Writer: Ed Brisson / Penciller / Colour Artist: C. P. Smith / Letterer: Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou / Covers: Tim Bradstreet / Collects: Sins of The Salton Sea #1-#5 / TP / AWA Inc.
14th May 2024 (Released 31st January 2024)
Review by Paul Dunne
The Pitch: Crime Noir collides with supernatural horror in this gritty thriller by Ed Brisson (Old Man Logan) and C.P. Smith (Wolverine). Wyatt, a professional thief living off the grid, is recruited by his brother for one last job. Their target: an armored car traveling down a desolate stretch of California highway. But when it turns out that their target is carrying not gold bars but human cargo, Wyatt is plunged into a conflict between warring factions of a doomsday cult. The cult claims that it is their solemn duty to save the world by means of human sacrifice. Will Wyatt protect the boy who has come into his charge? Or will he be swayed by the cult's increasingly convincing claims that the end of the world is fast approaching?
One of the great things about crime fiction, apart from its willingness to show you people who do terrible things and say 'Here is your hero', is The Left Turn. An art in any fiction, in the crime story, the left turn must be the masterstroke. You have to be surprised when that cop gets shot, when the guy the police had in custody the whole time turns out to be the mastermind. You have to be floored, like you've just been shot in the gut. It takes the form of any number of things but you know it when you see it: It’s the cop who was masquerading as one of the criminals the whole time, the security guard the robbers missed who brings down the whole show in the robbery, the bosses wife telling the bodyguard she loves him, or... The loot not being quite what you think it's going to be. And in Sins of The Salton Sea, the left turn is pretty goddamn far left.
Sins of The Salton Sea actually uses quite a few cliches to its advantage, most notably the 'guy who got out but gets dragged back in'. Wyatt is a haunted lead, although we don't find out right away what's haunting him. He lives off-grid under an assumed name, anonymous until his brother wonders back into his life, with that other irresistible crime cliche: the one last job that will make us all rich beyond our wildest dreams. It's always the pie that makes you want to bite. Wyatt's brother Jasper shows up out of nowhere after three years and leans on him in that hard/soft way only family can and the book itself begins its slow lean into the notions of family. The book moves fast. The reveals are nicely paced. As the pages turn, the book slowly becomes about the end of the world, but for Wyatt, what does it matter? As we dive into his past, we see his world ended three years back and everyone else's is just a matter of time. Yet key to the story, beyond making Wyatt relive that trauma again and again in smaller ways, is giving him something to fight for.
Brisson writes for the emotion, not the gut-punch, hard-boiled rat-tat-tat of post-Tarantino tough guys. Yes, the characters are hard people, but not without compassion. They contain multitudes and get the chance to display some of those. Brisson really turns up the tension in the heist scene, handing off to Smith, who bathes scenes in a magic hour glow that would normally be welcoming, warming but here marks a transition to an otherworldly nature. The past is a sea of emotion and in the sea there are things that might reach out and take us, requiring sacrifice. Brisson and Smith make this literal in surprising ways. Brisson creates a believable motivation for the actions of the characters that really puts you in 'What would I do?' quandary. Smith's art utilises mixed media at least to my eye, which has a strange effect on the reader but may prove divisive for some of you. Otsmane-Elhou's letters move into something a little more real than previous work, as he allows voices to weaken at key moments. It's a nice style that adds to the overall realism and then the eventual madness that follows. Sins of The Salton Sea is a book that begins in the real and ends with the monstrous. No matter how straight the road is, that left turn is always coming up somewhere.
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