' murders.  Eric self-mutilated and self-fashioned Angel of Death is, if possible, even more sinister than Madder Red.  In contrast to the spectacle, bombast and chaos that drove Madder Red's acts, this new serial killer possesses a quiet, calm deliberateness, which is more frightening in its iciness and ease.  Issue 4's final few pages point to a gruesome impending endgame for Eric's spree, one which whether in the next issue or the one after promises a tense, if staid, confrontation between Fillmore Press and another killer, one in which he will doubtless be able to discern the worst elements of his former self and perhaps illuminate the new differences between them.