Swords of Texas (1987) #1-4 by Charles Dixon, Ben Dunn, et al.
After being positively surprised by Timothy Truman’s Scout, I was hopeful about the two mini-series that were designed to fill the time between the first Scout series and the debut of the Scout: War Shaman series.
But these are more like I feared Scout would be: Badly drawn, leaden dialogue and a boring plot line.
Artist Ben Dunn was apparently most known for drawing robots at this time, and he definitely didn’t have human anatomy down, what with the constantly fluctuating head sizes…
… and headache-inducing layouts: If those people up there are shooting horizontally, why are the bullets raining down diagonally?
It’s just that sort of thing for four full issues.
Oh, the plot. It’s about these arms merchants that will sell arms to anybody, but they live a life of honour anyway. Yeah, yeah. It ends the way you’re imagining right now.
The backup feature by Beau Smith and Flint Henry (etc.) is a chaotic, unfunny mess.
Heh. They have a competition for “real man and real woman” where readers are supposed to submit pictures. Winners to be announced in the subsequent Scout: War Shaman series. Now I’m excited!
Apparently Eclipse was sitting on a lot of stock they wanted to get rid of. Overprintings that they then couldn’t sell? Apparently the Japanese comics and Scout, Airboy and Miracleman was successful enough to exclude, but they’re sitting on a lot of copies of Twisted Tales of Bruce Jones, which is no surprise.
And a handful of 3D comics? The fad’s over?
While the artwork remained basic, I think the writing got a bit better as the issues went by.
Oooh! And then Scout makes a surprise appearance for a couple of panels! At least I guess that’s supposed to be him.
We’ll see more of Chuck Dixon in this blog series, but I think Ben Dunn disappeared into the clutches of even smaller publishers after this…