Deadly Tales of the Gunslinger #5 // Review
He’s struggling against sleep. It might be considered heroic, but it’s only causing things to get worse. The boundary between reality and illusion is getting pretty weak. He’s not doing so well. He’s tied-up and slung over the back of a horse that’s marching forward. It’s not going to be easy to escape captivity in Deadly Tales of the Gunslinger #5. Writer Jimmy Palmiotti waxes poetic in a journey into a cowboy hell with artist Chad Hardin and colorist Ulises Arreola. It’s an interesting journey that could prove to be quite a strange, existentialist cowboy horror drama.
They have put Gunslinger on a spinning wheel. They’re throwing axes and knives at him. They claim to be sharpshooters, which would suggest much better aim than what they manage: a knife in his right arm. Another in the tail of his coat. The axes landed pretty far off the mark. So did a couple of daggers. The Gunslinger is mixed-up in a great deal that really isn’t any of his business. It’s difficult to be in a position like his and NOT be left to the whims of those who have him tied to a spinning target.
Palmiotti comes really close to playing with the very nature reality around the edges of a more traditional cowboy story. It's really interesting to see the way he moves around the edges of the narrative. It would be a lot more to focus on the existential philosophical a little bit more metaphysical the nature of being a cowboy in a lot of things that could be explored by someone who is essentially the more supernatural end of things. Palmiotti DOES have a surface-level cowboy drama to engage in, though. And there’s a lot that has to happen with that before he cane get into anything else.
The hero of the series is tied to a rotating target for most of the issue. It isn’t easy to make that look visually...heroic. (Or interesting.) Hardin does a pretty good job of keeping it interesting with some very powerful, intricate and nuanced drama. Action has a tendency to explode across the page in between long stretches of dramatic tension. It all comes across with a very vivid sense of power thanks in no small part to the coloring work of Arreola. Hardin and Arreola give the Gunslinger more than one powerful moment over the course of the issue.
The finer points of the family end of the drama don’t end-up being nearly as interesting as they should be, but the heart of the action in the fifth issue holds together quite well. There’s a badass strength in having the hero totally tied-up for most of an issue as he seems to be at the mercy of the people who have him captive. Palmiotti clearly has a deep respect for the sturdy, rugged knock-around action hero formula. It fits quite well on the Gunslinger. Hardin finds a nice middle-ground between horror, cowboy western and superhero genres in a largely satisfying issue.
