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CBG SATELLITES
The ADD Blog by Alan David Doane
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Like Louis L'Amour's Sackett family, Gideon Brood and his gang of
hangers-on don't go lookin' for trouble - trouble just seems to find
them. And interestingly (theoretically, at least), it's always trouble
of the supernatural variety. The premise is this: Brood and his
compatriots have just buried their friend Race Kennedy. It seems as
though the gang has time on its hands, so when traveling spiritualist
Sarah Williams asks Brood and Co. to accompany her to the nearest
railhead, they oblige. From there, troubles dog our heroes and their
wagon train as they travel to the railhead; one of Brood's enemies hires
a raging psychopath to kill him, and all manner of paranormal mayhem
ensues. This time 'round, the trouble is caused by a strange
conflagration that occurs when Sarah Williams and Montana Donnie
Fletcher, the aforementioned psychopath, come into close proximity to
one another.
Jeremy Haun, whose fine artwork can be seen in the current Image
miniseries Battle Hymn, puts in a workmanlike effort in
Banners of Gold, but the results are average at best. Backgrounds
are vague and lack any kind of detail that would make the most of the
southwestern locations, and when Abby DeGrazia and Sarah Williams show
up on the same page, it's sometimes difficult to tell who's who. The
male characters (except for Jerome Betts, who's bald, although even he
has a little shock of hair erupting from beneath his lower lip) all
appear sprouting hair from the most unfortunate locations on their
faces. This works well in the case of our villain, who looks
appropriately creepy sporting some seriously Wolfman-esque facial hair,
but is decidedly less effective elsewhere. The fantastic apparitions
that appear in the climactic sequence elicit little more than a shrug
and a chuckle. However, the artist has to work with the script he has in
his hands, so I'm sure Haun is not entirely to blame for that
unfortunate series of images. As for the "Banners of Gold" of the book's
title, that particular image provides all the thrills and supernatural
mystique of a super-sized school crosswalk superimposed across the
horizon.
Finally, there's the character of Gideon Brood himself, who often looks
like he's hamming it up for some unseen camera; on one page, he appears
to be calling down lightning from the heavens while intoning (to a
corpse, no less), "Anyway, I reckon you won't mind the rain as much as
some of them others might. And it looks like it'll hit hard when it
comes." One splash page, one stiff pose, one stilted, pointless line of
dialogue, and that pretty much sums it up for Banners of Gold.
Head 'em up, and move 'em out.
-- Jim Witt
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Desperadoes: Banners of Gold
This book's weaknesses become apparent on the first page, and things
only go sideways from there. One minute, Gideon Brood is sprawled out on
the ground with blood spurting from his mouth looking up at a rather
rotund and nasty-looking bad guy who has just bashed him in the head
with a chair. The next minute he's standing beneath a starlit sky
exchanging pleasantries with Sarah Williams. With a wipe of a hand, his
mouth has healed, and he's given the opportunity to say things like,
"Wouldn't'a been a problem if he'd stayed dead," referring to Jimmy
Miggs, who managed to die not just once, but a couple of times, in
Desperadoes: Quiet of the Grave. As for the guy with the chair,
we never do find out where he ends up, or how he manages to disappear
without taking one last shot at Gideon. Later, two people in Sarah's
traveling party are brutally killed following a seance in an abandoned
stagecoach station, but we never find out who, or what, killed them.
Their presence in the story seems to be nothing more than an excuse to
put the dearly departed's long intestines and sundry other internal
organs on display for the viewing public, both in tasteful silhouette as
well as in glorious technicolor.