Review time! with ‘Bog Bodies’

“Over the hill and across the moor, I ran in the house and slammed the door”

Bog Bodies appears to be a simple crime comic by Declan Shalvey, Gavin Fullerton, Rebecca Nalty, and Clayton Cowles (with editing by Heather Antos and publishing by Image), but it slowly turns into something a bit deeper and disturbing. It’s the first thing I’ve read by Shalvey (I own Savage Town, but whoops, haven’t actually read it yet), and I’m looking forward to reading more, if this is what he brings to the table.

The premise of the book is simple: Killian, a young dude trying to make his way as a gangster, is picked up by Keano, a friendly older gangster who’s taking him on a job. They drive from Dublin out into the countryside, where Killian opens the trunk of the car and finds Gerry, another gangster, pointing a gun at him. Apparently Killian messed up a job and the big boss wants him to pay. But before anyone can kill him, Killian makes a run for it. Gerry manages to shoot him in the leg, but he escapes into the, appropriately enough, bogs. He stumbles across an injured young woman, and he decides that if he can get her to safety, maybe he can redeem himself a bit, at least to himself. And, of course, he has two gangsters on his tail. So there’s that.

You can hang a lot of things on a story as simplistic as this, and Shalvey proceeds to do so. Killian was supposed to kill someone, but he screwed it up, so now he hopes that, even if he dies, rescuing the girl – Neev – will be a sort of redemption. Keano is as kind-hearted a gangster as you’re going to find, and he doesn’t really want to kill Killian, but there’s nothing he can do. Gerry is a psychopath, but there’s even a question about how good he is at his job. Shalvey ends up making everyone very philosophical, as they muse about death and life and what a good life really is. They’re out on the moors, so the idea of “bog bodies” – the ones found perfectly preserved from thousands of years ago – is brought up, and it becomes a metaphor for the characters being trapped in amber, disliking their choices but unable to get out of whatever lives they find themselves in. Killian doesn’t really have what it takes to be a gangster, but he’s poor and uneducated, and that means he has very few choices in his life. Gerry, it seems, loves being a gangster, and Keano probably did, once, but he’s mellowed, which is certainly not a tenable position to be in. Neev is an innocent, but she also gets dragged into this world, and it’s clear that her choices are being taken away from her. We see the tragedies of the book coming a mile away, but they’re not really the point – Shalvey throws some “twists” at us, but they’re not supposed to surprise us all that much – as the book is really about trying to make the best of your life even in the face of impossible odds. Killian and Keano are trapped, but they try. Whether they succeed or fail isn’t important.

Shalvey also gets into the idea of consequences, as the book is full of them. All of them have to live with the consequences of their actions, and Shalvey shows the difference between people who care about that and people who don’t. Neev is swept along, but the others are acting, and they know what will happen if they act in a certain way. It’s a clever way to comment on life in general, because while none of us, I hope, are going to be chased by gangsters because we screwed up a job that involved killing someone, we can all relate to the idea of doing something that has both intended and unintended consequences and how we deal with them. From so many gangster stories, we know having a good heart is always bad news, but Shalvey does a good job showing how that might play out and how some people reconcile thinking people should live and knowing they have to die. It adds a nice layer of tension to the book, because while we think we know exactly what’s going to happen (and what you probably think is going to happen does happen), Shalvey keeps us on our toes, because we’re never quite sure if the consequences of the characters’ actions are going to catch up to them or if they’ll be able to evade them.

Fullerton and Nalty give the book a rough, eerie look, which suits the subject matter and the place. Fullerton scores his characters with deep, thick lines, showing the way life has battered them down, and his faces never let us forget that all of these characters have seen too much violence. With Killian and Neev, their experiences have left them fragile, and Fullerton shows that nicely, while Gerry has sunk into the violence far too comfortably, which is also displayed on his face. Fullerton doesn’t have to draw a lot of scenery out on the bogs because it’s night and it’s basically flat, but when he does have to put the characters among trees, he does a good job showing both how twisted and stunted a lot of the trees are, making them menacing, but also how safe they can be, because they provide cover. The house they find out on the moors is falling down (even though someone lives there), and Fullerton does a nice job making it a haven, but a rickety one that can be invaded at any moment. Nalty, meanwhile, has to make everything dark because it’s, you know, the nighttime, but she has to make everything clear, too, and she opts for a beautiful blue-based palette that sets a gorgeous and somber mood while also providing a good complement for the moments of violence, which are naturally colored in red, and the moments of calm, during which she uses softer reds and oranges. Despite the fairly limited palette, it’s a beautifully colored book, one that works very well with Fullerton’s line work.

Bog Bodies is an interesting comic. It’s intense and sad, and while it’s the tiniest bit predictable, the story matters less than the effect the plot has on the characters and what it says about being a human being in a violent world. Shalvey isn’t going for anything too grand, and that makes it more relatable, as the people are just trying to do the right thing (well, most of them) in a world that often doesn’t want them to. Shalvey is still an excellent artist, but it seems like he knows a thing or two about writing, as well, and his fellow creators do a nice job making the story work even better. So that’s neat.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆