Like I said, the four books split up neatly. These two are the first two issues of a 4-issue mini-series. Did they convince me to buy the remaining two issues when they come out? Read on and find out.
The first issue is set-up. The general notion of who Colman Cooper is and why he ended up in this tournament of death. He's a husband and father, they're going West, but their version of Oregon Trail has been particularly rough, and it took all they had to treat the diphtheria his wife came down with. If they're going any further, they need money, so why not enter an 8-person, winner-take-all battle to the death for 10 grand? This is in 1873, mind, which an online inflation calculator I just checked says in equal to almost a quarter-million dollars now.
The second issue is. . . also set-up. For the first half, at least. We learn a little more about Colman from his son talking to another competitor, and a little about some of the others, even if it's just where they're from. We get a sense of the rules of the game, such as they are, and then the fighting starts. One contestant has died already, and I'm not sure whether another bit the dust as well. Probably not since we don't see the body, and it was a gut shot, but I'm not positive the guy in the background of the last panel with the rifle is the same one who got shot.
Borden and Brummond are going to have pack a lot of fighting and killing into the remaining two issues. Which I guess is why it's a free-for-all battle. Plenty of chances for someone to swoop in and kill two people who are in the middle of killing each other. The bodies can start stacking up quickly. I'm curious if there's going to be any more attempts at fleshing out the other fighters, or if we're past that portion of the story and it's just killing time. Although they could always do both. You can reveal stuff about a character from how they fight, if you know how.
Brummond mostly uses 4-6 panels per page, but switched to a 9-panel grid for the brief fight between Neil Kelly and Jiao Long Ru Ren. For that page, the panels are a basic action-reaction thing, showing the progress of the fight (such as it is) in the brief moments. I'd expect a lot of panels to make it seem slow, but each one is so closely focused my eye kept zipping on the next one. It helps give the sense all this really happened in just a few seconds.
Brummond switches between drawing Colman with his hat brim shadowing his eyes, which makes him look the park of the grim gunslinger, and looking up at him or from some other angle where his entire face is plainly visible. Which makes look like some poor dope of a homesteader, in over his head. I would think the extreme upwards angle panels were meant to be from his son's perspective, how he sees his dad. Except one, the kid seems pretty confident his dad is a tough fighter, which doesn't match the "homesteader" look, and two, Brummond draws a lot of characters from that perspective at one point or the other. It really messes with my perception of how large everyone's nose is.
As to the question of whether I plan to buy the remaining two issues, the answer is yes. It's intriguing enough I want to see how it plays out. It feels like Colman's going to win, but maybe he doesn't and the winner gives his kid the money. I imagine that'll only work if the lady wins, though. Not sure she cares about the money.
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