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Deadlands: Dead Man's Hand TPB

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    Todd Jordan
    Smut is good.

  • Deadlands: Dead Man's Hand TPB



    Published by: IDW Publishing
    Released on: Apr. 8, 2015
    Writer: various
    Artist: various
    Cover Artist: Jacob Bascle
    Purchase at Amazon

    Deadlands, in case you didn't know, is a popular role-playing game that does a bit of genre-bending to produce some interesting and weird Western material. Pinnacle, the company behind the game, also produced a comic book put out by Image Comics mostly in 2012 and IDW collects stories from those books as well as delivering a couple of new tales. Written and illustrated by a number of different writer/artist teams, this trade paperback is really an anthology with characters presumably taken right out of the game play modules. The common theme that runs through most of them has to do with a mysterious and powerful mineral called “ghost rock”, but the stories are not at all interconnected. Each is a stand alone, and great for some quick reading. Bonuses in the back of the book include sketches, an exceprt from a Dead Lands novel coming in the fall of 2015, and some info about the items and characters from the stories as they pertain to gameplay.

    “The Devil's Six Gun”, written by David Gallaher and illustrated by Steve Ellis. A man from Prague named Copernicus Blackburne, a genius with creating firearms and many other amazing inventions, is approached by a wealthy American tycoon to build a gun that can kill the devil. He takes on the task, and as reward the tycoon takes care of his family back home. The inventor uses ghost rock as the thing that will make this six-shooter the power it will become, but it drives Perny mad. Gallaher's story is pretty compelling but just too short. The madness that starts to consume Perny comes on so fast and stuff happens that causes some head scratching. If given a few issues to tell the story, rather than just 20 pages, this one could have been much more. Eillis' artwork is great, with some seriously ghastly looking skulls throughout to signify death at every turn. Great colors too, at times bringing an otherworldly effect to the page.

    “Massacre at Red Wing”, written by Jimmy Palmiotti and Juston Gray, drawn by Lee Moder. A woman, half white and half Native American, is on a mission alongside her trusty German Sheppard Hondo. She was taken from her mother at birth and she's learned her mother was not dead, which was what this white-haired warrior was led to believe. She locates her mother in a brothel, and when buying her mother's freedom fails she is forced to resort to violence in order to escape with her mother. In what feels more like a rejected Red Sonja story, the main character needed more development which have helped bring a much more interesting angle to her story. As it is, and not having any knowledge of the character in the game (if she even is one), her story was tough to get into and is nothing more than a rescue mission which ends with the promise of revenge. The story just seems uninspired, which is a letdown because Palmiotti usually puts down solid comic book scripts.

    “Death was Silent”, written by Ron Marz and drawn by Bart Sears. A bounty hunter without a tongue roles into a sleepy town with a corpse draped over his horse, and enters a saloon. He's able to communicate through a chalk board tied around his neck that magically prints the words he is thinking, and he chats it up with the barkeep. Soon after the conversation starts, the bounty hunter shows his hand and lets the room know he is there to kill them all. You see, they are not human but instead all are replicants, formed by some sort of plant lifeform a la Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The tongue-less one has a friend with him, who happens to be his brother, and the two do what they have to in order to eradicate the replicants and move on. Bart Sears creates some pencils and inks that are highly effective in getting across the mood of the piece and making everything feel wet and disgusting. Constant rain pours down throughout the story and lends itself to a dark and dreary atmosphere.

    “Black Water”, by Jeff Mariotte, and drawn by Brook Turner. A wealthy man becomes obsessed with a woman who nursed him to health back in the Civil War and years later starts to see her in visions, leading him right to a place of death: the Black Water. His bodyguard/manservant hires a guide to get them through The Maze, a very treacherous path that many never come back from but one that will get the old timer to where he thinks he needs to go. This cocksure guy knows how to get through it, and they set sail to reach their destination, dealing with a waterspout, a water dragon, and monsters in the maze. Their party shrinks in numbers, and when the mysterious woman in black leads them to the Black Water, things go sour for the remaining members. Brook Turner's artwork is nicely detailed and steers clear of hyper detail, keeping the images clean but the panels nice and full. The script itself isn't too riveting, but the artwork helps keep it interesting.

    “What a Man's Got to Do” by Matthew Cutter, art by Ulises Roman. War hero Lucas Pitt reluctantly goes along with the sheriff to roust up some no-good law-breakers, and becomes the lone survivor in the posse. Left for dead, a group of Apaches happen along, inform him he has an evil spirit called a Manitou inside him, and they ain't touching him. The Manitou shows itself, has a conversation with the poor guy and leaves the man to clean up after a slaughter the Manitou was responsible for. Too quick of a story, it never really builds and then just kind of fizzles.

    “Vengeful” by Shane Lacy Hensley and art by Dean Lee. A retired lawman is living out the balance of his life at his homestead with his lovely wife, when a group of men storm the house on horseback, armed to the teeth. They kill the sheriff and his wife and make their exit, but a red-eyed creature of vengeance arises from the blood and ashes, setting up another tale for another day. This tale, though short like the one that precedes it, fares better in the entertainment factor than the last, but not by much. It feel more like filler to make the book a little bigger and it appears (as well as the What a Man's Got To Do”) to merely act as a prologue for other Dead Lands tales that may arise.

    For the most part, the collection is entertaining, and the varying artworks styles help keep the stories very different from one another. Death Was Silent stands out as the better of the crop, with The Devil's Six Gun right there on its heels. Both lay out a good story that make the reader want more, but both end in way that if nothing further comes of them they stories still work on their own.

    Game inspired comics are hit or miss, and some don't translate well, especially ones based on video games, but Dead Lands with its supernatural subject matter, the Wild West setting, and ultra-violent action is a universe that could go quite far in comic form with the right people at the helm. Most of the stories within this volume make good use of those qualities, which makes the book certainly worth a look.
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