I hope Jorge Vega is able to produce more writing for comics that’s this good because I really enjoyed it. There is a strong message about society and racism, but the story itself comes first almost putting the message in the back seat. So they didn’t sacrifice a good story for some rant about America.

Fans of Wolverine will like this because the anti-hero is a minority who can be shot and maimed, but never killed. To get an idea of how similar this book is to Wolverine visually, flip toward the end (the copy I have doesn’t have page numbers, sorry for the vagueness) and look for the scene where the Buffalo Soldier is fighting a group of bandits with his jaw hanging by the flesh of his right cheek.

After reading this scene, with its excessively violent imagery and themes of prejudice, I can see Vega being a candidate for Wolverine a few years from now if he keeps up this work.

Given that Gunplay is a Western, many fans of Jonah Hex and The Dark Tower should also look at this book. However, because of the occult aspect of this book, fans of The Dark Tower will likely enjoy it more.

After reading last month’s preview, which comprises the first part of this book, I was really smitten with it. It is a great piece of writing. You had a taste of what was to come as the Buffalo Soldier gets his brains blown across the page at the end--though the prose piece accompanying it revealed that he would not die. Because the story isn’t told in chronological order, there were a lot of questions left after the preview.

In the succeeding parts of the book, all those questions are answered. The preview made it seem that the Buffalo Soldier was the only good person in the story. However, as it progresses, I had to have a change of heart. I still liked him, for the same reason that I like Wolverine or Punisher--which is simply that he’s a bad ass and the people he’s killing are pretty bad themselves. During the middle part, though, I found that the only baby face hero in the story is Finn--the supposedly spoiled boy who loses an arm in the opening scene.

It is explained quickly in the second part that the gun is cursed, which is where the occult comes into play. The Buffalo Soldier must kill one person a day, but it only has to average out to that--so the killing has rollover, much like the minutes on my cell phone plan.

Once all the questions are answered, a true third act is set up. There is no broken chronology and very little character development as the heroes go in for their insane battle with the bandits. Women are saved, bodies are mangled, and killing quotas are met as the Buffalo Soldier kills for the good of mankind--not the good of himself.

At the end, people ride off into the sunset and a “To Be Continued” appears on the last page. Though I liked this a lot, I’m not so sure I’d like an ongoing series about these two. As far as this one story goes, I highly recommend giving it a chance.

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