Leroy Douresseaux on EARP: SAINTS FOR SINNERS #4

EARP: SAINTS FOR SINNERS #4 (OF 4)
RADICAL PUBLISHING

CREATORS: Matt Cirulnick and David Manpearl
STORY: Matt Cirulnick
WRITER: M. Zachary Sherman
ARTIST: Colin Lorimer
COLORS: Kyushik Shin
LETTERS: Rus Wooton
COVER: Alex Maleev
28pp, Color, $3.50

Writers Matt Cirulnick and David Manpearl have created Earp: Saints for Sinners, a comic book miniseries from Radical Publishing. This science fiction with a Western flair takes the classic Western hero, Wyatt Earp, and puts him in a near-future, dystopian setting. With a story by Matt Cirulnick, a script by M. Zachary Sherman, and art by Colin Lorimer and Kyushik Shin (colors), Earp: Saints for Sinners turns out to be a good, violent action graphic novel.

This re-imagined Wyatt Earp rides rough after an event called “Black Thirty,” which sets off a second Great Depression. Out of the chaos rose a new type of bank robber, and Earp was the man who brought them in to justice or shot down the ones he didn’t bring in. After his brother, Virgil Earp, was killed in a train robbery, Wyatt retired and became a businessman, opening the AOK Saloon in the only boomtown left in America, Las Vegas.

As Earp: Saints for Sinners #4 opens, Morgan Earp is dead. Morgan is dead by the hand of Alan Pinkerton and his private security group, Pinkerton Security, in the service of Mayor John Flynn, owner of Flynn Casino and Mayor of Las Vegas. Now, Wyatt Earp is coming for Pinkerton and he’s bringing Hell with him. That’s Hell in the form of Jesse James, a modern day Robin Hood, and the Jesse James Gang, and, of course, Earp’s old pal, Doc Holliday.

Newly reappointed U.S. Marshal Wyatt Earp and his deputized army race through the desert to the Pinkerton compound. Earp and Doc Holliday also have scores to settle, and a woman, Josephine “Josie” Marcus, to rescue.

Earp: Saints for Sinners saves its best for last in this fourth issue. This science fiction and crime comic book is part Michael Mann urban action and part John Ford Western. Its finale delivers the gun smoke, the rat-a-tat, and the cap-popping action. Ultimately, Earp: Saints for Sinners does what a book should usually do – leave us wanting more.

A-