Saturday, May 28, 2022

Saturday Splash Page #22

 
"Steroid Side Effects May Be Severe," Wynonna Earp (vol. 1) #2, by Beau Smith (writer), Joyce Chin (penciler), Mark Irwin (inker), Nathan Lumm (colorist), Amie Grenier (letterer)

I think I first became aware of Wynonna Earp because Ragnell had a post on her blog once that was excited about the announcement of one of the later stories with the character (which we'll get to in a couple of weeks). It didn't do much beyond my sort of passively noting, "Huh, Wynonna Earp? Weird, but sure, why not?" When IDW released a collection of the first four stories in 2016 (called Wynonna Earp: Strange Inheritance), I was buying the mini-series that tied in with the TV show, so I went ahead and bought it, too.

This story came out in 1996, published through Image. Not hard to tell just by looking at the above. The absurd firearm, the hyper-thyroid werewolves, the title character being a "federal marshal" who walks around in skintight pants, half a bra and a denim jacket. but if you can make the look work for you. . .

There are two stories in here. The first is a three-parter where Wynonna teams up with two werewolf bounty hunters to hunt down some vampire, Bobo del Rey, that is dealing a drug that is highly addictive and makes people hungry for blood and super-strong. Bobo and his entire family are also fans of The Andy Griffith Show, for some reason, to the extent Bobo kills a man that badmouths the show. The other two issues (drawn by Pat Lee) are Wynonna teaming up with some ex-boyfriend who works for a mob to stop the revival of the chaos goddess Tiamat, whose followers try to use Wynonna as a host. Which means they started wrapping her up like a mummy, but only got so far as strategically covering the naughty parts before she got free. Seems like an inefficient way to wrap a body, but if it works for you. . .

I think this was meant to be an ongoing series, but it got canceled after 5 issues, with the last two pages being Wynonna giving Beau Smith grief for not using his pull with Jim Lee to keep the book going, and threatening to get one of Garth Ennis, Neil Gaiman or Warren Ellis to write her adventures in the future. As terrifying and/or hilarious as any of those might have been (I can't picture what Neil Gaiman's Wynonna Earp would have been like), Beau Smith would still be writing when the character got her next shot in 2003.

2 comments:

thekelvingreen said...

I got very confused there. I saw Wynonna Earp but I also saw the very 90's art style, so I thought it was some sort of retro flashback. I had no idea WE was actually around in the 90's; I thought it was much more recent series.

CalvinPitt said...

I'd never heard of it before the third mini-series, which came out in 2010-2011, but apparently it's part of that '90s "bad girl" era. Albeit one that seemed to grow beyond that eventually.