I'm sort of an anthology guy, especially when it comes to indy books. Sure, there's an uneven quality to almost every anthology, if only because there are so many voices talking at once, but there's usually at least one gem, and in good anthologies, more than one. Shocking Gun Tales #1 is a new entry into the anthology market from a new publisher, and its first issue, while shaky, does have some potential. The artwork on the book is across the board impressive, featuring a couple of names recognizable from new projects at Speakeasy or Image as well as a several wholly new names. The stories are a little bit more uneven, with several of them clearly needing more space than anthologies generally allow to tell their tale, but there are two solid hits and a couple other near-misses with potential. Shocking Gun Tales is a good bet for those who lament the loss of Western Tales of Terror, as it has a similar vibe (if a different theme), as well as for those with an interest in crime fiction in general and gun-themed tales in particular.
"The Snowman" has terrific-looking artwork from Ethen Beavers, but like the other collaboration by Beavers and Singley at Speakeasy, Mutation, it's damned hard to follow. The general notion of the story seems to be about a hardass bodyguard becoming attached to the little boy who is his charge (shades of Man on Fire or Transporter 2), but the actual events that transpire after that are completely unclear. They're captured, how is never made clear, there's an escape attempt, a reveal about a cop that doesn't make sense because the context isn't clear and a shootout that is confusingly choreographed, all tagged with an ending that is either a bad literal surprise ending or a failed attempt at thematic connection. It looks nice enough, but "The Snowman" is a mess, and clearly needed at least double the page count it had to tell the story it was trying to tell.
More clear, but still not entirely so, is the exceptionally brief two-pager by Jason Meek, "One Bullet," about a girl who contemplates suicide on one page and kills... someone on the next page. Again, the lack of much in the way of words or depth prevents the reader from anything more than guessing at what the story is about. Was this a longtime pattern of abuse suddenly directed at a sister? That seems to be the implication, but there's so much left out of the story that what's there doesn't communicate clearly enough. Meek's artwork is exceptionally nice, and the bullet motif in his panel borders is a nice touch, and his panel-to-panel storytelling makes the story flow clearly enough, but this is severely lacking in context. Meek has several pinups of young girls in underwear posing with realistic guns which are artistically sound, but whose cheesecake tendencies seem to work against the message of "One Bullet" about the price of exploitation and the girl's own empowerment.
"Never Enough Time" is probably my favorite story in the book, if only because it seems to be the only one that uses the limited space available in an anthology correctly. Singley's story is basically an extended gag, and the timing plays out perfectly with Meek's artwork, which in this context reminds me pleasantly of the work of Tony Moore. It's basically one of those "western gunfight" stories, and most of the story is about the anticipation and the uncertainty from both participants, coupled with a funny and evocative reveal that tweaks expectations nicely.
"Moira" by Mark Winters is a strange story, and I'm not certain if it's meant to be ironic or if we're meant to read it straight. I believe it's the latter, in which case "Moira" is something of a right-wing speculative fantasy in which gun control laws have gone awry and a lone assassin is trying to kill someone who wants to build more of these crazy liberal ineffective gun laws. I had some difficulty with this one because the premise seems like an absurd right wing fantasy, but if your mind works in such a way that gun control seems dangerous and is a ploy by the government to take away the rights of its citizens to rebel, you might find some enjoyment in what is, admittedly, a decent bit of action storytelling and lovingly detailed gun art.
Also in the science-fiction type vein is "Angel's Bane," about a pulp-ish World War II hero who uses a magic gun to defeat the supernatural menaces he encounters alongside his army unit. The actual story is relatively familiar, the notion of a powerful artifact that threatens to corrupt its wielder, but putting that framework onto a World War II story and a gun instead of a sword is a clever enough twist, and Freddie Williams's artwork is pretty nice, especially when it comes to the solid details on the background.
The final story in the book, "A Violent End" by Vinton Heuck, is one of the strongest tales. The artwork is exceptional, easily the strongest of the bunch, and given that there's a pretty solid level of artwork across the board in Shocking Gun Tales, that's saying something. It looks remarkably like Eduardo Risso's work on 100 Bullets, and indeed Heuck's writing style seems similar to that of Azzarello as well. "A Violent End" is essentially the middle of a Tarantino flick, from the viewpoint of a girl whose boyfriend is on a bit of a violent tear. Despite being essentially the middle of what reads like a bigger story, though, Heuck makes it work, playing off the cliched elements of the story so that we don't need to see the beginning or ending, but instead just need to get the tension-filled middle of the story where the girl makes her decision between love and safety.
