Gunning for Hits #5 // Review
Record Company hotshot and former hitman Martin Mills deals with the twin tragedies of runaway success and impending failure in the latest issue of Gunning for Hits. After a bit of a slow fourth issue, writer Jeff Rougvie manages a really clever fifth that straddles itself somewhere between two tragedies in the life of a very unstable executive. The action and drama are brought to the page once again by Moritat with colors by Casey Silver. The ongoing story of Martin Mills has been heading in the general direction of some kind of showdown. This issue sets-up for a crescendo of action that will likely follow in an even more appealing seventh issue.
As the issue opens, Mills is taking a meeting with his director. Director Cook is furious, but as Mills has been so damned successful, there isn’t much that he can do about it. Meanwhile, things are falling apart with Mills’ two biggest assets. The hot, young Kurt Cobain-esque frontman for the suddenly successful grunge band Stunted Growth is starting to predictably descend into addiction and self-destruction. The faded, pop Bowie-esque megastar that Mills is working with has turned in an album that he’s far too starstruck to realize is utter crap.
Mills’ clever pairing of two different pop begins to emerge as a really smart contrast. Granted--the Ziggy Stardust/Sid Vicious rock and roll suicide type of a story isn’t all that interesting, but it’s thrown into a mix that makes clever use of the cliche. Success on the brink of failure plays against a legendary success who is about to fail spectacularly. A former hitman is caught in the middle of it all. When your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. When your most trusted tool is a gun...well...Mills has his own solution to the impending catastrophe that launches Gunning For Hits in a really fun direction by issue’s end. Clever stuff.
Moritat delivers the story to the page with an appealing sense of drama that never overpowers the story. Mills and company hang out in panels that are decorated with some pretty clever dialogue. It feels classy even when things get ugly. There are occasional strokes of casual genius in the delivery of the drama. A single page has a group of people all sitting in different locations all listening to the same album by the faded rock legend. The contrasting reactions make for one of the issue’s most visually dynamic moments cast in a range of different colors by a smartly deft Casey Silver.
Success and failure play in a crisp narrative stereo feel that works impressively well this issue. The build-up to the end of the issue is punctuated by a fun couple of pages that have Rougvie writing the rough copy for a total evisceration of the doomed album by a fictitious music critic. As the issue ends, it’s already apparent that the album is bad. It’s a nice little stylistic punctuation for Rougvie to go into detail on just HOW bad it is in the narrative text at the end of the issue.
