Annotations 

Haunted Trails: Issue #18

By | January 25th, 2012
Posted in Annotations | % Comments

Welcome back, you cretins and dames, to Haunted Trails! Your one stop shop for a behind the scenes look at the Oni Press smash hit The Sixth Gun! Each month, we’ll sit down with Mr. Cullen Bunn, the mastermind behind the book, to look deeper into each page and each panel and discover what juicy bits readers may have missed!

After taking a much needed break in December, the book begins its fourth story arc this month, titled “A Town Called Penance”. With Drake missing following end of the last arc and the fate of the four guns bound to him up in the air, the stakes have never been higher for Becky and the rest of our ragtag cast of miscreants!

Click on down as Cullen and I break down the latest chapter in what is sure to become more of the most exciting and mysterious modern day westerns seen in years!

(And in case you missed it, you can find our breakdown of Issue #17 right here.)

Joshua Mocle: This issue opens by clarifying one of the question marks we looked at back in November and confirming just how Bill John’s husk is walking around with Drake off the board. Was using Bill John to take the guns off the board part of Drake’s plan, or a last minute “I am falling out of a train” desperation move?

Cullen Bunn: I’ve always thought Drake is one of those guys who plots and plans and schemes, but when the chips are down and he’s falling out of a train, he’s quick to improvise. He knew he needed to get those guns to safety, so his last action before falling from the train was to summon Billjohn and tell him to take the guns to Becky.

JM: Drake and Bill John don’t exactly have time to chit chat in this scene, much less time for Drake to convey a complicated scheme to an undead mud monster. Can we assume the abilities of the Fourth Gun also include some kind of telepathic connection between the holder of the gun and the Husks it creates? Or was Drake more or less throwing caution to the wind and hoping the guns would get where they need to go?

CB: I think there’s definitely some small connection between the wielder of the gun and the husk creatures. It’s probably more pronounced between Drake and Billjohn, but I never go out of my to specify that.

JM: Finally someone affiliated with The Knights of Solomon shows their face in something other than a flashback, and Drake knows them! You and I have discussed connections between The Knights and some of the other villains we’ve seen in the series so far. Given that Drake also has a history with General Hume and his men, is it reasonable to assume one of those connections is Drake himself?

CB: The Knights of Solomon (and their opposite, the Sword of Abraham) are big players in the world of The Sixth Gun. They’ve been working behind the scenes for centuries. Drake’s connection to them is going to become more and more clear over the next couple of issues. Suffice it to say, they’ve been involved in some “very bad things” and Drake might have been along for the ride.

JM: Is that meant to be a Hand of Glory that Gabriel is carrying? And if so, is the original owner of the hand someone we know?

CB: That is a Hand of Glory! I’m sure Brian loves to open one of my scripts and see several pictures of mummified hands attached for reference. It was not my intention that the hand belongs to anyone we’ve seen thus far… but now that you mention it….

JM: Assuming again that that is a Hand of Glory, that particular item (to my mind) is indicative of a really dark kind of magic, the kind you don’t mess around with unless you are really not scared of some kind of Heavenly power. Nothing about the mysticism in the book so far has been exactly bright, kindly or “Potteresque”, but something about a Hand of Glory just says “everything you’ve seen was just a precursor, the really dark stuff starts now.” Is that fair to say?

Continued below

CB: You have no idea. Heh. This arc is really a game changer in a number of ways. I wanted the Knights to be weilding some kind of artifact from their very first appearance, and a Hand of Glory definitely set the right mood. But, yeah, I think it sets a nice grim tone for some of the things to come.

JM: Finally we reach the town of Penance and right off the bat we know that things are…not well, to say the least. Everything person and animal we meet on those first few pages is either dead or hideously deformed. So the main question here is not unlike the chicken and the egg conundrum: were they deformed before they came to Penance, or are they deformed BECAUSE of Penance?

CB: That’s a good question, but I’m not telling… at least not til next issue.

JM: The word “penance” itself has a lot of connotations to it. Is it fair to say that repentance and redemption is on the minds of the denizens of that town? Or were you just looking for a badass name for a badass town? (Mission accomplished if that was the case.)

CB: There’s a long-standing tradition of cool names for towns in westerns, and I knew I wanted something like that for this story. “Penance” eveentually came to mind because in many ways this is a story about the price Drake (or those around him) must pay for many of the things he’s done in his life. And it just sounded badass.

JM: Did you give Brian any particular instructions as to nature of the characters’ deformities and/or the general weirdness that pervades Penance, or was that mostly him using creative license?

CB: A lot of that was creative license. I might have made a few suggestions with the townsfolk, but I think Brian was doing concept designs on them once he heard what the story was going to be about. I provided more detail on specifc characters (such as the stable boy, Bunt) but mostly that town’s just Brian doing his thing.

JM: Becky riding into town on Page 8 not unlike any number of gruff gunslingers in any number of Westerns was a stroke of genius and a really logical continuation of her character arc. However it is obvious that her silhouette prior to the reveal was intended to be stunningly “Drake-esque”. Was this part of the original script or was Brian having a little fun? What do you think this artistic bait and switch says about Becky’s character in relation to Drake’s?

CB: That was in the script. I thought it was a cool bit of trickery, but I also think it nicely represents how the Becky/Drake dynamic changes as of this arc.

JM: Assuming of course that her saddle bag is not an exact copy of the bag Bill John dragged up from the lake, why has Becky chosen to keep Drake’s four guns with her as opposed to hiding them somewhere for safe keeping?

CB: I think this is just another example of how Becky thinks differently than Drake. For example, when Drake showed up in New Orleans, he stashed the guns. Becky, on the other hand, figures that no one can use them as long as Drake’s alive, so she just keeps them on her. As far as she’s concerned, there’s no reason to hide them. This way, she knows where they are at all times.

JM: Is there a reason Maze is, for lack of a better term, the only normal looking man in town (relatively speaking of course.)

CB: It’s funny. I think he’s pretty weird looking, too. Maze himself just thinks he’s one good-looking man.

JM: The line given by the boy running the stables about not eating Becky’s horse on Page 13. I can’t for the life of me determine whether I should laugh or be deeply disturbed. I’m guessing that was the point of that one?

CB: That’s exactly the point.

JM: On Page 16 and 17 we’re introduced to yet another inspired and mysterious location with the as-yet unnamed underground town. Am I right to assume that this town and Penance are related? Is this the real Penance, or a different location entirely?

Continued below

CB: While this isn’t the “real” Penance (although that’s an interesting question) the two places are connected in a big way.

JM: This location itself, whatever it ends up being called, is one of the most visually rich locations seen in the book. Not only because it’s underground, but also due to the mysterious items scattered around it. How did you and Brian go about designing this town, and how soon will we know more about it?

CB: One of the things that’s great about working with Brian is that we live in the same town. I’m pretty sure we discussed the look of the underground city while sitting at Starbucks. Since we’ve been working together, Brian’s wanted to draw an underground city like this, so I knew from the beginning that he was going to just go crazy with the design.

JM: How soon are we going to see what lives in that lake on Page 21 & 22?

CB: You’ll see it in issue 21.

JM: The final page of the book seems to indicate that Gabriel may not have the worst intentions in mind for Drake (despite all the beating) and that when he and Drake parted ways, it may not have been on as bad of terms as when Drake parted ways with The General. Is there more to the two’s relationship than a simple rivalry? And how important will their past together be to the book moving forward?

CB: There’s definitely more to the relationship between Gabriel and Drake. More importantly, there’s lots more to the relationship between Drake and the Knights of Solomon. It should be a lot of fun as we explore this in the next few issues. I’m excited to see what readers think.


//TAGS | Haunted Trails

Joshua Mocle

Joshua Mocle is an educator, writer, audio spelunker and general enthusiast of things loud and fast. He is also a devout Canadian. He can often be found thinking about comics too much, pretending to know things about baseball and trying to convince the masses that pop-punk is still a legitimate genre. Stalk him out on twitter and thought grenade.

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