If you could make a gun from your fingers and shoot it? What then? Finger Guns, the monthly comic book from Vault, is now collected in a trade edition.
If your fingers could ‘bang’ and shoot energy at bullies, or calm someone, or help you solve your life’s problems? Would it be good? Would it simplify life, or would it make it worse?
This is the ‘what if’ premise of Finger Guns, and at first thought, it seems basic enough. But as writer Justin Richards, artist Val Halvorson and colourist Rebecca Nalty (lettering by Taylor Esposito) explore this concept with teenage characters, the situation gets much more real.
Finger Guns deals with deep issues: Wes and Saudade are witnesses to domestic abuse, social pressures at school, and their fun moments are few and far between. Big time drama.
The drawings are nicely handled. Heavy black lines, expressively so. The characters have substance, hold their mass. They inhabit the panel, move smoothly. The panels coalesce, combine to collect the flow. The colour is rich also, with oranges and blues. So much lightness and hope, yet huge helpings of fear and loathing.
This is a strongly written and realized coming of age story, made more original with its slight stray into fantasy and science fiction. Touching, delicate, brutal, unforgettable.
Vault Comics, Finger Guns (trade collection), $17.99 for 136 pages of content. Teen.
Newsdesk