Sam and his Talking Gun #3

Sam and his Talking Gun #3

Scout Comics 2021

Written by Drew Ferguson

Illustrated by Lee Ferguson

Lettered by DC Hopkins

Sam and the Gun are free from the asylum, and Colt knows that he's loose. Sam goes to enlist an old friends' help... but can he trust them? This old friend brings back some memories; memories of young Sam and Colt's first job together. It... didn't go as planned. Not by a long shot.

What could have been odd and cheesy story is actually an amazingly odd and perfectly cheesy story that is so well thought out and executed that it is a rather creative and unique reading experience. I like that only Sam can hear the gun talking and when he’s with company and talking to the gun it makes him sound like he’s actually an individual who has lost his marbles. The whole idea and the gun talking really does belie the fact that this is a serious story about revenge. Colt doesn’t realise the beast he’s unleashed as Sam has had twelve years to come up with how the’s going to exact his revenge for not only being locked away but for killing his grandfather as well. Filled with dark humour to balance out the dramatic overtones this becomes one of the more interesting reads around.

I’m a huge fan of the way that this is being told. The story & plot development that we see through how the sequence of events unfold as well as how the reader learns information is presented exceptionally well. I love the character development that we’re seeing as well thanks to the dialogue, the character interaction, the monologues and how they act and react to the situations and circumstances they encounter. The pacing is superb and as it takes us through the pages revealing more and more of the story along with the twists & turns along the way we’re kept in suspense with this delicious tension keeping us riveted.

I am enjoying how this is being structured and how we see the layers within the story continuing to grow, evolve and strengthen. These layers are where we see loads more characterisation and where the larger plot is revealed more. Plus it really highlights the gun and his chatter. How everything works together to create the story’s ebb & flow as well as how it moves the story continually forward is achieved amazingly well.

I like the interiors here. Right off the bat I’m going to say I wish we’d see more backgrounds in use. There is a lot of wasted space in the panels and it doesn’t give us any kind of feeling of where they are other than some tesseract style dimension where you don’t need any more details as it’s just space. The linework we see is laid down extremely well and how we see the varying weights and techniques in bringing the characters to life is extremely nice to see. How we see the composition within the panels bringing us depth perception, a sense of scale and the overall sense of size and scope to the story is rendered well. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels show a very talented eye for storytelling. The colour work is beautifully rendered. The various hues and tones within the colours being utilised to create the shading, highlights and shadow work is lovely to see. I appreciate how light sources are utilised to cast shadows and changes the colouring its a sharp detail that few do this well.

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This feels like the beginning of the end for the story as it’s right before the climax and becomes the penultimate game changing issue. This is superbly written with great interesting and complex characters along with strong interiors to create a rather unique and fun reading experience.