Southern Bastards Volume 3: Homecoming
Jason Aaron, writer; Jason Latour, artist
Image Comics, 2016
The cover image is a bit of a tease, because the "homecoming" that drives most of the action in this arc is the annual Homecoming game in the high school football season. Each of the six chapters focuses on a different character, including a backwoodsman, a preacher, and last but not least, Earl Tubb's biracial daughter Roberta. There's plenty of new history here, most of it dealing with Coach Boss and all of the people he has wronged in his struggle for power in Craw County. That's a lot of enemies, and things are starting to go against the coach. In the end this arc is a summation and a preparation. It shows the effect of the deaths of Earl Tubb and Coach Big on people in town, and builds to what looks like a major climax in the next arc. Roberta's arrival has been foreshadowed for a long time, but she is far from the only storm on the horizon. Another good installment in the series, even if it's mostly buildup. There is one experiment in this arc: Chapter 12 "Vegetables" was written by series artist Jason Latour and illustrated by Chris Brunner, who was previously Latour's partner on the series Loose Ends.
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