Comic errors

And I'm not talking about Rob Liefeld's refusal to learn human anatomy. (very tired ZING!)

I recently picked up The Ballad of Sleeping Beauty, because, of course, it's a Western comic. It's decent. The art is pretty good, and the weird Carnivale-like stuff in the story is interesting enough. The artist draws a good gun-fight, something a lot of my other Western comics are lacking, even if he does opt for a modern muzzle-flash rather than a technologically appropriate puff of smoke.

One of the things that bugged me about it (cue loss of normal audience here) was that the artist kept drawing the guy reloading his Civil War-era pistol with a swing-out cylinder. I don't know exactly when swing-out cylinders became the norm for revolvers (my guess would be at the turn of the century when double-action revolvers were becoming the standard), but I do know that no cap-and-ball or cartridge conversion pistols from that era had swing-out cylinders.

What's worse (WORSE!) is that the arist has the auDACITY to draw the same error a few pages later, but swinging out on the OTHER SIDE! Can you believe it? No revolver has ever worked this way. Come ON.

I like how he never draws the cylinder arm. Where is it? How is the cylinder sliding out? It's in the shadows. We'll never know.

I admit that that is a pretty nit-picky and nerdy thing to be bothered by. How many people know that kind of thing, after all? I mean besides anyone who has ever studied the operation of those guns.

But BUT I have something that should make you all laugh now. I enjoyed Damion Scott's art for the Batgirl book quite a bit. Once in a while he had some issues with storytelling, but for the most part it was my favorite depiction of the awesome Thai Batgirl. There is one panel that cracked me up, though. Let's see if you can spot the problem.

See it yet? Yes? Awesome. No? See the closeup below.

*pushes up glasses* Ahhh, excuse me, are we to believe that this is some sort of magic auto-shell-ejecting revolver? Ah ha, ah ha, ah ha. Boy, I really hope someone got fired for that one.