Sneakpeek at Six-Gun Gorilla #2. Art by the inimitable Jeff Stokely. 

So. It’s been a few days now since episode #1 of Six-Gun Gorilla hit shelves. A few superfuckingcrazy also overwhelming also wonderful days. It’s inevitably a little icky when one’s trying to report on one’s own feeling of delight, so do me a favour and assume all this comes from a place of unexpected pride rather than smugness.

I like to think all of us who’ve been working on 6GG were confident in its trigger-pulling horse-lobbing awesomeness from the outset – at least, in the context of our own beavering-away-at-it little worlds – but in this game there’s never any guarantee (or frankly expectation) that one’s own deranged tastes will completely mirror those of the market.

But, yeah.This time, they kinda did.

Six-Gun Gorilla #1 sold out at distribution level straight away. We’ve heard reports from all over the place that stores have run out. Our splendid publishers Boom! Studios have rushed out a second print with a very tasty new Joe Querio cover. Á la:

 That, I think, will be landing on shelves along with Ep 2 in the second week of July. In the meantime the first issue remains available on Comixology, and if you’re lucky you might catch a couple lingering on shelves at your LCS.

There’s an oft-repeated commandment among comicky creator types (or anyone, I suppose, who produces “art” - hahaha - and chooses to metaphorically dangle their metaphorical balls over the metaphorical frying-pan of Internet Opinion).

And that commandment is this: Don’t. Read. The. Reviews.

 (Actually, the more functionally achievable commandment would be “Don’t Admit To Reading The Reviews”, but let’s not split hairs).

I read a few. Actually, that’s a lie: a read a whole bunch. Enough to know that I could plausibly mention just a couple and not get caught-out later for having selectively quoted. They’re… well. They’re all pretty amazing. A few snippets are mentioned below.

So: thanks, folks. Thanks for liking the same insane, weird, creepy, impossible-to-define-without-just-bloody-reading-the-fucking-thing stuff that we at Team-6GG love to bits.

Come back for #2, yeah?

-Sx

QUOTH IGN:  “There so much going on in this issue it would be a disservice to just sit here and describe it to you. Just buy it. Just drop whatever book from the Big Two you are buying out of habit and buy this book. Trust ol’ Ben, I wouldn’t lie to you. Without a doubt, this is the best debut of a new series I have read in a very, very long time. In a word, it’s brilliant. 9.6 out of 10”

QUOTH BLEEDINGCOOL: “Clever, inventive and nasty science fiction, this one will hit you right between the eyes.”

QUOTH NEWSARAMA: “a new sci-fi series that will just floor you with its inventive plot and original premise. Make sure you pick this one up, because you’ll be kicking yourself if you miss out.”

So, yeah. Little bit of a faster-than-hotcakes scenario going on out there. 6GG#1 has sold out at a distribution level, with news from all quarters of comic stores selling out at the point of sale. 

Step-up Boom! Studios, with a swift-deployed 2nd printing:

…featuring a doublegorgeous new cover by Joe Querio. Full press release here:

BOOM! Studios is proud to announce that in less than 24 hours since its release, SIX-GUN GORILLA #1 has sold out at at the distributor level and the publisher has rushed to a second printing

Comic book fans should keep in mind first printings of SIX-GUN GORILLA #1 may still be found at the local comic shop nearest you. Not sure where to find your nearest comic retailer? Use www.comicshoplocator.com orfindacomicshop.com to find one!

Inspired by an obscure public domain character, SIX-GUN GORILLA is created and written by Simon Spurrier (X-MEN: LEGACY, CROSSED: WISH YOU WERE HERE) with interior art by Jeff Stokely (FRAGGLE ROCK, THE REASON FOR DRAGONS) and featuring a cover by Eisner Award-winning artist Ramón Pérez (A TALE OF SAND, WOLVERINE & THE X-MEN), SIX-GUN GORILLA is a pulpy mash-up of Western weirdness and lo-fi science fiction unlike anything else on the stands!

Welcome to “the Blister” — a bizarre other-world colonized by humans sometime in the 22nd century, which quickly became a hotly-contested source of fertile land and natural resources long ago exhausted on Earth. In this new frontier, a rogue gunslinger and his companion wander across a wilderness in the grips of a civil war, encountering lawlessness, natives, and perversions of civilization in a world at the crossroads between the past and the future. The fact that said gunslinger is a bio-surgically modified silverback gorilla toting a pair of enormous revolvers is neither here nor there.

SIX-GUN GORILLA #1 second print ships with a striking new cover by Joe Querio (EXTERMINATION) with a retail price of $3.99.

Several months ago, when the Six-Gun Gorilla comic was just a daft idea monkeying (ha!) about in my brain, I drew an even dafter little doodle as a  proof-of-concept litmus test for my own sustainable interest.  

I was rather proud of the shadowy bugger (which tells you something about how low I set the standards of my own doodlement) and promptly gave it away to my exceedingly talented friend and collaborator Simon Gurr. 

Partly that’s because, over the years, I’ve jealously accumulated enough of his artwork for myself (caw! caw!) that if any poor sod is going to be lumbered with my cackhanded pencilshite it should be him. But mostly it’s because that solitary word of dialogue - “draw” - operates on the level of Crap Punning (something for which Gurr and I share a lamentable passion) as a “keep-at-it, don’t-stop-now”, commandment.

When Si draws, magic happens.

He’s just gone and proven me right on that score, by marking the day of Six-Gun Gorilla’s release in glorious style.

For my money Si’s sense of arrangement - mixed with idiosyncratic detail, elegant  humour and design style - are unparalleled, and if only more people knew about him he’d be as wealthy as (a very very hairy) Croesus. Luckily for you they don’t, so he sells his wares at criminally low prices. Artfans: very, very worth a punt.

…which I’ve been working-on secretly for 3 years. It’s epic and it’s dark and it’s deconstructive and it’s gorgeous and it’s mythic and it’s sleazy and it’s brutal and it’s at one and the same time the most high-concept and the most prosaically human thing I’ve ever written, and above all it… just… keeps… getting… bigger.

What you’re looking at there is a single panel, 1/6th of a normal page.

Let me repeat that from the other direction, just for clarity. There are five other panels on that same page of the same size and detail.

We have something like 280 pages of this project in the bag already.

I can’t tell you much more just yet. I can’t even tell you the name of the amazing artist of the above panel. But what I can tell you is that finally, at long…fucking…last… this project is going to be announced this year. 

—comics’ new master of stylised ultraviolence.  I love me a bit of hand-drawn SFX, I do.

Six-Gun Gorilla sneak-peek there, folks. Something big, mean and furry this way comes…

Today we live in a world where, by the time a piece of news has achieved the status of Fact - with a coherent and verified narrative of events from beginning to end - too long has elapsed for it to be deemed truly newsworthy.
In other words, the act of Knowing Something has become more important than whether it’s true or false.
On the other hand, maybe there’s a good reason it’s always been called ‘news’ rather than ‘trues’.