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Stray Bullets Comics: Looking Back At David Lapham’s 30-year-old Crime Classic

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After starting his career as a penciller at Valiant Comics, David Lapham followed Jim Shooter when he left to launch Defiant Comics, but thirty years ago, in 1995, it was his turn to open his own indie publishing house: El Capitan Books. His flagship self-published title was something quite different from what he was known to draw. No superheroes, but black & white crime fiction with the award-winning Stray Bullets series.

Entirely written, illustrated, and lettered by Lapham himself (who won the Eisner Award for Best Writer/Artist in 1996), the long-running series targets a mature audience with bleak stories of violence dipped in drama, romance, desperation, and disillusionment. It’s about regular people and criminals, children and adults, growing up and dying, at the periphery or in the heart of the crime world.

David Lapham’s Stray Bullets is not about one character going forward, as it follows a panel of different characters in stories told in a non-chronological fashion. It builds a large narrative, piece by piece, focusing on human experiences, developing thematically complex, rich tales defying clichés and tropes, notably about the consequences of violence and the cyclical nature of trauma. They are tragic vignettes revolving around people pushed to their limits. Every bullet makes an impact.

“Stray Bullets is a series of interconnected short stories dealing with…mostly innocent people…whose lives are affected by violent events. Many times emotional, psychological but also physical. And how that sort of warps them. And how they lead, basically dysfunctional lives. It’s a crime drama series heavy on the drama.”

-David Lapham Anti-gravity Room Interview, 1997 (source)

Highly influential in the crime noir comics genre, most notably on Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips‘ collaborative work, Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso’s 100 Bullets, and others, Stray Bullets is one of the successes of the world of indie comics that emerged through the 1990s. The initial run spanned 40 issues over ten years, from 1995 to 2005, before entering an extended hiatus. It came back in 2014, relaunched under the Image Comics banner, and continued for years. The series may be on hiatus for now, but it could return soon.

Stray Bullets Reading Order

There are technically three Stray Bullets series. Each one works as a potential entry point. I’d recommend reading the original first, and going through the whole 91 issues, but due to the way the series was written (non-chronologically), you can also start with The Killers, which is only 8 issues, and will give you a good idea of the tone, style, themes, and violence of the books. 

  1. Stray Bullets: The Original Series
  2. Stray Bullets: The Killers
  3. Stray Bullets: Sunshine & Roses

A fourth volume titled “Virginia” may come one day; no date has been announced yet.

Stray Bullets: The Original Series

Thanks to its non-linear structure, issues of Stray Bullets can be read independently of one another. However, it is much more interesting to read them in order and see how each piece adds to the others to build the larger story, as initially shaped by David Lapham.

The recommended starting point is the original trade paperback Stray Bullets: Volume 1 – Innocence of Nihilism, which introduces several of the series’ central characters, most notably Virginia Applejack, who ultimately became the heart of the comics, and establishes the tonal and structural blueprint for the rest of the work. 

We also have the Amy Racecar issues, a metafiction work presented as stories written by Virginia, pulp-inspired tales she put on paper as a way to deal with her trauma. As such, even if they could be taken out of the series without much impact, they actually provide in a very colorful manner an exploration of Virginia’s psyché and add real value to the book (they also have been collected separately).

The first series is composed of 41 issues. The first 40 were published between 1995 and 2005, the 41st only came in 2015 when Lapham ended his extended hiatus on the series. At that time, all those issues were made available in the Stray Bullets: Über Alles Edition, a single 1,200-page omnibus.

  • Stray Bullets: Uber Alles Edition
    Collects Stray Bullets #1–41. The original five-story arcs of one of the all-time greatest crime comic series are collected in this GIANT 1,200-page volume. “The Innocence of Nihilism,” “Somewhere Out West,” “Other People,” “Dark Days,” and “HiJinks and Derring-Do” appear in their entirety.

You can also find those issues in the following five trade paperbacks:

Published in 2009, “Open the Goddamn Box” is a 10-page Stray Bullets story starring known characters (Virginia Applejack, Mike Hussey, and Kevin) set in 1986, during the events of Stray Bullets #40.

Stray Bullets: The Killers

When David and Maria Lapham decided to return to Stray Bullets, they first had to decide what story to tell and how. After a false start, they redo the first issue and remember, after all these years, how to not follow the rules of standard comic book storytelling (they detailed the whole process in the behind-the-scenes material provided at the end of the collected edition for The Killers). 

At the same time, they finally published Stray Bullets #41 in 2014 and launched The Killers, an eight-issue miniseries. While it is a direct sequel to the original series, Stray Bullets: The Killers functions as an entry point for new readers. It offers a more serialized story arc and features returning characters like Spanish Scott and, more importantly, Virginia Applejack, as she is the main protagonist of the miniseries. Virginia resurfaced at her aunt’s place after running away once more from her mother’s home. There, she met a teenager named Eli whose protective mother stopped him from developing his artistic career. Encouraged by Virginia, Eli makes drastic changes in his life, but her violent world soon collides with his dreams.

Chronologically, The Killers #1 (set in 1978) takes place before Stray Bullets #4, but the rest of the miniseries is set in 1986, after the original series conclusion.

Stray Bullets: Sunshine & Roses

Originally launched to fill some holes in the stories, Stray Bullets: Sunshine & Roses was supposed to last around 16 issues at first, but it became an ongoing series with 42 issues in total. 

Like Killers, Sunshine & Roses doesn’t go back to the narrative structure of the original Stray Bullets series. Instead, it’s a heavily serialized story that brings back old characters and introduces new ones, mainly Kretchmeyer, Spanish Scott’s right-hand man, and as such, an enforcer for the terrifying Harry.

He plays an important part as Stray Bullets: Sunshine & Roses is going back to 1981, Baltimore, and focuses on how Beth and Orson got their friend Nina out of Harry’s hands, with his money and drugs. A good friend of Beth, Kretchmeyer, became a player in their complicated plan. The story is divided into three consecutive arcs (the planning of the heist/kidnapping, the hiding at Beth’s mom’s place, and the life on the run). The whole book concludes with Beth, Orson, and Nina on their way to the little village called Woodlake, where they were hiding in Stray Bullets #8.

The Amy Racecar Collection

Amy Racecar is a creation of Virginia Applejack’s. David Lapham dedicated some issues to Virginia’s fictional Amy stories, which are fantasy tales of various genres and offer an insight into her psyche. This work of metafiction can be read as entertaining pulp adventures.

  • Amy Racecar Volume 1
    This volume collects the Stray Bullets issues featuring Amy Racecar as well as both issues of Amy Racecar Color Special.
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