Posted on: December 21st, 2011 REVIEW: Six Guns #3
Everybody’s forever complaining about remakes. Come up with something original. Remakes are just lazy storytelling. You’re ruining the originals. Blah blah blah. You know what I say to them? Psbbbbbbt. That, boys and girls, was the textual interpretation of me blowing a raspberry. (Stop it) You’ve got to remake movies and books and comics and music. You have to, if you want to keep the stories alive.
I know people that won’t watch movies that are in black and white. Even if they’re classics, they won’t do it. Those people are dumb, but the fact is: they exist. Not everyone will search through the back issues of golden/silver/bronze age comics. Some find those stories obsolete. Of course, they’re wrong; but, again, they exist.
Now I must insist that all remakes and reproductions are made out of respect and love for the original/source material. That’s the only way I can support this trend. I don’t want your favorite book or movie or whatever to be bastardized just for the easy generation of funds. Is that what’s happening? Sure. But I’d like there to be some heart behind it. Where can you find such an occurrence? Andy Diggle and Davide Gianfelice’s Six Guns.
This is simply a modernization of classic Marvel Western characters. However, this is by no means a classic western. It’s the reinterpretation of Tarantula, Black Rider, the Two-Gun Kid, Tex Dawson (The Western Kid), and Matt Slade. Okay, so Maria Vasquez was never in the Western line, but you get my point. We’re still solving problems with guns. And you just don’t get more Old West than that.
Tarantula (Vasquez) has been framed for murder and everyone from the government to big corporations to lone gun-men want to hunt her down and find out information. The Black Rider and his motorcycle gang posse were hired to break Tarantula out of Tex Dawson’s custody. That went terribly wrong. Now The Black Rider has joined forces with the Two-Gun Kid in the hunt for the men responsible for the death of their friends and family.
I wasn’t ready for how awesome this book is. I had prepped myself for a straight-up western and in return, I got bikers, a hero-for-hire, a guy that learned to shoot from Playstation, and enough crazy action to make me high-five guys until my hand fell off. Andy Diggle has done a phenomenal job recreating these characters and making them feel like modern legends. The wit and tone of the entire story has reached down and embraced everything great about westerns. Has it been jazzed up for modern audiences with more explosions and punching? Is it missing the quiet undertones of man’s relation to the land and his horse? Yeah, sure. But that’s the boring part of old westerns! This is great!
If you’re going to have the action that solicits my visit to High-Five City, you’re going to need an artist that can convey that. Oh does Davide Gianfelice convey that. He makes remarkable use of his panels. The succinct nature of the movement would be like watching the action sequences in a movie in slow motion versus real-time. You’re filling in a lot of the blanks as you go and it creates a much more enjoyable series of panels. Plus, the Two-Gun Kid fires two guns whilst flying through the air, upside-down. There’s no denying it. I love that shit.
This is in every way a no-holds-barred kind of book. As the cover of issue #3 will show, there’s a crazy run in with a plane and a car. A plane AND a car. Oof. And, amongst the actiony action, it’s got some depth to the story. It’s so much fun to see these characters be given a new life. Pick it up, read it and if you want, I will totally high-five you when you’re done.