Comic Review: Gunning For Hits #3

Gunning For Hits #3

Image Comics

Writer: Jeff Rougvie

Artist: Moritat

Martin Mills is a 80’s talent signer for a big American record company who hides a dark, possibly criminal, background. Image’s new series, Gunning For Hits, revolves around Mills, his past and his successful (at least until now) work on the music business.

In this chapter, Mills continues to try and sign one of his favorite singers, come-back star Brian Slade (clearly inspired on David Bowie), but Slade’s got his eyes on Martin’s latest discovery, the band Stunted Growth, for some reason. We also get to see how Martin deals with “Mr. Goldstone”, Slade’s bodyguard, who happens to know Mills from his previous mysterious line of work.

The writing for this book was a bit off on the first issue, seeing as it contains an almost ten-page long info-graphic on how the music industry works, step-by-step. However, it has been shown through these last two issues that Jeff Rougvie only wanted that explanation out of his way so he could focus on his story and characters. The story progresses beautifully at a moderate pace which only feels rushed, simulating a day in Martin Mills’ busy lifestyle. Martin’s thought boxes contribute with a personal and yet analytical take on everything that’s happening developing his character charmingly and helping indicate how much of a cold professional he can be. All other of Rougvie’s characters are still a bit in the dark. That trait accompanied by the artwork allows them to go from exaggeratedly funny to mob-boss level scary in a single panel, without it feeling forced at all.

Moritat’s art for this book gives the reader a joyful ride and complements the story quite organically. The style varies from cartoonish and friendly to a detailed one whenever things get more serious making some of those legitimately creepy once the color work is added doing wonders on the shading of this comic. In both of those styles, the facial expressions are on point. The huge amount of details contributes for that naturally as do some of the cartoon elements in the comic, such as a star for eyes or the villainous grins some characters display. In addition to all that, the art still presents deeply detailed backgrounds but without driving the reader away from whatever’s happening in the panel.

Gunning For Hits might have started on a low note and scared some readers away on the first chapter, but Rougvie and Moritat have, since then, shown amazing synchrony in their work making for great storytelling on a charming, funny and instigating comic book.