“What do you expect of me, what is it you want … whatever you’ve planned for me I’m not the one”
Justin Jordan seems to write ridiculously violent comics with very little depth but with hints at deeper stuff that he simply never explores, and if that’s your jam, you’ll probably dig Gunpowder Prophets, his latest story. 
This is drawn by Patrick Piazzalunga, colored by Roman Stevens, lettered by Taylor Esposito, and edited by Mike Raicht and James B. Emmett. It’s published by Mad Cave, it costs $17.99, and it’s 110 pages long.
You know how it’s really hard to review some movies, because they’re kind of review-proof? Like, if you try to really break down, say, Commando, it just doesn’t work, because it’s not meant to be anything else than a kill-fest, and anything else doesn’t really matter. I mean, you can certainly talk about the ridiculously homoerotic fight between Ah-nold and Bennett, because it certainly is, but it doesn’t change the fact that all involved made exactly the kind of movie they wanted to make, and if you like those kinds of movies, you’re going to like Commando and nothing any wine-sipping, fart-sniffing reviewer will say is going to change that (I, of course love Commando). It’s pretty much the same thing with Gunpowder Prophets. It’s a simple story told well, and it does exactly what it wants to do — give us a simple story with a butt-load of corpses, which are corpsed in the bloodiest ways possible. 
It’s set sometime in the 1970s, the weirdest decade of the 20th century (I actually do appreciate that Jordan never tells us when it’s set or even makes too many references to it — it’s only because one of the main characters was in Vietnam that we get a hint about the time frame), and Huck and Marley are hired by a weeping woman to get her daughter back from her ex-husband, who’s going to sacrifice the girl to his dark gods to become super-powerful. The daughter — named America, because why be subtle? — was born at a specific time and raised to be a sacrifice, so she’s full of power, and the dude is going to snatch it from her. Huck and Marley get the girl back easily enough, but she’s not necessarily cooperative because she doesn’t trust her mother as much as she doesn’t trust her dad. Marley and Huck need to keep her safe as the dad sends waves of bad guys after her, bad guys whom Marley (and Huck, too, but mostly Marley) kills in spectacular fashion, but whom, because of her dad’s connection to the occult, can come back from the dead pretty easily. It just gives Jordan a chance to have Marley slaughter them again!
There’s honestly not much more to it. Marley has some kind of supernatural power — he can see ghosts — but that doesn’t explain how he’s so hard to kill, nor does Jordan feel particularly inclined to explain it. 
There’s just that tiny bit about Vietnam to let us know our protagonists have gone through some shit, but it’s not much at all. It’s just a slaughter-fest, and while I find that fun, if you don’t, you’re not going to find much more here. Piazzalunga has a good, rubbery style that helps mitigate the horrific violence a bit — he has a bit of a John McCrea/Brian Churilla vibe going on, which is not a bad vibe to have when you’re drawing lots and lots of killings, as it keeps it from being too bleak but still gets the point across. Jordan introduces some fun characters along the way, including the guy who wants to auction off America and the people who want to buy her, but again, there’s not much character development here. It is what it is, and that’s all it wants to be.
Again, it’s hard to review this too much. I liked it, but it’s very much junk food. You can find trashy movies from the 1970s and 1980s on streaming services, and it feels like they’re “free” even though you’re paying for the streaming service. For this, you’re paying 18 bucks for what is a fun but forgettable adventure. Whether you want to take that plunge depends, I suppose, on how invested you are in trashy, violent adventure stories. That’s all there is to it!
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆ ☆
