Recently Read: Bat Lash: Guns and Roses

First appearing in the late '60s as a wandering, Candide-like pacifist and lover (but also
a crack shot, of course), Bat Lash was DC's attempt to update the western comic for the
counter culture audience. Created by Carmine Infantino and Sergio Aragones, the short-lived series was better than it could have been and created a small but loyal following.

Forty years later (perhaps in order to use and retain the trademark), DC published a new
Bat Lash miniseries, Guns and Roses, with plot by Aragones, script by western novelist
Peter Brandvold and art by veteran John Severin, nearly ninety; it was one of his last
published works.

The series, collected in trade paperback, is fun and suspenseful, with old-fashioned
narrow escapes, delicious villains and plot twists and turns. It's a prequel; the origin of
Bat Lash. The characterization doesn't really jibe with the later Bat Lash we know, but
the story works anyway. I was a bit disappointed that Peter Brandvold seemed to be writing
down to the medium a bit; an author who makes a living writing novels should invest into
the comic medium the same sense of depth and characterization a good novel contains.

Where Guns and Roses excels, though, is in John Severin's mind-blowingly detailed and
researched art. Every panel is wrought with hand-crafted care. It's some of the best work
of his career, an achievement more beautifully accomplished than that of cartoonists a
fourth of his age. For that reason alone, I recommend Guns and Roses.

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