Gunslinger #35 // Review
Javier has angel wings. So it’s like he serves god or something. Only thing is...he killed a family and its baby. So maybe this is more sort of an Old Testament-type god that he’s serving, And maybe a certain spawn of hell happens to have a perfectly logical reason for pointing a cou[le of six shooters of the damned at the guy in Gunslinger #35. Writer Todd McFarlane tries his best to put a few scenes together in an issue that is brought mercifully to the page bay artist Carlo Barberi. There might have been some interesting art of an allegorical thing going on with the story if it wasn’t written by McFarlane. It is, though…
Naturally things are going to get ugly once the agents of heaven and hell start to stare each other down a bit more seriously. Javier pulls out a couple of blasters the size of his upper body. They’re glowing red like giant hand-mounted space heaters or something. He means business. They both realize that guns aren’t going to be of a whole lot of use between the two of them, so they both drop their weapons and things get a little closer between the two of them. A blade is put to a throat. Blood is drawn. Things get pretty McFarlaney from there.
McFarlane DOES have the kernel of a pretty interesting western-style showdown between heaven and hell. It’s a pity that he feels the need to write a script around it, though. The issue-length tangle between heaven and hell could have been interesting, but McFarlane doesn’t find a whole lot to do with it. There ARE a few appealing moments in various corners of the action, but for the most part this is a pretty unimaginative tangle between an angel and a demon.
Barberi frames a few visually clever panels of action from the “bonk BONK” on the fourth page to the “womb” at the bottom of the sixteenth. It’s a brutal battle with blood and spittle and percussion that occasional shows some admirable depth. Barberi does some impressive work with the color splatter and occasionally manages some very lush texture on the page. Extreme close-ups can sometimes pull back far enough to get a sense of the large picture in silhouette, which can be pretty cool and effective when it has the chance to do so. For the most part, though, this is a close-up tangle between two warriors and the overall kinetics of the battle seem a bit lost in the extremely close proximity from one warrior to the other.
As annoying as it all is, Gunslinger #35 still manages to congest a respectable amount of grit and monstrous brutality onto the page. It makes a hell of an impact for an issue that feels largely inconsequential even in light of the outcome of the battle. The overall intensity of the battle would have felt a lot more impressive if there was more of a larger picture in the overall comic.
Grade: C+
