A comiXologist Recommends:
Molly Brooks recommends Six-Gun Gorilla by sispurrier & jeffstokely

The framing genre of this comic is science fiction– a futuristic couch potato society sending armies to fight a war off-planet– but most of the action takes place in the territory being fought over: a pseudo- old western frontier called the Blister, governed by dream logic and populated by bandits, monsters, and deadly sunlight.

The society fueling the war in the Blister has forgotten the value of crafted fiction in favor of pure spectacle; in a ghoulish extension of reality tv, suicide troops with recording equipment implanted in their brains are sent in with the regular soldiers to capture their (hopefully gruesome) deaths for the audience back home. Wartime tactics are determined by the ratings and advertising figures they’re likely to draw.

The main character, Blue-3425, is one of these suicide troops. Blue is a heartbroken former librarian who thinks he has nothing left to live for, until he gets to the Blister and his brain camera records something it shouldn’t. Suddenly, caught in a warzone in a half-imaginary place, he has a mission again, and a mysterious laconic gorilla commando companion to help him see it through to the end.

Six Gun Gorilla’s strength lies in its worldbuilding; this is a story about story, flipping genres and spitting nonsense at every turn, and it could have easily collapsed into an incoherent mess. But seamless exposition, interesting characters, and a strict adherence to internal logic make it work well as both a sci-fi-cowboy-spy adventure, and as meta-commentary on the value of a good yarn. I enjoyed it immensely, and I highly recommend picking it up!

For more adventures about the nature of storytelling, try The Unwritten.
For more surreal and intriguing takes on the western genre, try Pretty Deadly and East of West.

[Read Six-Gun Gorilla]

For fans of: western, science fiction

_{molly brooks is an artist from nashville currently living in brooklyn. she works at comixology as a digital editor.}