GUNSMITH CATS BURST VOLUME 1

"SHORT SERIES #1" | "#2 GUNSMITH CATS MINI THEATER HP (HIGH POWER)"
"#3 HIDDEN GUN" | "BURST" | "OASIS" | "MONROE INN"
"MUZZLE TO MUZZLE" | "GIMME MORE SLICES OF TAKE!" | "RETURN" | "DEAL"
Presented by Kenichi Sonoda
Translation and Lettering: Studio Cutie

After the original GUNSMITH CATS series ended, Kenichi Sonoda revisited the characters a handful of times before eventually restarting it as an ongoing story with BURST. Those few intermediary appearances are a trio of one-shot stories called the "Short Series". The first of these is a pretty straightforward affair in which our heroines Rally Vincent, Minnie May Hopkins, and Misty Brown protect a hooker who's seen too much from a group of hitmen dispatched by a cocaine-dealing senator. It reminds us that in Sonoda's version of Chicago, nearly everyone in a position of power is corrupt in some way or another (which may not be far from the truth, though this heightened reality has a crooked senator conspiring with a crooked assistant district attorney to kill a hooker, which seems a bit extreme).

The second "Short Series" installment is one of those dreadfully boring affairs in the gun shop, where Rally and Minnie May work on a custom weapon for a client and gab away about it as if it's supposed to be interesting. I think I said this when I looked at the original GSC last year, but these scenes absolutely kill me. Sonoda is a gun nut, of course, and it's his prerogative to gush about them in the context of his stories -- and I suppose it's to his credit that he doesn't do this sort of thing too much -- but devoting an entire manga chapter simply to two characters talking about a gun is absurd. There's no story here; it's like I'm reading an infomercial for a Browning pistol! (Though there is a funny bit on the last page: when May learns along with readers that the client is Rally's information broker, Becky, May says that had she known, she wouldn't have put as much effort into polishing the gun.)

Our final "Short Series" story is short and sweet; a straight action affair in which Rally attempts to bring in a bounty but is attacked by his cohorts. They disarm her and hold her at gunpoint, but she manages to get the drop on them with the tiny pistol she keeps hidden up her sleeve. Sonoda throws a bit of pathos into this one, as the bounty's daughter witnesses the entire thing and cries for him in the end as Rally hauls him away.

Then GUNSMITH CATS BURST begins en media res. First, Rally's beloved Cobra Mustang is stolen from her shop while May and Becky are minding the place, then we cut to Texas, where Rally is sitting in a gas-depleted car with a captive named Howard, while Bean Bandit pushes the vehicle down the highway. It's a nice way to kick things off -- since most folks reading this sequel series would likely already be familiar with the major characters, simply tossing them all at us within the span of a few short pages works great to pique interest.

Sonoda then jumps back in time a bit to let us know how our heroes wound up in this predicament: Rally caught up with Howard, a mob accountant on the run, at a Texas warehouse -- but he had betrayed the mob and a group of their men were out for him as well -- and the mobsters had hired Bean to ferry them to their quarry. A shootout ensued, the mobsters all escaped without Bean (with one of them releasing him from his contract), and Rally hired the Road Buster to drive Howard and her to safety. But her car ran out of gas, dropping the group into the situation where the story first joined them.

Subsequently, the group stops at a small roadside motel/gas station to refuel, but two of the three mobsters arrive by chance and attack. Rally, Bean, and the motel's elderly owner work together to kill the two criminals, then Rally and Bean proceed on their way with Howard. But all is not well! It turns out the Cobra was stolen by the same gang who employed Howard, and they've informed Misty and May that they will use the car for a terrorist attack if Rally doesn't turn Howard over to them, along with the ten million dollars he stole.

Meanwhile, Rally, Bean, and Howard travel around an unnamed Texas city, collecting increments of Howard's loot from various banks, along with ledgers revealing the location of the bulk of the money. Howard offers Bean a large payday to break his contract with Rally, so she takes the ledgers and runs. Later, everyone reconvenes in Chicago, where Rally convinces Bean and Howard to help her stop the terror attack in exchange for her not turning Howard in and not claiming any portion of his money for herself.

With that, GUNSMITH CATS BURST's first volume ends, and I have to admit that it's a little... underwhelming. There's some fun stuff in here, mainly a running gag early on in which a delirious Bean, possibly suffering from heatstroke, repeatedly asks Rally to let him "drink (her) piss" because there's no water to be found out on the unforgiving Texas highway. But overall, it has the feel that this has all happened before. Nothing is specifically repetitive of past storylines, but it does all feel very derivative of situations we've already seen in the original series.

That said, it is nice to see Bean and Rally acting like friends (for the most part) rather than mere business acquaintances, and Sonoda hasn't lost a beat when it comes to creative and exciting ways to depict rampant gunplay. I just hope the story improves going forward. The fact that BURST remains basically a blank slate in my head a decade or after I first read it kind of has me wondering if it didn't leave an impression because the entire thing was this lackluster. I guess we'll soon find out!