#455 - Holiday Reading 2022: The Sheriff of Babylon - The Deluxe Edition

So continues my holiday reading retrospective and, after reading some horror and then some superhero, I thought I'd read something I little bit more real world.

My 3rd read during my holiday week was The Deluxe Edition of the Sheriff of Babylon, a military/political maxi-series by Jean Paul Leon, Mitch Gerads and Tom King. The series follows Christopher Henry, a former cop who is hired to train the new Iraqi police force in the wake of Saddam Hussein's regime fall. However, when one of his recruits is found shot dead, Chris team's up with Sofia, and American-Iraqi member of the emerging government, and Nassir, a top investigator of the old regime, to discover how he died and why.

Now, I'd heard a lot of good things about this series over the years, although I wasn't entirely sure what it was about. Yes, it was set in the aftermath of the (2nd) Baghdad War but, beyond that, I wasn't too sure what happened between the covers. However, the Sheriff of Babylon had gotten a lot of praise far as I knew and I loved Mitch Gerads work (thank you the Activity). The only question mark was Tom King, who only had a 50% success rate with me thanks to the Vision (Mr Miracle not having done as well).

Fortunately, the Sheriff of Babylon has helped bring Mr. King's win record to 2:1 with me. This series was brutally captivating, intriguing and, above all, awesome. Everything about it felt so against the grain in terms of these types of stories, especially given that not only do the good guys not seem to win but also that there is ambiguity as to who the good guys actually are. The way King seems to have built this story certainly makes me wonder how he wasn't found dead courtesy of his former employers as it feels incredibly critical of the role they played in the landscape SoB displays (although maybe for good reason). Almost every issue seems to deliver me an impression that the heroes (Chris, Sofia and Nassir) were going to win before the rug was pulled out from under me with an event or revelation which totally threw me for a loop. Effectively, this felt like the film Green Zone if you spliced it with Swordfish and the first half hour of the A-Team (movie. Yes, THAT great movie).

Speaking of Green Zone, Mitch Gerads was inch perfect to create (or rather recreate) the world of Sheriff of Babylon. I loved his work in the Activity and Mister Miracle, but this series, while a number of years before the latter, is truly where his work shined in my opinion. The way he rendered Bagbdad, the breakdowns of the various pages and some of the tremendous set pieces found on those pages (like the one where I REALLY wanted Chris to shoot) I fell in love with again and again. The Activity was obviously a learning curve for this gig and the layouts on Babylon were no doubt what got him on Mister Miracle.

Despite one reoccurring problem I had with this series in that some of the dialogue read like double speak of a salesman (which, given some of the characters, might make sense), I think it's an understatement for me to say that I absolutely loved this series. The Sheriff of Babylon was an excellent read for me and, after burning through it in two nights, I think this comic has helped sway my uncertainty about Strange Adventures ...

... of course, Doc Shaner working on it helps.