The Sixth Gun #21

Written by Cullen Bunn
Art by Brian Hurtt

I've been an admirer of The Sixth Gun since the series began, a couple of Free Comic Book Days ago, but I don't know if any single issue has ever stood out the way this one does.

In the 'A Town Called Penance' arc, Cullen Bunn has had Becky Montcrief, the wielder of the 'sixth gun' travel to the very bizarre twin towns of Penance and New Penance to try to rescue her friend (and wielder of four of the other five guns) Drake Sinclair from his old compatriots in the Knights of Solomon, who are holding him in a gigantic underground cavern they have made their home base.

This issue, Becky makes her way underground to rescue him.  The entire issue is silent - there is no narration or dialogue at all, and the entire comic is filled with action, as Becky fights her way to Drake, and together, they try to fight their way back out. 

The decision to leave out any dialogue works well for this issue - think of any of the dialogue in any big action sequence, and it's all pretty obvious and therefore unnecessary stuff.  This way, the entirety of each page forces the reader to focus on just how incredible an artist Brian Hurtt is.  The cavern where the Knights live is made up of snaking gangplanks and buildings on stilts - there are few direct paths, and the entire thing is poised over deep water inhabited by strange tentacled creatures that protect one of the seals like the one seen back at the very beginning of this series.  It feels like Hurtt has worked out a model of how this environment, which is more three-dimensional than most in a large action sequence, is laid out, and he makes ingenious use of falling stalactites to add more drama to the sequence.

The only place where I would have liked a little narration would have been when Becky and Drake find themselves in a room that looks like a library, with a large image of a Knight of Solomon, simply because I'm curious to understand this group better.

I can not wait to see what happens next in this comic.