Fifteen years ago, Dashiell ‘Dash’ Bad Horse ran away from a life of abject poverty and utter hopelessness on the Prairie Rose Indian Reservation in hopes of finding something better. Now, he’s come back home to find nothing much has changed on ‘The Rez’ – short of a glimmering new casino, and a once-proud people overcome by drugs and organized crime. So is he back to set things right or just get a piece of the action? Also at the center of the storm is Tribal Leader Lincoln Red Crow, a former ‘Red Power’ activist turned burgeoning crime boss who figures that after 100 years of the Lakota being robbed and murdered by the white man, it’s now time to return the favor. Now Dash – armed with nothing but a set of nunchucks, a hellbent-for-leather attitude and (at least) one dark secret – must survive a world of gambling, gunfights, G-men, Dawg Soldierz, massacres, meth labs, trashy sex, fry bread, Indian pride, Thunder Beings, the rugged beauty of the Badlands…and even a brutal scalping or two. For a dose of Sopranos-style organized crime drama mixed with Native American crime fiction, look no further than SCALPED!
Scalped is a 60 issue crime/western comic book series written by Jason Aaron and illustrated by R. M. Guéra, published monthly by Vertigo Comics. Issue #1 was published on January 3, 2007.
The series focuses on the Oglala Lakota inhabitants of the fictional Prairie Rose Indian Reservation in modern-day South Dakota as they grapple with organized crime, rampant poverty, drug addiction and alcoholism, local politics and the preservation of their cultural identity.
Scalped originally began as a prospective relaunch of Scalphunter, an older DC character. As development proceeded, much of the original concept was abandoned in favor of the current plot.
Jason Aaron has said the plot of the comic is partly inspired by Leonard Peltier, a Native American activist who was arrested for the murder of two FBI agents in a reservation shootout in 1975.
