"THE MOB'S REVENGE!"
(1991 version)
In many ways, this is where The GUN!, as a series, began to take off.
When I originally wrote GUN #3 in 1975, none of the 3 main regulars introduced in that episopde were given proper names. That actually didn't come until a year-and-a-half later, when I decided to start basing "The New Big Boss", his "Assistant Boss" and the guy who came to be known as the "Task Force Leader", on myself, my best friend and a mutual friend who had first introduced us. During my Senior year in high school, "Jim MacDonald" and "Dan Grayson"-- along with a slew of supporting characters-- all got massively fleshed out as complex, distinct personalities. It was easy. They were all based on people I knew in real life!
When I got around to re-writing the early episodes in the early 90s, I naturally applied that fleshing out to the characters, writing them as they probably always should have been. The result was the stories taking on the feeling of a sitcom. Basically, THE GUN! became what you'd get if you crossed THE UNTOUCHABLES with GET SMART. Except, here, the bad guys were the main characters.
As with "The Origin Of The GUN!" and "Casino Of Evil", this story was also massively fleshed out. What had begun life with the simple question posed by my brother-- "How about if The GUN! got ambushed in a dead-end alley?" --became a much-better story than it already was. More than anything, this episode sets the tone for most of the ones to follow.
As with "Casino Of Evil", this was re-written AS a "rough". Now, whereas the bulk of GUN #2 was done as a tribute to artist Gil Kane, in this case, for many years before I actually did it, I had in mind doing it as a tribute to a very different comics artist... STEVE DITKO. Pages 2 & 3, which serve as an epilogue to the previous story, continue the Gil Kane swipes. After that-- it's Ditko all the way.
Actually, there were 2 artists I was paying tribute to here at the same time. When I did the finished art, my goal to to create pages that would look like what you'd get if you had Steve Ditko pencils, inked by Joe Sinnott!
ENJOY!
THE GUN! #3 (1991 version)
Story & Art Copyright (C) Henry R. Kujawa
All prominent characters are Trademarks of Henry R. Kujawa
Don't miss the 2nd PART of this... coming up next!!!
(Continued in The GUN! #3, 1991, Pt. 2)
Wow, that was action packed and funny. Very kirbyeske.
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