After five issues, a whole lot of mindf*cking, and Nazis, I think I’m finally starting to see the bigger picture that David Lapham is painting with Sparta: USA.
While we still don’t get a huge portrait of the world outside of Sparta itself, Lapham throws in a few choice lines of dialogue between our hero Godfrey McLaine and the evil entity known as The Maestro in which he reveals that the entire situation deals with the Pied Piper of Hamelin (Maestro...), and in effect delivers that “ooooooooooooh” moment that I talked about way back in a review of one of the early issues of this series.
While the cliffhanger of issue #4 really threw me for a loop, the realization that Lapham seems to be blending in a mixture of mythologies from throughout history, including fairy tales (Pied Piper), ancient history (Sparta) and American history (WWII), takes the cake. In turn, he’s sort of forming a weird concoction of eras that blend together in a way that makes a bizarre ethereal kind of sense. I’m not sure that the series will have any solid, definitive conclusion that spells out all the uncertainties or explains the quirks and absurdities, but that leftover strangeness is part of Sparta: USA’s charm.
Despite the appeal of Lapham’s twisted plot, the storytelling itself is still a little fractured and can sometimes feel like it’s jumping from place to place, situation to situation, instead of ever constructing a narrative that comes together cohesively. For the most part, the sporadic pace lends itself to the story, but there are some story beats that still feel out of place. The ongoing saga between Ralphie and Sis is thrown into the middle of this issue, having left off with them at about the same time in issue #4. It simply feels unnecessary in the end, out of place amongst the rest of the interesting plot threads weaving throughout the book.
There’s only one issue to go and still a lot of things to be resolved and questions to be answered, but I’m not expecting to come out of issue #6 with a clear thought in my head. Issue #5 is indeed the penultimate issue and features the moment of realization where you just might see the thoughts swirling around in Lapham’s head as he pressed his pen to paper.
