This week's Best Shots @ Newsarama.com was Caleb-free, as there were some communication problems between Best Shots HQ and Best Shots Columbus. But be sure to check it out: Mr. Troy Brownfield shares some exciting news about the 'rama, and there's the normal message board bellyaching and drama that you know you couldn't live without.
As for what didn't make it into the column this week, I'll post it here, since I've got a lot of space to fill (actually, an infinite amount of space to fill, this being the Internet and all), and I would hate to see that Rawhide Kid gay joke go to waste...
Marvel Westerns: Two-Gun Kid #1
From: Marvel
Written By: Dan Slott, Keith Giffen and Stan Lee
Art By: Eduardo Barreto, Robert Loren Fleming, Jack Kirby and others
The term “mainstream comics” has come to be shorthand for superhero comics published by Marvel and DC, but in the past year Marvel has been dusting off some of their old genres at pretty regular intervals.
Last fall, it was monsters, in which the publisher married old, classic reprints with new, funny takes on some of their old, funny-named monster properties. In February, it was romance comics, a less-successful endeavor that nevertheless brought about some fun stories. Now it’s the Western’s turn, and this event is closer to the monster one than the romance one—right down to having The Goon’s Eric Powell contribute covers.
The main course in this Hungry Man’s portion of comic book goodness comes courtesy of Dan Slott (who, the more I read, the more I become convinced is Marvel’s most under-appreciated talent) and stars the Two-Gun Kid.
It opens in the present, in which hero/lawyer Matt Hawk is helping hero/lawyer Jennifer “She-Hulk” Walters hunt down her husband, John “Man-Wolf” Jameson. All this talk of werewolf hunting reminds the Kid of a similar case 130-years-ago, which we promptly flash back to.
In the past, we follow the Kid as he hunts for cattle rustlers and finds an ornery pack of lycanthropic varmints who aren’t just rustling cattle, but devouring it too.
Slott’s story is pitch-perfect, delivering horror and action with equally strong senses of humor and cool. The comedic high point may be the Kid’s discussion of masked men’s gimmicks; his is that he’s the “two-gun” kid, to which an old man responds, “But don’t all a’ ya got two guns?”
The bookends, set in the present and dealing with Shulkie and Jameson, are unfortunate in that they make the story less than self-contained, but if it drives new readers to Slott’s excellent She-Hulk title, that’s not exactly a bad thing. The art, by Eduardo Barreto, is just plain gorgeous, whether he’s drawing the 1876 portions or the 2006 ones.
But wait, that’s not all! Keith Giffen, intent on proving himself king of all genres, contributes a short story about the shortest cowboy of them all, with Robert Loren Fleming and Mike Allred, and then there’s the classic back-up, by two guys by the name of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.
Its star is a guy who’s name you may have heard tossed around a lot lately, given his apparent sexual orientation—The Rawhide Kid. In the modestly titled story, “Beware!! The Terrible Totem!!”, the Kid fights a bizarre yellow, living totem pole. There’s no hint of whether the Kid prefers braves or squaws in this story, of course, unless you want to get all Freudian with it—he does spend the entire adventure wrestling with an especially phallic-looking pole, after all.
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