The Sixth Gun

The Sixth Gun
Cover of The Sixth Gun #1 (May 2010). Art by Brian Hurtt.
Publication information
Publisher	Oni Press
Schedule	Monthly
Genre	Weird West
Publication date(s)	May 2010 – June 2016
No. of issues	50
Creative team
Created by	Cullen Bunn Brian Hurtt
Written by	Cullen Bunn
Artist(s)	Brian Hurtt Tyler Crook (#14, #23, #41)
Colorist(s)	Brian Hurtt (#1–5) Bill Crabtree(#6–present)

The Sixth Gun is an ongoing, monthly comic book series created by Cullen Bunn and Brian Hurtt and published by Oni Press.

The Sixth Gun takes place in the old west, shortly after the end of the Civil War. The story centers around a set of six pistols, each imbued with dark powers. The wielder of each pistol gains an ability unique to that weapon, and is tied to the pistol until his or her death. The guns are numbered, with the titular Sixth Gun belonging to one of the story's protagonists: Becky Montcrief. The other main protagonist is Drake Sinclair, a gunfighter with a very pragmatic outlook on the guns. The villains of the series include recurring antagonist General Hume, the Knights of Solomon, the Sword of Abraham, and others vying for control of the guns.

Shortly after the Civil War, Drake Sinclair is searching for the Hanging Tree—an oracle that can tell him how to access General Hume's vault, and the untold riches lying within. The souls of the tree tell Drake to seek out the Montcrief family. Meanwhile, Becky Montcrief is taking care of her dying stepfather, a preacher. Just as he asks Becky to toss an old wooden case into the deepest fishing hole she can find, they're attacked by agents of the Pinkerton Agency (who were hired by Hume's wife, Missy) and some thugs. The preacher removes a gun from the case and shoots several of the men, only to be shot and killed himself. Becky picks up the gun and shoots another man, but is captured immediately afterward. Drake shows up that evening, seeing he's too late. He interrogates one of the surviving men, who explains they were hired by a woman in the town of Brimstone.

At the same time, four bandits, each wielding one of the six pistols, attack and kill everyone in a monastery to retrieve Oliander Bedford Hume's body. Hume, thanks to his dark dealings, is undead; his imprisonment on holy ground has left him weakened. The five head back to Brimstone, where Missy Hume is interrogating Becky. Drake finds them, shoots Missy in the head, and frees Becky. Seeing that she is now bound to her stepfather's/Hume's gun, Drake forces her to come with him. On their way back upstairs, they learn that Missy isn't dead; she runs to the bar and gets her men. Billjohn O'Henry (Drake's partner) holds them off, but then Hume and his "Four Horsemen" burst into the bar. After a shootout between the two groups, Billjohn, Sinclair, and Becky manage to escape into the woods.

On the road, Drake explains that Hume was a general for the Confederacy, reviled for the atrocities he and his men committed. Somehow, he came into possession of six magical guns, each of which is more powerful than an ordinary pistol and never needs to be reloaded. Additionally, each has a unique power: one strikes with the force of a cannon, one shoots Hellfire, one inflicts a flesh-rotting disease on those it wounds, one can call up those it kills as golem-like servants, and one allows its wielder to survive any wound. The titular Sixth Gun (formerly Hume's, but now Becky's) grants visions of the past and future. Hume was brought down by a group of men, including a preacher named VonAllmen. One of the few survivors, he had Hume bound in cold iron and secreted at the monastery, then took the Sixth Gun to safeguard it and fled—eventually changing his name to Montcrief and marrying Becky's widowed mother.