Friends and Sinners in Sammy Harkham’s Crickets #9

Sammy Harkham’s Crickets #9 opens with a two-page story of a suburban couple awkwardly running into an old acquaintance at the local mall.  That story leads into the centerpiece of the issue— a story of a man in the 1860s facing a murder charge and the death penalty.  The issue wraps up with a story of (of all things) Frederick the Great.  And then, as a coda, Harkham throws in a one-page strip on the back cover of a man calling an old friend only to realize why he hasn’t called in a long time.  It’s an odd collection of stories; the quality is consistently great, but Harkham seems to be jumping all over the place.  The first story, the one about the couple and the old acquaintance, opens with the caption “A million years ago.”  That story, “Reunion,” and the back cover’s “A Sunday Afternoon” share some thematic links to open and close the issue, but what can we make of everything in between?

The clues may actually be found on the cover and on the inside cover front piece.  The cover is a nighttime shot of the old California town that is the setting of the second story, “The San Fernando Kid,”. It’’s a tranquil image of the setting, like nothing we actually experience in the story.  It’s a wonderful image but it’s not what we should be focusing on if we’re looking to unlock some thematic connective tissue for this issue.  Instead, we need to look at the subtitle just under the logo— “sing, you sinners.”  Who is Harkham directing this command to?  Himself?  The various characters in the stories?  Us, the audience? Who are the sinners here?  It’s a matter introduced as soon as we pick up the issue. 

And then the mystery continues on the inside cover where a new subtitle is introduced— “Goodbye to friendship.”  So here things become a tad clearer.  In most of these stories, we see various friendships explored.  But the imager on the front piece seems more related to “sing, you sinners.”  Harkham draws Adam and Eve’s expulsion from Eden, expelled out of paradise and into a wasteland.  But even there, could Harkham be trying to tie the breakup of Adam and Eve’s relationship with God to the other friendships we encounter in this issue?

In “The San Fernando Kid,” the beginning of his long-form follow-up to Blood of the Virgin, Harkham tells the story of a man who may or may not be named Alvarez.  In court, as a prosecutor argues Alvarez’s guilt in killing a man over $600 and a horse, the lawyer tells the jury “‘Alvarez’ being as common in California as ‘Smith’ is in Boston.  There’s over thirty Alvarez’s in the state registries… none of the Alvarez clans claim him as one of their own…” Just who this man is remains part of the continuing mysteries of this issue.  

For all we know, San Fernando may be a paradise (but as seen here, I kind of doubt it) but either way, Alvarez isn’t a part of the community so he isn’t part of whatever paradise it may be.  His only friend is a fellow prisoner locked up in the cell next to him. Here we see the sinners and the friends coming together and read on to see which role becomes the driving force behind the story.  Harkham’s cartooning conveys Alvarez’s cool calmness as he faces the death penalty; this is clearly a man who has other plans than facing the hangman’s noose.  So when the legal drama gives way to an action-packed chase, you know what Alvarez is running from. But what is he running to?

So let’s loop back to the first story in the issue, “Reunion,” which turns out to be all about friendship (or at least longing for a stable relationship in life) and sins.  Avi, the man that the couple runs into at the mall, is a troubled man with a troubled past; the interaction between the three is strained and rather painful to witness.  The shared life experiences that are looked back on come from such different and conflicting perspectives.  The second page of this two-page story narrows its scope to just Avi alone in his car after the chance encounter and he is angry at the world.  There’s a world of differences between Alvarez and Avi but their anger binds these characters together even as what they do with that anger speaks to the differences between the two men.  

Then coming to “Frederick the Great,” it’s a story all about friendship and more. It’s about longing in the face of destiny as Frederick’s own longings run counter to his father’s plans for him. Maybe like Avi and Alvarez, Frederick is a man struggling with his past— who he has been and what he has done— as he faces an uncertain future. Similar to Avi and Alvarez, there are connections between Alvarez and Frederick that speak to the different “sins” of these two stories and the different ways their characters approach “friendship.”  

Crickets #9 explores the room in our lives from friends and sinners.  If nothing else, what rings throughout this issue is the loneliness of these characters.  Alvarez faces that loneliness with defiance, Avi faces it with sadness, and Frederick faces it with pleading.  In one complete issue, Harkham explores these voids and absences brought on by isolation in the face of being surrounded by “friends.”