Southern Bastards #4

"Here Was a Man," Conclusion
written by Jason Aaron
art by Jason Latour

Holy shit!  "I am home," (Southern Bastards #4: 15), indeed.  Earl Tubb has forced Craw County into the open, more or less.  It's not that anyone on the outside gives a damn, but Tubb has shined a piercing spotlight on its own dirty, long-ignored criminal underbelly and the ruthless, bullying kingpin behind it all.

Tad Ledbetter survived his beating at the hands of Esaw and his fellow football-helmeted thugs.  Barely.  Earl Tubb couldn't care less about the vandalism to his family house or the hateful graffiti sprayed across the door and his rental truck, but Tad.

Now, Earl's daily pilgrimage to Coach Boss's BBQ joint draws a crowd of spectators come to see a bloody showdown.  Jumped by the cocky, preening Esaw, fresh off his battery of Tad, and his entourage of football goons, Tubb proves himself a tough old bastard.  His thrashing jars loose his memories in a tiled splash:  trying to cut down his dad's old tree, his father's totems of a Bible and club, Tad, the manic screaming of high-school football fans, his tour in Vietnam, his dead friend and squad leader, football, his lover, his phone.  When he emerges from the fray the victor with a new friend in the town mutt, it's a welcome relief.

If the townspeople were entertained by that brawl, their faces betray more apprehension when Tubb's confrontation with Coach Boss spills out into the street.  A petty man, bullied and excluded in high school, a man who's climbed the highest peak in town—meager though it is—leaving a trail of blood behind him, Coach Boss resents Tubb's refusal to defer to him, to submit to his intimidation and his reminder of Boss's less glorious past.

"That lightnin' hit that tree for a reason.  Whatever happens next... I'm glad it did."  (10)

If Aaron's writing in "Here Was a Man"'s concluding issue is thunderous, Latour's artwork is quietly devastating, filled with details and crannies that make Tubb's stubborn crusading seem every bit the Sisyphean task it has become, reliving the same punishment each day.  Even the television in Tad Ledbetter's room is Looney Tune's diminutive Henery Hawk trying to drag Foghorn Leghorn away by the toe.  The aging but physically imposing Tubb is anything but a conventional David, but with the entire town against him or silently cowering under the shadow of Coach Boss, he could easily pass for Marshal Will Kane of High Noon.