3 out of 5

Hey, you know what Brian Churilla really likes to draw?  Monsters.  So let’s give him an excuse to do that.  Never you mind that it ruins any sense of theme or story, he wants to draw monsters, damn you, so let him!  LET HIM!

Sons of the Gun started out really good.  Better than the series proper, almost.  It was so oddly poised – calling it ‘Sons of the Gun,’ prominently featuring one of General Hume’s horsemen on each of the first four covers, getting rid of the rustic narrative voice lead-ins and not giving us any kind of ‘1 year ago’ hints.  It was just uncharacteristically unexplained for Bunn, and made it that much more rewarding – picking up after Hume’s first death, a reader had to know his Sixth Gun story to get the relevance of these characters, and the importance of their disdain – in some cases – for the guns to which they’d been leashed.  The intention of giving us some background on the four was clear, but with loose links forming between each book, Cullen was weaving this open and mysterious and almost timeless tale of duty and evil.

And Churilla, forced to stick to a period and not mash it up with his puffy creepos, turns in some of his best and most focused art, detailed in ways he normally doesn’t manage (often choosing to leave some lines fading into color washes in favor of a loose look that unfortunately comes across as sloppy on occasion).

For a couple issues, anyway.  In book 3, Bunn (and Hurtt?) stumbles a bit, the tale not quite having the insular, sad focus as the previous two, and stretching the story out to a dangling conclusion that doesn’t satisfy.  (Because, it turns out, it’s a lead-in for the pointless conclusion, but the one-shot writing style up to that point wouldn’t have led you to expect it.)  Book 4 is back on track for the most part, dragging things into the light of a populated town to contrast with the twisted hopes of salvation of the featured horseman.  When things go awry, his misaligned use of the gun which brings souls back is well plotted as believable – an unhinged solution from a twisted man.  But then we’re dropped onto another cold conclusion.  Thus far, then, book 1 and 2 are aces, book 3 is odd, and book 4 starts well but leaves you in a weird spot.  WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IN THE END OH RIGHT BRIAN CHURILLA’S MONSTERS

…Because that’s all book five is.  Suddenly our story is incredibly linear (although, yes, it always was, there was that initial feeling of a different ‘flavor’ between issues), and there’s a really poorly justified battle with big-ass scary things that really has no momentum and… no point?  And wouldn’t ya know, once Brian gets his pencils on beasties, all the initial focus he’d shown is drained away.  Whoop de whoop.

An opportunity to do a proper side story – expanding on a subplot or characters – is half fulfilled.  I pray that the last bit wasn’t just tossed in to make it full enough for a trade.  I’d say you could save yourself the 3 bucks on the last book, but it sucks only having 4 out of 5, yeah?