The Devils Horn

"What makes a devil and what makes a man...?" is one of the questions a group of the best gunslingers are asking as they shoot their way through the tournament and are caused to travel to the darkest part of their souls to survive! Who will be the last gun standing?

If I had to sum up this comic in one sentence, I could not do it. I have to admit, I am a HUGE Dark Tower fan, so I had to keep reminding myself that this was not that. And I am glad to say that The Devil's Horn is most certainly it's own original story.
That being said, the story in and of itself (i.e. the plot) is quite enjoyable. The idea of a gunfighter tournament is appealing to me. And it moves at a very decent pace. I also like the fact that it seems to blend mostly Old West themes with a few modern conveniences here and there. But the plot gets moved along with large walls of text of these people talking, while standing and pointing guns at one another.
The language of these particular text walls can sometimes vary, as well. Not in the sense that the people speak an entirely different language, it just seems that one person may have talked eloquently, with correct grammar usage and spelling. And then in the next frame, they are saying something else in a very roundabout way and almost seeming to repeat themselves while some of the words get garbled. I don't know, maybe I'm the only one who sees it, but even the thought text does the same.
Even without the text, following the flow of panels could get quite confusing. I can't count how many times I accidentally read the wrong panel and then saw that the one I should have read before it is actually to the side, or underneath. However, I am glad that not all the pages were like that, and that there was a variety of many paneled pages and fewer paneled.
The drawing style and way that the artist managed to capture human emotions was very good, and the shading, though sparse, worked very effectively. There were no colors, but I do not think that detracted at all from the art, though sometimes the only reason you knew someone was "old" was because of context. The thing I noticed there to be quite an abundance of was eyes. This artist loves doing close-ups of eyes looking in any direction, and they look good! But they're a little too frequent. The action sequences were fairly easy to follow, and it made me think of Trigun mixed with Yu Yu Hakusho.
The whole tone of the comic carried through true. It had a very serious feeling to it, with bits of comedic relief scattered throughout that did not interfere with that seriousness.
All in all, this comic is decent, but could use a bit of improvement in how the panels flow, and it definitely needs to be a bit more condensed and to the point when text comes into play. Explaining the actions of a character is fine, but it makes more sense when he is thinking it rather than explaining his whole plan to his enemies. If I were to rank it from 1 to 10, 1 being lowest, I would give it a 7.

The Devil's Horn....

The plot's like the anime Basilisk, except just the fighting and none of the pretty women. All these cowboys have to kill each other in some kind of tournament thing. It's a very typical action story line.

The jokes are pretty ugly. There's a PMS joke where this guy shoots off another dude's dick. Sick. It's a good thing the art wasn't too detailed.

I guess others would be more into this story, but it's not my cup of tea.

Art:
The main characters are well designed and detailed ,but they are all strong built men in their 20s to 40s. Same body type, race, sex and height with really detailed cowboy outfits. It's hard to distinguish them. That one guy with the 80s long hair and the superhero stood out. Long hair's gone though. Too bad he seemed more interesting.

More on the art. This comic could use more inking. It's hard to tell if it's just pencils or if some inking is done. The contrast would look nicer if it's all black and white.

The walls of text could use some reducing too. There were some segments of dialogue that felt like the character was saying the obvious, what we already saw.

All in all, it's just not my kind of comic.

When I first saw the banner for The Devil's Horn, I was intrigued. I don't watch or read a lot of Western type stories, but every now and then a movie or game will come out in this type of setting that really shines. The color picture littered with bullet casings made this appear to be one of those, and I couldn't wait to read the story.

I have to admit, when I looked at the first page, I was a little disappointed. The page layouts looked decent (probably set up using Plasq comic life?), but they didn't seem to fit with the sketched out look in the panels. The artwork is great, I have no complaints there, but the typed color text bubbles, and obviously digitally created panels didn't quite jive with the rough artwork. The rough look to the art may be intentional, which would seem fitting for the type of story, but I think the page layout could have reflected that more. Also, some of the speech bubbles were strange, and maybe more time and care could have been given to how the text fell within them.

By the time I got to page 4, I was becoming very impressed with the artwork, and loved seeing the hero encounter his foe, but I felt a lot more emphasis could have been given to the gunshot that the main character receives, although I do absolutely love the panel that shows the blood spewing from his mouth. During the next couple of pages when it is revealed that the man who shot the main character had actually shot the wrong person, I thought the quality of writing slumped for a little bit. This makes an interesting plot device, but the writing wasn't as strong here and the dialogue seemed a little weak. I suppose it's hard to tell what a person would say to someone when they realized they were shot by mistake, but I would have expected a harsher reaction from the main character. I thought this was improved a few pages later when the main character takes the gun from the guy who shot him and attempts to turn his situation in his favor. The pacing here was great, and the story started to get very exciting. The excitement was hindered slightly, however, by the lack of actual sound effects when the main character pulls his revolver. I noticed "SFX: whoosh....SFX: cock" at the bottom of the page, but they don't do much to add to the page. Sound effects, in my opinion, need to be big, bold, exciting, and integrated right in with the artwork to keep the reader immersed in the page. It's distracting to get the sounds of the action written in plain text underneath a panel.

10 pages into the second issue, I realized that many of the complaints I had with the first issue had been fixed. The pacing, even though it took five pages to introduce the man in black, was excellent. It would have seemed too long to watch this man walk in to town for five pages, but the intro was done well and seemed necessary. There was plenty of things going on during this, such as commentary from the people in town, which was very much appreciated. I felt that you really got the "western" vibe with this issue. Some minor issues with text bubbles still exist, not that it was a major issue, but distracting none the less. Also, and maybe this is just a pet peeve of mine, but the word "damn" was misspelled when one of the town's people were saying they didn't think they would ever see the man in black again. Also not a big deal, but it's usually a pretty good idea to make sure everything in your comic is spelled correctly.

By the time the gunman got to the saloon, I found it strange that he ordered apple juice, which didn't seem very fitting for the setting, but the dialogue from the other patrons in the saloon was spot on and really painted the stereotypical Western saloon scene. The inevitable fight scene in the saloon was excellent and paced very well, but the same issues with sound effects just being typed at the bottom of the page popped up. This confused me because a couple of pages before, sound effects were shown in stylized text in the frame in which the sound was occurring, which worked much better. Still a very minor complaint, as this scene really held my attention and the artwork and dialogue were great.

Ok, I could probably review this all day, but I think I'll try to summarize a bit and call it a review. The story in The Devil's Horn is very interesting and, most of the time, very well written. Occasionally dialogue suffers, but for the most part it is spot on and really sets the scene. The page layouts look professional, but strange choices like brown text boxes and speech bubbles that don't quite fit with the text are distracting, especially with the sketchy, penciled art in the comic. I think the layout would have been better if it looked a little rough as well and the text bubbles and boxes were all black and white, maybe with a better font that highlighted the rough style of the comic. The pacing and action are done really well and highlighted by the artists ability to draw action very well, but these scenes are hindered a little by the lack of sound effects in the panels. Instead, sound effects are often replaced with simple lines of text under the panel that explain what sounds are being heard. More emphasis here would have been very helpful. All in all, this is a great comic, and definitely worth a read. As a matter of fact, I'm adding it to my favorites so I can keep up on it too!