Lost in the Shuffle #2 (review)

Crime, Independent/Self-Published

Creator: Alex M Clark

Independently published, 2025

When we last left our protagonists Quinn and Morgan, as described in our review mid-last year of Lost in the Shuffle #1 (Lost in the Shuffle #1 (review) – World Comic Book Review ), they were in very big trouble and on the run, trying to evade both the police and gangsters. Lost in the Shuffle #2 carries on with the adventure.

With a blown tyre, the two are compelled to seek the assistance of a seedy, shotgun-wielding farmer who inhabits a remote house lost in cornfields. Their rescuer inevitably fulfils the stereotype of a country hick with the darkest of secrets. Despite this, the set-up is more suggestive (the loud bump by the “dog” in the basement, the manacles in the foreground of a panel) than completely obvious: it is not certain at all that Quinn and Morgan are going to end up victims of a sexual predator.

But… they do.

We spoke to Mr Clark about issue 2.

WCBR: The adventure into the cornfields was unexpected. It reminded me very much of Pulp Fiction, where, completely out of left field, Butch and Marsellus Wallace find themselves at the mercies of Zed. Pulp Fiction and Lost in the Shuffle are not just similar because they each have a sex dungeon and unwilling captives, but also because each are a wild and off-piste vignette. Was this part of the story intended to take a page from Tarantino’s book?

AC: I seriously appreciate the Tarantino reference and I’ve been a fan of his for so long that I’m sure it went into my writing. I watched Pulp Fiction in High School at a friend’s house and it blew my mind at a fairly young age. I was not intentionally channeling Tarantino but have always loved dark humor, crime and road trip movies. Any Edgar Wright Cornetto Trilogy movie, Midnight Run, Planes, Trains & Automobiles, etc. I’m from rural Indiana and have always been afraid of creepy old farmers that live in the middle of nowhere surrounded by corn fields. My mind has always wandered to what goes on in those run down old farmhouses. And what better way to express my childhood fears than write them into a road trip dark comedy that has to drive through the Midwest.

WCBR: We now have a new cast member. Were you tempted to also include the redneck farmer as a break from convention?

AC: The farmer is a mix of all those old farmers that used to come into my small hometown to the market or even church on Sundays. In regards to the new cast members, my story is very loosely based on The Wizard of Oz so we will be seeing more crazy characters and a reluctantly heroic foursome halfway through the story. Quinn’s Dad is the metaphorical Wizard.

WCBR: I was reading Rick Remender’s Death or Glory on the weekend. It is also a crime-driven escapade involving cars, crime, and violent bondage, with some grindhouse thrown in. I was almost tempted to do a comparative review between Lost in the Shuffle against Death or Glory. WCBR has been very supportive of Remender’s work (Deadly Class is one of the best comics of the past decade) but Death or Glory is a reminder that not all comics need to be read from cover to cover. Some just should be put down at a point. (I am very conscious you might not have read Death or Glory, but stick with me.) I think crime is much harder to write than most types of fiction because the writer needs to get into the head of some violent types of people without going over the top. What makes a good crime comic? What do you do to inject that into Lost in the Shuffle?

AC: Not sure if you’ve seen the show Poker Face on Peacock but when my wife and I watched the first season, she looked at me and said “This is your book!” I agree there’s some similarities (and love the show) but I like the episodic nature of the show and my story has an overarching narrative with each issue having its own emotional hook. Fear, Hope, Loss, Connections, etc. I have NOT read Death or Glory but will check it out and feel honored to put my story in the same category as his. This is my first crime story as a writer but I’ve drawn a few in some other projects. I used my love of film and cinema to write Lost in the Shuffle and have had to put myself into each character to find their motivation and backstory. Why they do what they do and the bad choices they make. Every character is a little part of me and I think about what that part of me would do in this situation, for better or worse. And I think every crime story needs great action mixed in with an emotional story.

WCBR: One of the flaws to Death or Glory is extensive exposition. You avoid this with skill. How do you resist the temptation to fill in the blanks for your audience with text crammed into boxes?

AC: With my writing, I’m an artist first and I write what I want to see or draw. I grew up on X-men comics with Chris Claremont filling a tiny panel with so much copy that it left no room for the art. I feel the reader is smart and I don’t need to spell everything out for them. Let them fill in the gaps so they’re part of the story and world I created. I had a good friend of mine who actually appreciated the fact that I didn’t go into all the dirty details of the Farmer and JP’s past (we’ll get into that later). He went to the dark place in a very Tarantino way, but he also could hand it to his daughter and not be worried about the content. I wanted LITS to be a Teen book with a PG-13 level of crime and gore so it could get into more hands.