Stray Bullets: Sunshine & Roses, Part 4 – “The Salad Days”

Part 4 (Issues #25-32) opens with the earliest event in the Stray Bullets chronology so far: Kretchmeyer is leaving his parents’ house in December 1974. We get a good look at the dysfunctional family dynamics–before he kills his parents, believing he has made a clean break. These scenes are interspersed with Baltimore in 1979: Beth, Nina, Scott, and Krethchmeyer are dealing with Harry and the drug trade. In the end, Beth agrees to go to Sante Fe with Kretchmeyer and Scott, where they bond over peyote.

Kretchmeyer and Annie return to Kretch’s home town, and discover that the murder has not remained anonymous: Kretch’s father survived long enough to identify him as the murderer. When Kretch and Annie catch up to Vic, they warn him that the police are on his trail. Another narrative thread follows Spanish Scott and an accomplice as they attempt to recover the missing cocaine and cash. The series has stopped jumping around chronologically as much as the original series, but there are time jumps within each issue–so the story is not as linear as it had been earlier in Sunshine & Roses.

The last big event finds Beth sending Orson back to Baltimore to return to his former life. But he discovers that much has changed–their big heist actually made a difference. His old friend Chandra (the stripper) fills him in, and sends him back to Beth. Orson gifts her with his cash stash before he goes. And so the game is on for the final installment of the story.

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Back in 2020 I asked David Lapham about future collections; he told me that Part 5 would contain the remaining 10 issues of the series. Since then all of his public statements have said that he plans to return to Stray Bullets someday, but not in the near future. Presumably that includes the final Sunshine & Roses collection as well. Having noticed how much time had elapsed, I decided now was the time to reread Part 4 and buy the remaining issues from Amazon/Comixology. Because there are 10 issues and no compilation, I am going to cover the individual issues in the form of a reading diary. Here’s hoping for a big conclusion that is worth discussing.

Stray Bullets: Sunshine & Roses #33 “An Arm for an Arm”

The issue begins in Kentucky in 1982. Annie and Kretchmeyer’s brother Vic are talking about how Kretchmeyer killed their parents, while Kretch is outside trying to figure out how to fire a rifle with his numb left arm. Disgusted, he leaves them and heads back to Baltimore. He happens upon Chandra outside the donut shop and follows her home. He also begins spying on Spanish Scott (who was the person who disfigured Chandra during the big Cock’s Crow robbery that kicked off the events in this arc). So she is an ally in his plot to kill Scott, but he also recruits one of Scott’s crew. The story ends with him cutting off his dead arm with a knife, then burning down the Cock’s Crow.

Stray Bullets: Sunshine & Roses #34 “I Am Your Friend”

Annie and Vic go to Baltimore. They crash with Rose, who met Annie in Florida. Turns out that Spanish Scott is Rose’s brother. Vic falls off the wagon and shoots some heroin, than has a fantasy of breaking into Rose’s apartment and saving the day. Annie tells him he needs to seduce Rose, and he begins a hallucinatory verbal debate with a nearby inanimate object.

Stray Bullets: Sunshine & Roses #35 “Protect Your Brain”

The cover of this issue shows Vic wearing the classic paranoid’s tin foil hat. He has started seeing and hearing hallucinations from the television telling him that the heroin Annie is offering is a mind control cocktail, and he is going to be mated with the queen of an alien race. He takes Rose out to dinner, but is hallucinating so badly that he is barely able to keep it together. When a street person shoots at him through the front window Rose is convinced that something dangerous is happening. Back at Rose’s place, Kretch breaks in, intending to punish Scott by killing his sister. Hallucinations to the rescue! Vic sees him as the General in his hallucinations, stabs him in the wrist, and he and Rose escape.

Stray Bullets: Sunshine & Roses #36 “Love Yourself”

 This issue begins in April, 1982. Monster is questioning a dreadlocked Black hippie who calls himself Love Yourself (who is so memorable that I’m pretty sure we have not seen him before). Kretch sets off a bomb in the Tips Bar that Spanish Scott frequents, and Scott gets the message: he is sure that it was Kretch. It turns out that Love has been sheltering Rose, Vic, and Joey, without knowing about the family connections. But Love accepts his role as protector, and suits up to defend them. Which leads all the way to a meetup with Monster.

Stray Bullets: Sunshine & Roses #37 “Road Trip”

The time line is a bit hazy here. Beth and Nina have become separated. Orson finds Beth in  a motel room that was just shot up. She tells him the shooters got the money and the coke, and they have to get back to Nina before Scott or one of his lieutenants snatches her for a half million dollar reward. On the way back from Phoenix, Arizona to Ojai, California Beth starts hearing audio hallucinations from the car radio: lots of hallucinating in this arc! They retrieve Nina, but while trying to escape from Roth (one of the Baltimore gang) they end the episode with a spactacular car crash in the desert.

Stray Bullets: Sunshine & Roses #38 “That’s Life”

An Amy Racecar story in several chapters, each introduced by lyrics from American pop standards (like “That’s Life” and “Que Sera, Sera”). Lil’B is struggling to remember just about everything, and there are flashes of a hospital emergency room, as well as earlier times in Baltimore. Plus, maybe this is the last Amy Racecar story? That would be OK with me. In the final chapter Beth regains consciousness in a hospital bed under attack from some Baltimore low-life, but is saved by Love Yourself, who says he came as soon as he got her call.

Stray Bullets: Sunshine & Roses #39 “Calls”

As the title implies, this issue revolves around phone calls. The first is Orson, calling Chandra in Baltimore from Phoenix, where he has been staking out the storage place that he and Beth used to stash their stuff. Vic calls Annie from the closet in Chandra and Kretchmeyer’s place. Love Yourself is there, too, and it turns out that Kretch saved his life from Monster back in the parking garage. Annie pulls Vic out of the closet, and Kretch and Chandra arrive in Phoenix. Finally, Chandra calls Love: she tells him the money is buried beneath the house, and says it’s his if he saves Orson.

Stray Bullets: Sunshine & Roses #40 “Frenemies”

Chan rejoins Kretch in bed, sure that she made the call unnoticed. Love, Beth, and Vic get on a plane to Phoenix. And we see what happened to Beth at the Fish Motel: she was about to fall to a gang of locals, but Kretch took them out with a rifle. He followed Stephano to a hotel, killing him and taking the money. He tells Chandra that he knew she was calling Love. He starts choking her, but is interrupted by a knock at the door claiming to be Housekeeping.

Stray Bullets: Sunshine & Roses #41 “Walkin’ on Sunshine, Part 1”

In the monthly publication schedule there was a six-month gap before the arc’s two-part conclusion began. Spanish Scott arrives in California, and before long the whole gang will converge. Annie figures out which hospital Beth is in, so she heads there with Love and Vic. Kretch calls his inside man in Baltimore and hears that Scott is already in California, Monster is on his way to the airport, Roth is headed to Phoenix to retrieve the money and coke…plus they have lots of contracted local help. Everyone converges on the hospital, and the bodies start dropping fast. We see how the bad guys converged on the hospital in search of Nina, and how Love rescued Orson and came into Beth’s room just in time to behead her would-be torturer and killer. Before they can get away Kretch finds them and shoots Love. Left alone in Kretch’s car, Chandra (who did not die after all) steals the money and coke from the trunk. The hospital is on fire, and Scott has killed four cars worth of cops.

Stray Bullets: Sunshine & Roses #42 “Walkin’ on Sunshine, Part 2”

Over a year gap in the monthly schedule! I’m sure glad I was not reading it in real time. The hospital is being evacuated, so lots of the actors are moving around in the chaos. When Kretch fails to deliver the goods, Scottie shoots (and apparently kills) him. Chandra, Orson and Beth get away, along with Beth, the money, and the coke. Chandra goes back for Love, and Beth tells Orson to go to Las Vegas. But on the road he sees a sign for the 1st Annual Seaside Spring Festival, and takes the turnoff: which takes us back to the location of several issues in the original Stray Bullets series. In the final note Lapham says that the next arc will be titled Virginia, but no start date has been determined. 

In that same note Lapham says that what started out as a fill-in-the-gap story became an entirely unexpected adventure with new characters, that will carry the story into  the future as well as redefining some of the character’s pasts. That is easy to believe, given that the original series only ran for 40 issues! While Sunshine & Roses may have grown out of control in some ways, it was a very satisfying ride just the same.