By: Chuck Dixon (writer), Esteve Polls (pencils and inks), Marc Rueda (colorist)
Before the Review: I started keeping an eye on the Dynamite line since they launched their Project Superpowers. I’m lukewarm to their take on superheroes for the internal art, despite the quality of the stories. However, I often follow Zorro or the Lone Ranger where I think the grittier art style Dynamite excels at really fits. I’ve been tempted, but haven’t yet made the plunge on Athena and Buck Rogers. This is my first issue of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.
The Story: Temple Walker, the last survivor of a gang that stole ten thousand gold coins, has been inexplicably released from prison early. As soon as he makes his first stop, he’s attacked by three bandits ready to carve him into pieces. They want that gold. Enter our hero, who makes quick work of the attackers and who forces himself on Walker for a fifty percent stake in the gold. Will they survive?
What’s Good: Esteve Polls’ art dominated every other element of the book. It fit the setting, tone, characters and plot perfectly. Take a look at the first page, where dun-colored hills almost camouflage the Yuma Prison, while scrubby shrubs and cacti are deeply shadowed in the foreground. That’s just panel one. Panel two introduces us to Polls’ ability to draw a bitter, hardened, betrayed convict about to get out of jail. The other page of art that really slowed down my reading was the four-panel spread of our hero walking into a saloon. Check out the mood and shadowing of the environment and the expressions of the card-players. Coloring was controlled and disciplined. Brown had to be the dominant color in most of the book and yet we had to be able to see the figures, so Rueda walked that tightrope well.
Dixon’s writing is appropriately spare, with the story told almost exclusively through dialogue whose tone and authenticity are excellent. Dixon kept me in the moment of the old west throughout the entire book. On the plot, Dixon drove the story from panel one, with a mixture of pursuit and caper plots that drive so many suspense stories. This is smart, evocative writing.
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Filed under: Dynamite Entertainment | Tagged: Chuck Dixon, Comic Book Reviews, comic books, comic reviews, Comics, DS Arsenault, Dynamite Entertainment, Esteve Polls, Joseph Rybandt, Marc Rueda, Project Superpowers, review, Reviews, The Bad, The Good The Bad and the Ugly #7, The Good The Bad The Ugly #7, The Good The Bad The Ugly #7 review, The Lone Ranger, Weekly Comic Book Review, weeklycomicbookreview.com, Western Comics, Zorro | 4 Comments »
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