What do you think?
Rate this book
Stray Bullets
Stray Bullets: Sunshine & Roses, Part 2: Change of Plans
What would you do for love? How far would you go for revenge? "SUNSHINE & ROSES" tells the story of a boy and a girl: how they fell in love and hatched a scheme to blow up the Baltimore underworld. There is no crime book remotely like STRAY BULLETS and with "SUNSHINE & ROSES," the uncompromising, Eisner Award-winning team of DAVID AND MARIA LAPHAM craft a heist story like you never seen.
Collects STRAY BULLETS: SUNSHINE & ROSES #9-16
Collects STRAY BULLETS: SUNSHINE & ROSES #9-16
248 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2018
7 people are currently reading
100 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 30 reviews
July 7, 2023
One of the key volumes of the entire series as it's D-Day, the day our off-beat group of outliers rip-off organised criminals! Surely this will be difficult for Lapham to pull-off and excite and entertain the reader? Nah. Cool beans!
The show goes on. Whatever you thought or considered or theorised about this volume Lapham will exceed it. At times brutal, at times simple, at times poignant, and other times heartbreaking - four completely dysfunctional characters with inter dependencies and drug and/or booze addictions look to rip off the Mob? Formidable! It's the nuances and how Lapham joins the dots from volume one from over 19 years ago, and still entertains and bedazzles. OK this is all getting a bit sycophantic - but the rarity of continually good ongoing series - it has to be treasured. 10 out of 12, fab Five Star read!
2023, 2019 and 2017 read
The show goes on. Whatever you thought or considered or theorised about this volume Lapham will exceed it. At times brutal, at times simple, at times poignant, and other times heartbreaking - four completely dysfunctional characters with inter dependencies and drug and/or booze addictions look to rip off the Mob? Formidable! It's the nuances and how Lapham joins the dots from volume one from over 19 years ago, and still entertains and bedazzles. OK this is all getting a bit sycophantic - but the rarity of continually good ongoing series - it has to be treasured. 10 out of 12, fab Five Star read!
2023, 2019 and 2017 read
June 12, 2019
Baltimore mob boss Harry killed Nina’s boyfriend and made her his coked-up mistress. Now, with her best friend Beth, Beth’s boyfriend Orson, and the questionable young enforcer Kretchmeyer, Nina’s gonna make Harry pay. The plan: obliterate Harry’s deal with the Bolivians, rip him off for millions in cash and drugs and skip town. Except the gang are all fucked up on various substances - what could go wrong??
The first Sunshine & Roses book was good - the second is an undeniable masterpiece! Orson and Beth getting fucked up on pills and vodka while planning the heist was hilarious, and Beth going shopping on speed was so damn funny as was Orson trying to keep up his fake love for Roses.
David Lapham is such a good writer that he can turn on a dime from comedy to the blackest drama without it seeming forced or unconvincing. In the same issue Beth on speed goes hunting for supplies, there’s an absolutely brutal fight scene between her and Kretch and a tragic look at how dark Nina’s life has gotten.
And as much as Stray Bullets has always been a blend of comedy and drama, it’s always been heavily weighted towards the dramatic side. Roses is a clownish character for the most part but there’s also a really sad human side to her - there’s a reason she’s always getting fucked up and sleeping around. And she’s a vision of who Nina is going to be in ten years, if she makes it that far.
The title is a bitterly ironic one - there’s nothing happy or pretty about Sunshine & Roses. Every character’s relationship is a warped, sick version of love: Beth’s for Nina, Kretch’s for Beth, Nina’s for Kretch. One of the most moving scenes is Orson writing a goodbye letter to his younger sister, knowing that going ahead with this crazy heist means death for him - but doing it anyway. His love for Beth - despite meaning certain doom for him - precludes everything, even though he has a shot at a real life and Beth doesn’t. That’s what love is in Stray Bullets: intense pain and death.
Once the Cock’s Crow heist kicks off though - wow, that’s the very definition of an unputdownable read! The only predictable part of it was that Orson and Beth would fuck it up somehow, and, even though I knew they were going to pull it off - this is a prequel story - it’s still gripping seeing how they do it. It’s such a rollercoaster sequence with so many nutty things happening along the way - such imaginative, clever and completely entertaining storytelling.
The Monkey Boy issue was arguably the best single issue comic of the last few years. Joey and Kimberley go to help Kimberley’s junkie mother and Joey’s got a gun without bullets - or is it? Just brilliant. A masterclass in cartooning.
And even after all that - which at this point easily makes this book a masterpiece - there’s still more great stuff in the motel. There’s the black comedy - Orson on coke, the slow-witted motel worker thinking he’s a pedo - and the even blacker drama as we see how the group gets rid of its most troublesome member.
The Amy Racecar issue was again the only part of the book I didn’t completely love. I thought these issues were cute once, and I get that they’re as distinctive of Stray Bullets as “cool beans”, but they feel played out and unnecessary. I could do without them now.
Despite that, there’s no way I could give Change of Plans anything but the highest rating - everything else about it is too good to say it’s deserving of anything less. Effortlessly compelling entertainment by a master writer and artist, Stray Bullets: Sunshine & Roses, Part 2: Change of Plans is another superb addition in this remarkable series. Crime comics as high art - I couldn’t recommend Stray Bullets more.
The first Sunshine & Roses book was good - the second is an undeniable masterpiece! Orson and Beth getting fucked up on pills and vodka while planning the heist was hilarious, and Beth going shopping on speed was so damn funny as was Orson trying to keep up his fake love for Roses.
David Lapham is such a good writer that he can turn on a dime from comedy to the blackest drama without it seeming forced or unconvincing. In the same issue Beth on speed goes hunting for supplies, there’s an absolutely brutal fight scene between her and Kretch and a tragic look at how dark Nina’s life has gotten.
And as much as Stray Bullets has always been a blend of comedy and drama, it’s always been heavily weighted towards the dramatic side. Roses is a clownish character for the most part but there’s also a really sad human side to her - there’s a reason she’s always getting fucked up and sleeping around. And she’s a vision of who Nina is going to be in ten years, if she makes it that far.
The title is a bitterly ironic one - there’s nothing happy or pretty about Sunshine & Roses. Every character’s relationship is a warped, sick version of love: Beth’s for Nina, Kretch’s for Beth, Nina’s for Kretch. One of the most moving scenes is Orson writing a goodbye letter to his younger sister, knowing that going ahead with this crazy heist means death for him - but doing it anyway. His love for Beth - despite meaning certain doom for him - precludes everything, even though he has a shot at a real life and Beth doesn’t. That’s what love is in Stray Bullets: intense pain and death.
Once the Cock’s Crow heist kicks off though - wow, that’s the very definition of an unputdownable read! The only predictable part of it was that Orson and Beth would fuck it up somehow, and, even though I knew they were going to pull it off - this is a prequel story - it’s still gripping seeing how they do it. It’s such a rollercoaster sequence with so many nutty things happening along the way - such imaginative, clever and completely entertaining storytelling.
The Monkey Boy issue was arguably the best single issue comic of the last few years. Joey and Kimberley go to help Kimberley’s junkie mother and Joey’s got a gun without bullets - or is it? Just brilliant. A masterclass in cartooning.
And even after all that - which at this point easily makes this book a masterpiece - there’s still more great stuff in the motel. There’s the black comedy - Orson on coke, the slow-witted motel worker thinking he’s a pedo - and the even blacker drama as we see how the group gets rid of its most troublesome member.
The Amy Racecar issue was again the only part of the book I didn’t completely love. I thought these issues were cute once, and I get that they’re as distinctive of Stray Bullets as “cool beans”, but they feel played out and unnecessary. I could do without them now.
Despite that, there’s no way I could give Change of Plans anything but the highest rating - everything else about it is too good to say it’s deserving of anything less. Effortlessly compelling entertainment by a master writer and artist, Stray Bullets: Sunshine & Roses, Part 2: Change of Plans is another superb addition in this remarkable series. Crime comics as high art - I couldn’t recommend Stray Bullets more.
September 12, 2019
“If I’m being completely honest, I think this plan is completely f….ed”—Orson
Our intrepid teen heroes, Beth and Orson plan to help Nina get revenge on her mob boss, Harry by ripping him off as the planned Coke deal with the Bolivians goes down at the Cock’s Crow (the strip club managed by Spanish Scott). What (will) we do for love? love? In this wild tale it is Orson, for the love of Beth, who knows he is a dead man for taking on Scott, Monster and the rest of the band of murderers. He even writes a sad and touching good-bye letter to his sister in the process. Because he loves Beth, whom we all know is a kind of train wreck, but also love. We get both a teiephoto and wide-angle view of the very wall their Little Engine that Could will crash into: Spanish Scott.
Make no mistake about it: The undercurrent, the very foundation of this darkly slapstick Sunshine and Roses arc is tragedy. As a kind of comparison, most Laurel and Hardy slapstick films are Depression-era tragedies, played for laughs, see below, and this approach has a long history, of course. See below). From the subtitle: Roses is a sad, sex-obsessed woman, far gone, really unable to support her disabled son Joey, also known as Sunshine because he draws sunshine faces everywhere. The volume is a sort of familiar comedic one about a heist gone wrong, but the emotional knife-in-the-heart issue at its center is “The Monkey Boy,” where Joey and Kimberley face a bunch of bullies to help her junkie mother. Joey has with him a gun the boys gave him, one without bullets—or is there one left in the chamber? Thrilling, terrifying, deeply sad. So that story isn’t funny, but it is amazingly well-done, and quite possibly gives us an idea where all the other mad-cap characters—all played for comedy--could end up. Roses, Nina, Kimberley’s mom: All addicts living in Opiod America, on the edge of our new century doom.
The volume opens with Orson (taking a gap year with Beth before he accepts his scholarship to college?) swilling vodka, Beth popping speed, and Nina on coke, joined in their plans by Killer Kretchmeyer, the most (un)reliable criminal in the bunch. So we already know the plan is doomed from the beginning, and it plays out increasingly as manic farce to the brutal end where the group manages to get rid of its scariest member.
For the second volume in a row, the Amy Racecar story feels flat and beside the point. Usually it is the comic relief in a volume of sad stories, but in this tragi-comic volume played most often for black humor, it just doesn’t seem necessary.
I Kind of miss the early days when Lapham created all these one-off issues in the creation of his noirish world. Now it’s more of a straightforward story, but boy is it a great sad one, with amazing cartooning.
An excerpt from The Music Box Movers by Laurel and Hardy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEYl9...
But this is the whole, glorious 27-mnute Music Box film:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-s4nV...
Our intrepid teen heroes, Beth and Orson plan to help Nina get revenge on her mob boss, Harry by ripping him off as the planned Coke deal with the Bolivians goes down at the Cock’s Crow (the strip club managed by Spanish Scott). What (will) we do for love? love? In this wild tale it is Orson, for the love of Beth, who knows he is a dead man for taking on Scott, Monster and the rest of the band of murderers. He even writes a sad and touching good-bye letter to his sister in the process. Because he loves Beth, whom we all know is a kind of train wreck, but also love. We get both a teiephoto and wide-angle view of the very wall their Little Engine that Could will crash into: Spanish Scott.
Make no mistake about it: The undercurrent, the very foundation of this darkly slapstick Sunshine and Roses arc is tragedy. As a kind of comparison, most Laurel and Hardy slapstick films are Depression-era tragedies, played for laughs, see below, and this approach has a long history, of course. See below). From the subtitle: Roses is a sad, sex-obsessed woman, far gone, really unable to support her disabled son Joey, also known as Sunshine because he draws sunshine faces everywhere. The volume is a sort of familiar comedic one about a heist gone wrong, but the emotional knife-in-the-heart issue at its center is “The Monkey Boy,” where Joey and Kimberley face a bunch of bullies to help her junkie mother. Joey has with him a gun the boys gave him, one without bullets—or is there one left in the chamber? Thrilling, terrifying, deeply sad. So that story isn’t funny, but it is amazingly well-done, and quite possibly gives us an idea where all the other mad-cap characters—all played for comedy--could end up. Roses, Nina, Kimberley’s mom: All addicts living in Opiod America, on the edge of our new century doom.
The volume opens with Orson (taking a gap year with Beth before he accepts his scholarship to college?) swilling vodka, Beth popping speed, and Nina on coke, joined in their plans by Killer Kretchmeyer, the most (un)reliable criminal in the bunch. So we already know the plan is doomed from the beginning, and it plays out increasingly as manic farce to the brutal end where the group manages to get rid of its scariest member.
For the second volume in a row, the Amy Racecar story feels flat and beside the point. Usually it is the comic relief in a volume of sad stories, but in this tragi-comic volume played most often for black humor, it just doesn’t seem necessary.
I Kind of miss the early days when Lapham created all these one-off issues in the creation of his noirish world. Now it’s more of a straightforward story, but boy is it a great sad one, with amazing cartooning.
An excerpt from The Music Box Movers by Laurel and Hardy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEYl9...
But this is the whole, glorious 27-mnute Music Box film:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-s4nV...
May 29, 2022
The story of just how Beth, Orson, and Nina wound up with a big bag of cash at the beginning of Stray Bullets continues here. The plan to steal the money didn't seem so sound to begin with and the wheels coming off didn't help things. There are a lot of twists and, of course, the book ends in such a way that I immediately want to read the next one.
David Lapham's art in this fits seamlessly with the earlier Stray Bullets installments even though they were done decades apart. The Laphams once again have crafted hall of fame crime comics. I know Spanish Scott is going to live through Sunshine & Roses but I still want him to get shot or something.
David Lapham's art in this fits seamlessly with the earlier Stray Bullets installments even though they were done decades apart. The Laphams once again have crafted hall of fame crime comics. I know Spanish Scott is going to live through Sunshine & Roses but I still want him to get shot or something.
October 7, 2023
The big event happens here! We basically know from Vol 2 of the original series how this turns out, but it really doesn't take away from the action here. It's near perfect.
Lapham's artwork is perfect for the story. Each character is unique. I especially like Beth's design. Her facial expressions are perfect. Monster of course is fantastic, I like the hard rectangle speech bubbles he gets. It's perfect for a large cast of characters like we get here. The panels are typically kept simple which helps to keep the reading fast paced.
One of the most entertaining crime comics I've read.
Lapham's artwork is perfect for the story. Each character is unique. I especially like Beth's design. Her facial expressions are perfect. Monster of course is fantastic, I like the hard rectangle speech bubbles he gets. It's perfect for a large cast of characters like we get here. The panels are typically kept simple which helps to keep the reading fast paced.
One of the most entertaining crime comics I've read.
September 12, 2018
Sunshine & Roses V2 is probably the tightest story in the entire Stray Bullets milieu, with eight issues spent on less than a week of time, detailing the days leading up to the infamous heist that puts our main characters out in California, and what comes afterward.
There's just a hair of unusual narrative structure in this volume, as we learn what's going on with a few different characters leading up to the heist. It's a bit of a pity, as I love the far-flung narratives of Stray Bullets, but I can also enjoy Lapham's decision to tell this one straight, after jumping around it for decades.
The joy of the story is, as you might guess, what happens when things go horrible wrong, because how can it be otherwise for Beth and Orson? It's also great seeing how this narrative comes together and how it affects these characters, most of whom we've known for decades, but a few of which we know only through the lens of the extended "Sunshine & Roses" arc.
I'm really champing at the bit to go reread V2: Somewhere Out West again, which speaks to Lapham's ability to reveal new facets of these characters as he steps through their life stories fractally.
There's just a hair of unusual narrative structure in this volume, as we learn what's going on with a few different characters leading up to the heist. It's a bit of a pity, as I love the far-flung narratives of Stray Bullets, but I can also enjoy Lapham's decision to tell this one straight, after jumping around it for decades.
The joy of the story is, as you might guess, what happens when things go horrible wrong, because how can it be otherwise for Beth and Orson? It's also great seeing how this narrative comes together and how it affects these characters, most of whom we've known for decades, but a few of which we know only through the lens of the extended "Sunshine & Roses" arc.
I'm really champing at the bit to go reread V2: Somewhere Out West again, which speaks to Lapham's ability to reveal new facets of these characters as he steps through their life stories fractally.
July 16, 2020
In the original run of Stray Bullets, Beth Kozlonowski ends up hiding out in California with a couple suitcases of drugs and money. This volume of the sequel series doubles back to 1981 to fill in the details of the heist that made the escape from Baltimore possible. As always, it's an enthralling read with plenty of violence and humor. The humor may actually be a little overdone this outing as the caper practically devolves into slapstick at times.
These are not professional thieves.
These are not professional thieves.
September 28, 2018
There were so many oh-my-god moments in this GN, and I loved it very much.
December 11, 2020
The sunshine gang pulls it off even when everything goes wrong. The haze doesn't help their situation much either.
December 22, 2018
Mayhem redefined by the Sunshine Gang
September 17, 2019
There's just nothing about the new incarnation of Stray Bullets that isn't exceptionally good. Art, plotting, dialogue, Lapham can do no wrong.**
(**And I just remembered the iffy Amy Racecar chapters. They're inconsistent, sometimes brilliant, sometimes....ehhh...)
Plot points:
(**And I just remembered the iffy Amy Racecar chapters. They're inconsistent, sometimes brilliant, sometimes....ehhh...)
Plot points:
May 9, 2020
The Laphams are back with a fresh volume of their saga of crime, poor impulse control and depravity: Stray Bullets. This time, the story largely focuses on a big chunk of narrative that happens between some of the volumes of the original Stray Bullets run, and answers the very big question of how Orson, Beth and Nina ended up in a nowhere desert town with a few million bucks in cash and a suitcase of cocaine. We know already they will get there, but with this story, the journey matters more than the destination, and what follows is one of the more enjoyable and expansive middle chapters inserted into a pre-existing story you’re likely to see. The characters are largely familiar but the continued deep dive into their motivations and their hang ups is really compelling, even if you feel like you need a fresh shot of hand sanitizer after every issue.
April 16, 2019
Fairly good but depressing crime comic collection - monochrome
This comic series revolves around a collection of characters , all involved, one way or another, in criminal activity. Drug-dealing, gun-running, murder, bloodshed, lots of sex all feature prominently. Most of the main characters are manipulative and untrustworthy, exploiting others as much as possible, sometimes with good intentions. There's a good deal of substance abuse as well. Ultimately none of the characters come out of this well and you just feel that it will end badly for all of them - and perhaps that's all they deserve. A third volume seems likely.
This comic series revolves around a collection of characters , all involved, one way or another, in criminal activity. Drug-dealing, gun-running, murder, bloodshed, lots of sex all feature prominently. Most of the main characters are manipulative and untrustworthy, exploiting others as much as possible, sometimes with good intentions. There's a good deal of substance abuse as well. Ultimately none of the characters come out of this well and you just feel that it will end badly for all of them - and perhaps that's all they deserve. A third volume seems likely.
February 20, 2020
This book collects issues 9 through 16 of the on-going series. As a crime comic, Stray Bullets is sharper than a diamond and yet, somehow, comes across as more human than any others in this genre. Perhaps it's because we aren't simply seeing hard men go after a job. We also see the human wreckage that gets dragged along into the underbelly. The people not smart enough to earn except through crime. Those born into it and literally have not known any other way of life. Those kept in it out of habit, substance abuse, or threat. Each character is different and each is tragically flawed and each is remarkably human.
August 27, 2024
This volume truly shows how the crew got out of Baltimore since in the original run it was never really explicity shown. Honestly it's as big of a shitshow as I thought. Gotta say though if you thought Orson was impressive before I really gotta give him props. Dude really went himhon and showed how far he's fallen in order to keep Beth. It's a shame we all know how his tale ends (or do we? Since we never get confirmation.)
November 9, 2020
I've enjoyed all the Stray Bullets books to this point, typically awarding 4 starts. This one gets the 5th star because the narrative is not as jumpy and the inking isn't wonky on a few pages. Criminals try to rip off their former friends, also criminals, so they can blow town once and for all. Hard boiled
May 26, 2021
This is part of a larger graphic novel, not a standalone arc so it continues right from where Vol 1 left off. We get to see Beth and Orson's plan go completely to hell. I'm loving this series. It's been too long since I read the original Stray Bullets for me to compare them, but this one is dead solid so far.
July 17, 2020
Still amazing. Everything I said about the last review applies here. I think it’s also notable to mention that this is the first time Lapham has done a continuing narrative from book to book like this. Stray Bullets has never been this chronological before, I dig it. It’s a nice change of pace.
December 15, 2020
Just as good as book 1. If I could be critical about anything, it only suffers from feeling like the middle chapter in a bigger story. You definitely must read the first volume and this will not have a conclusion.
February 26, 2019
A tale of robbery and betrayal.
There was plenty of action in this graphic novel, but I found it a bit too odd.
Reading time a couple of hours.
There was plenty of action in this graphic novel, but I found it a bit too odd.
Reading time a couple of hours.
April 11, 2019
What a roller coaster!
I miss when Lapham would spend a whole book telling sordid little tales of ancillary characters, but boy, that's a minor complaint when the main arc has been this engrossing.
I miss when Lapham would spend a whole book telling sordid little tales of ancillary characters, but boy, that's a minor complaint when the main arc has been this engrossing.
July 18, 2019
yeahhhhhhhhhhhh boyyyyyyyyyyyyy*
except the last story which is unnecessarily cruel and dumb
except the last story which is unnecessarily cruel and dumb
July 23, 2020
This is edge of the seat back of the car stuff, monstrous
September 21, 2022
3.5 stars.
Didn't like it as much as the first one. And I still don't like the one trippy issue that seems totally out of left field. But I really enjoyed the action and looking forward to more.
Didn't like it as much as the first one. And I still don't like the one trippy issue that seems totally out of left field. But I really enjoyed the action and looking forward to more.
January 9, 2023
The last 4 parts of this book were awesome. Truly great. First three, a bit less so but still good.
Read
June 21, 2023The best
Darned series I've read since Strangers in Paradise. If you read only two comics series ever Stray Bullets and Stranger's in Paradise are those two series.
Darned series I've read since Strangers in Paradise. If you read only two comics series ever Stray Bullets and Stranger's in Paradise are those two series.
January 28, 2024
Goodreads should bring sixth star just for this series.
There's no better comic out there. I think there never was and probably, won't be.
There's no better comic out there. I think there never was and probably, won't be.
September 2, 2024
The story continues to be entertaining and dark. Hard to predict what could possibly happen next! Mature readers only.
June 30, 2025
4.5 rounded up.
August 11, 2024
All the buildup to the heist pays off in the best way in this one. Not loving the Lil B issues but get what the idea is
Displaying 1 - 30 of 30 reviews