I picked up Deadlands: The Devil's Six Gun on a whim. I had heard of the book through twitter, and the combination (wiki wild, wiki wild) Wild West and zombies role-playing game it's based on made me extremely interested, as I am a HUGE fan of the Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare add-on game.
Written by David Gallaher and drawn by Steve Ellis, this first one shot follows a man named Copernicus Blackburn, a man who invents the Devil's Six Gun, a weapon that is said to be able to "kill the devil" (and give us the name of this first one-shot). Gallaher's script allows us to follow the man as a child, where we learn of his ability to create extremely advanced weaponry for the time of the old west. He eventually meets a financial backer who gives him the Ghost Stone, a green, skull-shaped stone in which one can access supernatural powers. After being screwed over by the backer, and the death of his family in a fire, Blackburn uses their bones to great the Devil's Six Gun. Armed with his new weapon, he goes out for vengeance against the man who did him wrong.
Gallaher's script starts off slow, but once the Ghost Stone is introduced it definitely ramps up. His panels do start to get a little wordy, and he's definitely needs to learn the "show, don't tell" rule of comics. However, the story is very cool and unique, and Ellis' pencils fill the creepy zone effectively. While it didn't know me out of my seat, I am intrigued enough to pick up the next one-shot, and possibly even research the role-playing game.
Now this is what I want from an X-Men comic. The latest issue of Chris Yost's X-Men story finds the Evolutionaries attacking Utopia attempting to get to Cyclops, while the other X-Men are fighting their damnedest to prevent them from getting to him. However, they also have to prevent them from getting to Magneto, who was also one of the mutants that they had contacted years ago when they first arrived in our time stream. There are some fantastic action sequences here, especially when we see Storm using her abilities to fight off their attackers. Paco Medina and Dalibor Talajic share art duties, with the former tackling the modern story and the latter handling the past story. For once it's refreshing to read an X-Men story involving timelines being altered that isn't confusing. It's just a shame that Yost will leaving in two issues.
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