ECC Ediciones compiles the two series by Lee Bermejo, Suicidal and Suicidal Kings of Hell, in a single luxurious volume that closes this dystopian and pessimistic work.
The future of Los Angeles after an alleged earthquake that destroyed the city is black, desolate, a world divided between those who could survive the catastrophe, and those who did not. The social struggle, the difference between the neighborhoods, the gangs, the tribalism, fill the pages of this series.
Suicidas is born with a great disaster: The big one. An earthquake that destroys a good part of the city of Los Angeles, especially affecting the less attractive areas. This produces a social rupture, a division between the rich and the poor, with a wall that divides the city between the poor and forgotten and those who still have a real city to live in. In between, an independent state is created that enjoys its own legality, with its own security that avoids entrances from New Los Angeles to old. A corporate state.
Bermejo first devised the first miniseries as a story that spoke of that fracture, of an immigrant who comes from the poor to the rich and rises to the top through a cruel futuristic fighting game. X-raying a society that he himself creates, but acts as a dark mirror of the current one. It is a story full of details about that corporate future, of vested interests, but above all it focuses on that life of an immigrant who, thanks to his brutality, can be a useful tool, both for the brutal classes of Nuevo Angeles, as well as for the corporate interests of the old woman.
It has a critical load that is not hidden, but that does not develop beyond what we already know. The media, money, big business, immigration, political impassivity, or worse, the inability to do anything, fill the gaps in the work, which actually speak of a man, of how he changes, transforms, like a monster may change, but it will always live on that edge, and if it falls, the monster will rise again.
The second part of the work was published later, and it was a prequel, so this volume has been placed before the main story, but in my humble opinion, reading it in the order of publication makes the whole more interesting. I think that Bermejo risks more and wins whole in this second installment, focusing 100% on New Angeles and its almost apocalyptic world of gangs and poverty, of personal dramas that in the end become goals and objectives. And that risk creates a melting pot of stories that make this series much more interesting than the predecessor and its game with flashbacks to narrate the creation of a Suicide.
The art of the work falls on Bermejo in the first series, and on Alessandro Vitti (helped in the last issue by Gerardo Zaffino). The scriptwriter of the entire work knows its strengths, so in the first series the spectacularity and darkness are enhanced, even in bright settings there is always something dark. With a futuristic character design supported by all the realism that he is capable of imagining, Bermejo leaves a work more dynamic than what they are used to doing, and full of impressive vignettes. Vitti in the prequel does just the opposite, he clearly shows a world full of trash and blood, making it clear that it is not that darkness is not present, it is that it is not distinguished from light, in New Angeles there is shit, violence, and it does not hide behind armor, spectacle or neon.
Suicidal It is a work that could have been perfectly done in Europe, it has an almost BD spirit, but with such an American approach and with such a US comic image, no one doubts its origin. But this makes it clear that both ways of understanding comics touch each other much more than the public usually thinks. It is a work that begins being quite typical and with stereotypes, he is clear that the story and the message must be clear and he does it well. The second part shows an advance in the ability of the writer to tell and organize more information, using more characters and situations that round off aspects of the first part and increase interest by increasing the stories it tells, the little stories are powerful and make up a mosaic that improves the work.
Lee Bermejo with Suicidal has improved, and created a dystopian and critical work under the seal of Vertigo, which reflects on people in extreme situations, on power, on social classes, and does so slightly, but with a clear intention that leaves a mark on the reader .