Issue #1 of All Star Western was one of the highlights of the first month of the New 52. Sadly some of the light has already faded with the 2nd issue.

Here, instead of furthering the mystery of the Gotham Butcher along and developing the Watson/Holmes relationship of Hex and Arkham, we get a bunch of pages of dudes shooting guns.

Don’t get me wrong, I love a good action scene, but I can’t help but feel this book would have benefited from losing some of the those pages – say like, going from that awesome splash page of Hex saying, “Evenin’ boys.” to the aftermath of the fight with the 2nd awesome splash page of Hex standing in the pile of dead bodies and Arkham whispering, “Dear God in heaven.” That would have been the way to go – or maybe that’s just me. Sometimes less is more.

Anyway, all nit-picking aside, I did enjoy this issue, just not as much as the 1st one.

Also, I don’t know abut you but I’m kinda done with zombies, let alone Old West Zombies. The back-up feature in this issue was a waste of space. I give it a 2 for story and 3 for art.