Bedlam #10

"I Can Fix This"
written by Nick Spencer
art by Ryan Browne

And so we discover, with little room for doubt, that Fillmore Press, former mass murderer and clinical psychopath, sincerely cares for Ramira Acevedo.  In the course of their collaboration on criminal investigations, their partnership had grown perceptively easy and natural.  Despite his past atrocities and current eccentricities, Press was figuring out how to be a partner, someone trustworthy and cognizant of his colleague's thinking.  But, confronted with a bullet-wounded Acevedo, Press offers his finest expression of concern and affection for his friend:  "Boss, I-- I can fix this--" (Bedlam #10: 18).  And at some point, though I can't recall just when, he started calling her Ramira.

This tenderness makes his confrontation with Bedlam's pixelated villain all the more disturbing.  It seems he knows Fillmore; they've met before.  In fact, Press very well may be one of those he's brainwashed, unable to see his face until Press has "purged himself of weakness".  By Press's own acknowledgement, he's highly susceptible to this kind of psychological influence, an influence which seems to know no bounds.  "I Can Fix This"'s final splash is a singularly powerful demonstration of this maniac's control over his army.  Triggering sleepers in the police department's S.W.A.T. team so that nearly the entire force takes themselves out is one thing.  Convincing a moral man almost unhealthily obsessed with justice to kill his (admittedly overbearing) mother is quite another, and it promises to test the depths of Press's new friendship with Acevedo, who the madman undoubtedly perceives as Press's weakness.

There's a symmetry that characterizes Spencer's mad vision, an almost fanatical devotion to counterpoints.  It's in the small details, like beginning an issue in a baseball stadium and ending it in a basketball gym, and in the series' major thematic structure, like the persistent invitations to see Press and Severin as dark mirrors of one another, more alike than different and yet nothing alike.  This structure provides a kind of narrative beauty to Bedlam, but the pulse remains with the central friendship.  After a few episodes dedicated more to Matt Severin, the man behind the mask of the First, it's refreshing to have them back at the heart of the story.