Review by Ian Keogh
When last seen the Skullkickers escaped a tricky situation by stowing away on a ship, and naturally enough that’s where Six Shooter on the Seven Seas picks up.
The title story brings about a sea change in Skullkickers. Kusia the elf played a major part in Five Funerals and a Bucket of Blood, but as someone causing trouble for the Skullkickers. From here on, she’s part of the team, although her absorption is a slow process. When we reach the title story the Skullkickers are on a transport ship completely manned by women, rapidly discovered and only taken into the crew when Kusia vouches for them. However, that’s just the starting point.
While the two previous volumes have been fun, they’ve been developmental as Zub came to terms with his cast and their possibilities. They’ve also seen artist Edwin Huang on one hell of a learning curve. The improvement over ten issues to here is a leap from talented artist to someone who’s able to tell a story efficiently, emphasising the right elements and at the same time deliver great action pages.
In addition to Kusia’s gradual integration in a story ostensibly set at sea, Zub manages to include a Western segment and Lovecraftian sequence and also reveals the origin of the tall bald Skullkicker. He’s now definitively Rex, and we learn how compromised his existence has been, all cleverly leading to a threat at sea. A couple of other new ongoing features apply from this collection as Zub beefs up the contrary introductory narrative captions, always a joy, and Kusia’s magical rhyming sword.
For all that, Zub still hasn’t mastered how to either compact a story or ensure there’s enough substance to fill the five chapters he’s settled on as the regular length for his main stories, while some fat could be trimmed. There’s one hell of a surprise ending, though.
It’s followed with another four ‘Tavern Tales’. Jim Zub writes one himself, featuring some great cartooning from Joel Carroll, but there’s no disguising all contributions as filler.
Next up is Eighty Eyes on an Evil Island, or you can find it combined with this as the second hardcover Skullkickers Treasure Trove or more recently as the second Compact Attack Edition.
