Page 45 Review by Stephen
Terrifying. Against the pitch-black backdrop that overshadows the pages and encloses each panel within them, the tension builds from the very beginning before the violence kicks in a mere third of the way in, and then thunders on furiously at a blistering, breakneck speed. Oh, Lapham knows what he's doing: claustrophobia plays its part, as does the occasional split screen (which works rather better in comics because you don't risk missing something), but so does the deafening insanity that stabs at the psychopath's ears. Any work whose opening chimes consist of a rendition of "Dem Dry Bones" is on course for dementia. Sluice the man's auditory canal with a shoal of flashing, knife-toothed monsters, like piranhas from the darkest depths, careering upstream to the brain, their jagged, tape-worm tails lashing out behind them as they pierce the rubbery cortex, and you are in so much trouble. It's a shame Mia doesn't know that.
Mia lives in New Jersey with her little sister Stacey, her loving, trusting Dad and a step-mother called Suzanne whom she resents and distrusts. The thing is, Mia resents everything, so she's hardly the most objective witness; as her friend Yvonne is quick to point out as they idle away on the seaside boardwalk, she's a complete downer, her first words at almost any meeting being bitter and angry. But when the couple depart for a skiing holiday with some of their friends, and Yvonne casually invites some of her own friends round to Mia's house, they egg each other on to phone the numbers they find in Suzanne's address book, claiming she's in a coma. Oddly, no one recognises Suzanne's name or description, so they bluff it: they make two very stupid phone calls. The first is to phone Suzanne herself in the ski lodge (Scott: "Hello, Suzanne... I finally found you.") and it scares the living daylights out of her ("D-Daniel?"). The second is to this Daniel. It's only then that they discover the cash, but it's far too late, because Suzanne is on the move immediately, and Daniel isn't too far behind.
Lapham excels at family cracks and their effects on adolescents caught in their strain. His STRAY BULLETS series is full of young, complex individuals scarred by acts of violence, their paths crossing in unusual ways, so if you imagine for one second that this is as straight forward as I've made it sound, there's more to be unravelled beneath. Yvonne, for example, is a nightmare. She's constantly trying to get into young Scott's oblivious trousers, then goes off in a hilarious huff each time, and when on her own she discovers a knife caked in blood, bagged with all that money, what does she do with that knowledge...? Oh dear. It really does pay to share.
Like Lapham's previous work, this is in black and white, but he's opted for tones here, and successfully so. The lighting on the speeding, ramming cars is loud enough without the sound effects, but he's a dab hand at placing those as well, so that they translate immediately from the letters on the page to the noise you're intended to hear. I've never seen so much action in his hands, nor so many faces distraught and eyes stretched wide with tear-streaming desperation. It's that sort of a book: terrifying.
