the_mighty_monarch's All-Star Western #17 - Standing on Death's Doorstep; 19th Century Stormwatch review

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    Dishonored Gotham

    Bill Sienkiewicz's cover is amazing, it contrasts the detail of a lot of the covers that came before, but the scraggily look is so incredibly fitting of not only the series, but this issue in particular. It creates such an intense and desperate tone for the issue that the issue, in turn, takes and runs with in full.

    Ever since the zero issue, Moritat's art has hit its stride in full. I don't know what happened, but the entire second year of All-Star Western has looked a huge step up, visually, from the first year. I loved Moritat's art for the first year, with some occasional exceptions, but lately its been on a whole other level. The added details has actually improved the dynamism instead of taking away from it.

    This issue reminds me SO MUCH of Dishonored, which I've been playing a lot of lately. A 19th Century harbor city with mostly the poor suffering from a disease and cordoned off from the rest of the city because certain stages of the disease turn them into crazed zombie-esque madmen? And it's winter? Yeah. But this is mostly in setting and tone, it doesn't feel like a rip-off, it actually made me feel more at home in the setting. There was a strong focus on narration in this issue, and during the portions with Jonah Hex it really made you feel like you were there, in the gutters, with him. This is one of those cases where an omniscient narrator actually improves the issue, and it helps make it a good jumping on point. The intro to the situation leads right into an intro of Jonah Hex that is... perhaps the most amazing description of the character I've ever seen.

    This issue also toys around with the history of the DCU a bit more with the arrival of Vandal Savage. They toy around with his identity and history a bit, longtime readers will be familiar, but new readers will get an intriguing narration that dances around spelling out the full truth. Savage is also shown to have some surprising capabilities previously unseen, but ones that make perfect sense. It's interesting for someone like me, who's been following all of the New 52, to see how Savage has been progressing through different eras. From the boisterous and jovial Savage of Demon Knights to the calm and logical Savage of DC Universe Presents. The Vandal Savage we see here is somewhere in the middle. He's classy, but intimidating and unafraid to simply take what he wants. He wants a woman? He takes her! Doesn't matter if she's married to one of the most significant men in Gotham, Vandal Savage wants this woman.

    The only real problem with this issue is the pacing. I'm generally against stories that start in the middle, then go right back to the beginning; and while it does do that without plotline justification, it's hard to complain when it lead to the amazing Jonah Hex intro I mentioned before. But it's odd to see them have one random traveling companion, then see they had two at the beginning, and as soon as we return to the middle, that one we had left gets killed. So those two guys were utterly pointless, we didn't need a death to set the stage, it was done perfectly without that. The other problem with the flow is that we've completely skipped over Amadeus' return from the looney bin. I figured this would be a significant scene, Amadeus sees his mother up an about, or Hex says his farewell to Constance or SOMETHING. There was so much character work that I felt needed to be done for that scene, and it's completely skipped.

    After the painful experience that was the Tomahawk co-feature, ANY co-feature would've been an improvement, but this one is, without a doubt, my absolute favorite yet. The artwork is great, the character seems interesting, and most importantly it's full of Steampunk tech, one of the aspects I've been hoping to see most in All-Star Western. It's like Wild Wild West. The only real flaw is that I spent the whole co-feature confused about why Jenny Freedom only had one companion since this was '19th Century STORMWATCH,' only to find at the end that she'd previously quit Stormwatch. It was weird, but in telling a larger story, perfectly fine.

    In Conclusion: 4.5/5

    This issue wasn't perfect, but we went from the worst co-feature I've ever read, to the best one this series has had. This issue has a totally different tone, like each arc does, I'm just a little disappointed with the way we skipped the epilogue kind of stuff from the previous arc, and some other minor pacing quibbles in this story itself. But All-Star Western continues to be one of the best things the New 52 has been putting out, and if you don't think you like westerns I'd still advise giving this a look because it's just phenomenal.

    Other reviews for All-Star Western #17 - Standing on Death's Doorstep; 19th Century Stormwatch

      New All-Star Western Arc has Promise 0

      All-Star Western no. 17 gives us the start of a new storyline and presents a mysterious, new villain - at least as far as Jonah Hex and Amadeus Arkham are concerned. The story takes place in the winter, with a severe outbreak of cholera occurring in one of the tenement districts of 19th century Gotham. Thousands fled the district and soon those who remain begin to die off. As a result - the district is giving the dubious moniker of "Death's Doorstep." The outbreak become so bad that Gotham's may...

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