Welcome to Haunted Trails, Multiversity Comics’ column exploring the mythology of Cullen Bunn and Brian Hurtt’s The Sixth Gun. This month I’ll be talking to Cullen Bunn about last month’s The Sixth Gun: Days of the Dead #3 and yesterday’s The Sixth Gun #44 (Holy crap, what an issue!)
Cullen Bunn: Dust to Dust is something I’m very excited about. As I’ve said many times, Billjohn O’Henry is my favorite character in The Sixth Gun, and I was so cruel to him in the first arc of the series. As the series draws toward a conclusion, I wanted to revisit Billjohn in his mortal days. The resulting story was a little surprising. The tone is a little different from a typical issue of The Sixth Gun. It’s funny and quirky and bittersweet and exciting all at once. And Tyler draws one helluva great Billjohn!
He does. The preview on Comic Book Resources looked very enticing. And it seems we’ll learn a little more about his run-in with Kid Bedlam too…
Billjohn’s one of those characters that endeared himself to me quickly. I liked that way back in the first arc of The Sixth Gun as he, Drake, and Becky headed to the Maw, he knew he was going to die there. He didn’t try to run from it (though he clearly wasn’t happy about it), but rather decided if he was going to die, it was going to be on his terms, fighting with his friends by his side. He was determined that when he died, it wouldn’t be for nothing.
CB: Kid Bedlam was mentioned in passing in the second issue of the series. Later, we saw Kirby Hale recounting the legend of Kid Bedlam. With this series, we get to see how the famed outlaw’s demise played out.
And it’s interesting that you mention Billjohn choosing to face death on his own terms. With Dust to Dust, that’s sort of a theme we’ll see surfacing again and again.
I expect he has at least one last role to play before the end of the main series too.
CB: Yes. This is an issue we approached a little differently. I wrote a script that was almost old school “Marvel style.” I didn’t write panel by panel descriptions and instead focused on describing the action in big, sweeping strokes. Brian Hurtt had some very specific things he wanted to do with the issue, such as starting with big images, moving to pages with as many as 16 panels, then moving out into big images again. He wanted as much freedom as possible with what he was drawing. With that in mind, I decided to forego dialogue balloons and use only narrator captions to give the issue the feel that someone was recounting some epic battle of legend. I feel like the issue is pretty special, and it definitely shows that Brian is one of the best visual storytellers in the business.
That recounting of legend aspect is something that’s been a part of the series since the beginning. It’s part of what drew me in. It’s a western that feels like The Lord of the Rings, capable of stepping back and looking at this grand mythology, but also capable of switching to very intimate moments with the characters. You definitely got the right artist for that.
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Speaking of legends, the Thunderbirds (not those Thunderbirds. I’m talking about the primordial giant bird-like creatures that can summon lightning) make a return to the series, their first since the beginning of the series. These Great Birds are just as old as the Great Wyrms. When that first one flew in to the pages of Cold Dead Fingers, did you know they were going to be a part of an epic battle near the end, or was that something that evolved as you went along?
CB: I didn’t necessarily plan on revisiting the Thunderbirds in the series after the first arc. As the pieces of the puzzle started coming together, though, I saw how they might fit into the story again. Screaming Crow, the shaman who “tamed” the Thunderbirds, was playing a vital role in the story, and we knew there would be an epic battle. And Brian had some amazing designs for not just one thunderbird but several. It pretty much had to happen!
I’m so glad we got to see those designs from Brian. They were awesome.
The link between the Thunderbirds and Screaming Crow certainly made me think you’d planned it, especially since Screaming Crow was mentioned in the opening of the very first issue of The Sixth Gun. Readers heard of him and Asher Cobb before we even got to meet Drake or Becky.
CB: I didn’t necessarily have plans for Screaming Crow (or Asher Cobb) when I wrote that first issue. I threw those mentions in there to add a sense that the world was much bigger than what you were seeing in the main story itself. But both of those elements stuck with me, and it wasn’t long before I knew I’d be returning to them.
CB: Poor Becky. She has gone through pure Hell over the course of this book. As much as I would like to say it’s going to get easier for her, it’s not. Issue 45 in particular is going to be brutal. She has faced horror after horror, and she’s at a point where she’s not sure there is any coming back from it. She’s feeling hopeless and angry at the same time, and that’s a dangerous combination–both for herself and for her enemies. It’s funny, because in the beginning most readers would have pegged Drake as the apocalyptic, brooding type. But he’s the one who is trying to talk Becky back from the ledge!
The Sixth Gun #45 will be on sale on the 3rd of December with The Sixth Gun: Days of the Dead #4 on the 24th.
There’ll be one last Haunted Trails before the new year. Catch you then.
