Gunslinger Spawn #21 // Review
It’s a chaotic mess. Dinosaurs, demons, humans, and hellspawns. Somewhere in the midst of it all, there’s a powerful champion who is desperately trying to clear up the mess in Gunslinger Spawn #21. Writer Todd McFarlane does his...McFarlane thing on a script that is rendered for the page in some pretty impressive detail by artist Brett Booth, inker Adelso Corona, and colorist Ivan Nunes. Though the action is brought to the page with aggressive, inventive passion, it lacks any real coherence in the way of a decent script. It’s all very childish, but thanks to a top-notch art team, it all looks good anyway.
Gunslinger Spawn thinks that they’re demons. Of course, he IS from 200 years ago. He’s not going to know what dinosaurs are. It’s okay. He doesn’t really have to know what they are to kill them. (And it’s not like there aren’t demons, too. There are. Lots of them.) There are a lot of hostile creatures in the world around Spawn and his allies. They will have to work together to get through the danger that awaits them. They might not get along all that well, but there isn’t going to be much time for them to fight amongst themselves when things get dangerous.
McFarlane works with an extended ensemble that seems small enough. There is a diverse group of personalities to bring to the page. That’s always good. The story hasn’t really had a whole lot of dramatic depth, though. It doesn’t get any deeper in the 21st issue. The dialogue feels weird and stiff throughout. Gunslinger Spawn and company could theoretically have something to offer that the action doesn’t, but McFarlane’s pretty inept at bringing anything to the page other than demons and dinosaurs for the 21st issue.
Booth, Corona, and Nunes do a brilliant job of bringing detail to the page. Corona’s rendering over Booth’s art would seem to suffocate page and panel. They manage to keep it all in check from cover to cover. The action hits the page with impressive intensity that cleverly orchestrates a symphony of lines and shading. The dinosaurs are beautiful. Some of the detail on the humans isn’t too bad, though the drama doesn’t always feel fully realized. Corona’s color adds depth and selective radiance to the page. The murky dusk of the opening conflict is deeply immersive. Magic glows dully in the haze of the wilderness around Gunslinger Spawn. It all looks so good.
Not everything works. Some of the costuming is remarkably silly. As beautiful as it is, so much of Gunslinger Spawn #21 is so repetitious that it could have been easily edited down to half an issue. The interplay between demons and dinosaurs and time travel and magic and gunplay could really find a way to come together brilliantly, but it would take a more clever sense of thematic modulation than McFarlane is attempting. There have been moments over the course of the series thus far that seem to have been reaching for something bigger. It’s consistently disappointing to see McFarlane fail to live up to the potential of the premise’s weirdness.
