Stray Bullets: Sunshine & Roses Volume 1

Stray Bullets is a crime comic series, perhaps the longest running one of its kind. Certainly the longest running one using the same cast of characters, which makes the events more poignant. Most such comics, the characters are there then blown away, or in prison, or running with the cash. You never get to really know them. Except in this series, you will spend ten to twenty issues with a character and their departure will be meaningful. People keep calling it a crime noir, but that’s redundant. Have you ever read a noir that wasn’t crime?Sunshine and Roses is really the second title of the series, the first one being simply called Stray Bullets. You don’t need to have read the first series at all to understand what is happening in this second one. Though if you have, then it adds some extra weight to the events. A lot of familiar characters are about, Orson and Beth, skanky Rose, Monster, and Spanish Scott. Now added into the mix is a new boy, the titular Kretchmeyer. Another stone cold killer with his own agenda.Again, for those who read the first series, you will recognize that the events here happen before many of the stories in the first book. They take place between the first and second arcs, and considering that we know the ultimate fates of many of these characters, it adds some gravity and a hint of tragedy to the events.This book collects the first 8 issues of the series - really a bargain for the price. The story stays primarily with Beth and Orson and doesn’t skip around in time and place as the originals did. So far things have been fairly linear.

Stray Bullets is back and it is better than before! The wild and zany antics of Orson, Beth, and Nina continue in Sunshine and Roses. If you never read Stray Bullets, this is a good place to start. Kretchmeyer is one of the best additions to the series, if not all comics, in quite a long time. Rock on!

Stray Bullets is the best comic ever.

It's been a while since I've bought comics so I was unaware that a new Stray Bullets series was being published. Part one of Sunshine and Roses has art by David Lapham that is sketchier and less detailed than I remembered but the characters and stories are excellent. Can't wait to get to Part Two to see what happens next.A Highly recommended noir crime series.

I'm a lifelong reader of comics and graphic novels and have never been squeamish when it comes to the violence portrayed in various stories...if that violence serves the story. Unfortunately, the violence in Stray Bullets seems completely without purpose other than to try to be cool. Again, I'm not opposed to violence, but it simply doesn't fill the void of poor storytelling.It doesn't help that the artwork is pretty generic with nothing really noteworthy about it. Also, for me, there wasn't a single character that I could even remotely empathize with let alone identify with, which really alienates the reader from the characters/stories. This one is a hard pass for me.