Bad Karma #1
Written by Alex de Campi
Art by Ryan Howe, Dee Cunniffe
Published by Panel Syndicate
‘Rama Rating: 8 out of 10
There’s a lot to appreciate about Bad Karma #1. Out now from Panel Syndicate, the pay-what-you-want digital publisher founded by Brian K. Vaughn, Marcos Martin, and Muntsa Vicente. Bad Karma follows two American veterans of the war in Afghanistan, Ethan and Sully, as they reconnect for the holidays to celebrate Christmas with Ethan’s ex-wife Cheryl and her family. While they commiserate after a disastrous Christmas dinner, the pair make the startling discovery that writer Alex de Campi frames the book with: a man is on death row after being convicted of a crime Ethan and Sully know very well he didn’t commit, because… well, they did.
While the driving force of the book is Ethan and Sully’s quest to free the wrongly convicted Aaron Carter, the crux of it is Ethan and Sully’s relationship, with each other and the world around them. De Campi has a knack for exploring the things that make the world unpleasant, and the ways those things complicate dealing with other people for better or for worse. She regards Ethan and Sully’s post-service (for Ethan, at least, as Sully is still an active private military contractor) lives with a straightforward kindness, recognizing the struggle of attempting to lead a “normal” life after experiencing profound trauma without deifying these characters for serving in the military.
Bad Karma handles that cultural tendency particularly well, namely through Cheryl’s father and her mother Darlene, who sneers at Ethan (a scruffy unemployed vet with a prosthetic leg – an extremely common story in the U.S.) and delights at clean-cut, “happy and healthy” Sully. Ryan Howe’s artwork goes a long way here; his expressive faces sell the subtleties of de Campi’s dialogue, from Darlene’s snooty narrow eyes to Ethan’s wide-eyed and open expressiveness. Bad Karma #1 could easily be another gloomy crime story, but Howe’s art and Dee Cunniffe’s clean colors make the Boston of Bad Karma feel extremely normal, and while not exactly inviting, like a place you’ve been before and can easily imagine yourself in again, sliding into an empty seat at the table for a particularly awkward family dinner.
Where Bad Karma stumbles somewhat is in its framing device. De Campi starts a thoughtful conversation later in the issue about what kinds of people we find deserving of compassion – people like Sully, usually, who seem “fine” and don’t force us to think too much about what we should be doing, structurally as a nation, to support people who need our help. What’s a bit jarring is coming to this conversation after the opening pages, where Sully and Ethan sit down on one side of a prison visitation booth to inform a prisoner they committed the crime the prisoner’s about to be executed for.
The prisoner in question is Aaron Carter, a black man and seemingly only person of color in the issue to get a name. It’s the glib tenor of Sully and Ethan’s initial back-and-forth here that makes the scene so weird. It’s difficult to tell if that particular dynamic of the conversation is being lampshaded or not by the full-panel reveal of Aaron. Bad Karma very obviously recognizes that the specific set of circumstances here is, uh, messed up: two men did a crime, and a third man is in jail for it. But it’s unclear in this first issue if the additional layer here is intentional, and while this is only a debut issue, that is an extremely loaded dynamic to introduce without anyone making any moves to address it – it’s Schroedinger’s plot point, simultaneously intentional and accidental until the next issue is in hand, asking readers to hope for the best but also be perpetually primed for disappointment about an extremely difficult topic.
This particular point is so frustrating because the other thematic elements of the book are handled fairly well throughout, from Ethan’s frustration about how others treat him due to his leg to watching how quickly Cheryl’s family’s perception of Sully changes when his alarm buzzes for a dose of medication. But handling some things well is never a promise of handling all things well, and the darkly funny and somewhat glib energy of Ethan and Sully at the prison and the teaser for their adventure to save Aaron is a bit of a discordant contrast to the more thoughtful and somber energy de Campi, Howe, and Cunniffe bring to their later scenes with Ethan, Sully, and Cheryl, and her family. There’s a lot of promise in Bad Karma #1, and given that Panel Syndicate is pay-what-you-want, you can make your own choice about how much it’s worth to you to wait and see how things play out.