Lady Gunfighter: Desolation #1 is a comic written by Mike MacLean & Brian Pulido, illustrated by Joel Gomez, and colored by Hedwin Zaldivar. A bounty hunter with a demonic pistol attempts to eradicate villains from her past. This is a supernatural western comic with plenty of gunfighting, unexplained mysteries, and classic tropes. The leading lady for this tale is an unnamed woman with a very tough exterior and a tragic past we only get glimpses of. She is very determined when it comes to obtaining her bounty and she has little use for empathy. This lady has a pistol that shoots bullets controlled by what everyone assumes to be the Devil. Throughout her travels she’ll come across a couple notable characters like Preacher Cotton and Artemis Pike. The story begins with the lady in Missouri hunting a man that killed a prostitute. She goes to his family home where she is accosted by his mother and the situation turns violent. This takes place during the Wild West in states like Kentucky, Missouri, and Kansas. The violence here is very bloody and extremely gory with frequent gruesome attacks. The pacing is overall steady with a nice balance between fast and slow scenes. The tone here is like that of your average Western just with a more sinister and supernatural twist. There are many intense moments brought to us via violence, danger, and drama. The dialogue is mostly conversational with Western slang and terminology as well as some narration from the lady. There are no word-heavy pages here. This is an exciting debut issue that gives us a mysterious lead with a dangerous job and that tells us a story you’ll want to see play out.

            The art here is drawn in a modern style with some sharpness, light grittiness, and strong shading. The color palette seems accurate for the time period with a lot of browns, reds and blacks. For scenery we have forests, mountains, and a lot of wide open plains/deserts. There isn’t a primary location but this lady will find herself at saloons, burnings, hangings, strange towns, and on trains. The backgrounds usually show the surroundings with the sun and moon doing some heavy lifting. The expression level here is around average as the lady maintains a stoic, uncaring look but the characters around her give a lot more. The main emotions here are anger, fear, rage, and sinister happiness. Most of the faces here have a high amount of detail so all the different expressions come across clearly. The bullets from the lady’s gun look like red laser beams. The violence usually involves guns but sometimes it’ll feature other Western weapons like whips, ropes, and axes. There is a large amount of blood and gore here with nearly every attack being gruesome. The action scenes sport a good amount of panels which leads to an unconfusing, usually smooth flow.

“Is this worth reading?”

Yes.

“Would I like this?”

If you like supernatural Westerns stories that star a woman with a tragic past and a mystical gun while featuring heavy violence, mystery, and drama then this is for you.

“What would this comic’s film rating be?”

R. Violence, heavy gore.

“Could I get a quote from the comic?”

“But I bet the other fella might want his due.”

 

Kickstarter Link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/coffincomics/coffin-comics-all-new-lady-gunfighter-desolation/description

***IN-DEPTH COMIC STATS BELOW***

Probably Contains Spoilers

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Actual Pages(not counting covers and credits): 48

Violent Pages: 27, for 56% of the comic

Sexy Pages: 0, for 0% of the comic

 

**The levels below aren’t necessarily maintained throughout the whole comic, but they were definitely reached**

 

Violence Level – 4

“Wasn’t no tussling at all.”

“Sometimes you gotta hit somebody.”

“I’m getting charged with how many counts of assault?”

“This was a tournament arc.”

“All my life I had to fight.”

 

Gore Level – 5

“The only thing leaking out your face is tears.”

“Looks like somebody spilled some ketchup.”

“Might need to soak that up with a bath towel.”

“That isn’t supposed to be outside the body.”

“This is a slaughterhouse.”

 

Death Level – 4

“And everybody lived happily ever after.”

“We might have gone to a couple funerals.”

“It just LOOKS like a serial killer was here.”

“Yeah this was a tragedy.”

“Think Gettysburg.”

 

Porn Level – 1

“Everybody kept their clothes on.”

“I guess it was too hot for a bra.”

“Sometimes you got to let everything air out.”

“This is like late night Cinemax in the early 2000’s.”

“Oh. This is porn.”