Review by Frank Plowright
Adam and Maggie are a Texas couple trying for a baby, but Maggie begins worrying about whether the child will grow up to share their values. These amount to caring about everyone irrespective of gender or country of origin, and concern about the planet’s future. Continuing the discussion as they emerge from a shop they’re robbed at gunpoint. Maggie doesn’t want to hand over her wedding ring, but Adam does so tearfully when her life is threatened. The aftermath is Maggie increasingly concerned about Adam’s ability to protect her and becoming more insistent there should be a gun in the household. We follow their meandering journey thereafter.
Gun ownership in the USA is a matter of disbelief in Europe, where most people feel protected without having to own weapons. Statistically more people are killed by accidental gunfire in American homes than by their use for protection, and deaths resulting from children using guns in the home run to a couple of hundred annually.
It’s an issue Dave Cowan feels strongly about, and it’s certainly an issue deserving more than being constantly shouted down by vocal gun proponents quoting the US Constitution’s second amendment. However, good intentions are only one step toward a readable graphic novel.
It’s difficult to care about Maggie and Adam as anything more than sanctimonious caricatures, always explaining who they are and what they care about to people who already know. Who in the midst of a proper argument takes on board a comment of disrespect via raised voice and modifies their tone? When a crisis point manifests in the marriage the over the top reaction would shame a sensational soap opera. Those and multiple other examples mean Should We Buy a Gun? transmits as a lecture, not a discussion, and while the couple are able to take on other opinions, they never transcend their paper thin personalities, which can shift as the story requires.
Their lack of appeal is also the result of extremely basic art from Gabriel Wexler, as flat and one-dimensional as the cast. There’s little deviation from head and shoulders illustrations on a colour background, which would make for a dull book even with a technically better artist. Whether Wexler worked from a full script or conceived his own layouts is an issue affecting the pacing, which is incredibly slow. It’s a rare scene that can’t be contracted for greater effect.
The protagonist of a plot intended to counterpoint Adam and Maggie’s comfortable life is a little more convincing, inducing the fear that circumstances will propel him to violent solutions, but the discussions people have never convince as genuine conversations. Cowan earns credit via including views of responsible gun owners, but while there’s balance, nuance remains absent and lectures prevail. The most effective scene in Should We Buy a Gun? occurs toward the end when a crisis point is reached, but it’s too little, and far too late.
Should We Buy a Gun? opens a very necessary debate that should spread to a graphic novel audience, but the issues rarely transcend rebukes.
