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Wild West Weird

Graphic Book Review: The Sixth Gun
Sons of the Gun

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Sixth-gun-sons-of-the-gunZombos Says: Good

Four guns are unholstered for The Sixth Gun: Sons of the Gun, but this spin-off prequel story in The Sixth Gun saga misfires with its audaciously aimed showdown that pits one giant monster (we're talking 10 stories tall, here) versus cursed gunslingers to close this five issue series. Before we reach that point, a weird wild west storyline unfolds along different paths as each gun's owner brings us back to General Hume's hanging-tree demise starting point and onto their own slides down the slippery slope of perdition. 

Each gunslinger can shoot bullets drilling deeper than mere death in their targets: Arcene's bullets carry firey doom; Kinney's bullets bring flesh-rotting ruin; Hedgepeth's bullets bring forth all the souls he's killed as golem-like vassals to do his bidding; and Sumter's bullets explode like cannonballs. A formidable firepower of destruction when directed by the evil General Hume or his soon to be widowed wife, the equally evil Missy Hume. She carries a cursed gun too, but in proper female stereotyping for comic books written by the boys, she only gets a youthful long life for every person she kills with her bullets. How vain.

Sumter wields the first gun, but it doesn't do him much good as he slowly dies of thirst in the desert. A lucky break with an Arabian Nights-styled Waters of Azad fountain hidden in the air, and a pack of human wolves hungering for its treasure, saves him for worse things to come. But he likes it that way, honing his mettle for destruction as the bodies stack up.

One by one, we come to really dislike, hope for salvation, strive to understand, and finally condemn these wicked men.  What's not  probed is why they must be so bad, but bad things they must do, and there's the more engrossing tale set against a little Cthulish ghoulishness with Arcene's mama making naughty with dark, demon-hided, men deep in the swamp. She looks like the Crypt Keeper, just not as witty and a tad more churlish. Arcene's family tree certainly does show more appendages than the normal allotment for siblings. But this interlude into his questionable parentage doesn't go further than his abrupt dislike for it before we're following Kinney as he suffers the pangs of unrequited love, gun-toting guilt, and the burden of a severe physical deformity causing ordinary folks, and would-be lovers, to shun him like the plague, which he pretty much resembles. 

But a heartbeat is all we get to ponder the vagaries of his tribulation before we're following Hedgepeth and his battle with creatures infecting a small town. His gun leads him to the only solution he can figure out for the time allotted. Then off to the showdown with a plague of parasitic monstrosities that Brian Churilla's soft lines can't convey beyond a PG tone. Throat-ripping upchucked creatures, half-eaten men, they all carry as much visual gravitas as Arcene's family-gathering in the swamp. There's no oggling his pencils for emotional shock value; there isn't any where it could add to the scene's impact.

Instead, all threads within this hurried storyline, when they could easily have been separated into fully developed series indivdually, all culminate in a brief Kaiju battle more suited to a tokusatsu drama than a weird wild western. And since none of these gunslingers grows in size, like Ultraman, to meet the danger, the threat is spent with a few bullets so Missy Hume can step in and take charge to shed more blood.

Unless you've read the earlier issues of the comic book series, or the graphic book collections, you may find this one unsatisfying all by its lonesome. I'd recommend reading the others first to come up to speed before tackling this one.

Book Review: Deadman’s Road

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Deadmans roadZombos Says: Good

Some authors are bumps on a log while some examine those bumps, while still others just sit on them and write up their stories. Then there are those authors like Joe R. Lansdale who insist on turning the log over and stomping on the crawlies squirming around underneath for inspiration.

Lansdale's inpsiration doesn't reach for the sky in Deadman's Road, just for the zombies, werewolves, and Chthonic monsters Preacher Jebediah Mercer and his modified .36 Colt Navy revolvers go gunning for. The tallest drink in this bunch of weird west tales is Dead in the West, where the preacher comes up against a dusty town whose dirty deeds come back to bite the townsfolk. Hard.

Lansdale’s hankering for sullied characters and his disposition to muck up their trails as they wind themselves around them doesn’t follow Gene Autry’s Cowboy Code of Conduct much, so don’t expect any white hat truisms or dainty ladies with frilly white parasols waiting for doors to be opened for them; think more along the lines of Lansdale as Rob Zombie, only Texas-sized, to size up his approach to the wild west and its imagined horrors.

For starters, Jebediah Mercer’s no saint; he doesn’t preach the word of god nor cares to, and he’s definitely not interested in saving souls. And more than likely, in fact, the odds are you’d best be planning your own funeral should you find yourself by his side for any length of time. His horses don’t fare very well, either, so he winds up hitting the trail on foot more often than not. But his aim is wicked good and his pocket bible’s pages provide for a potent weapon against evil monsters when he tears them out. For a man who thinks god's running both Heaven and Hell and enjoying the mischief the latter's tenants are carrying on with more than the former, it's surprisingly effective how Lansdale handles Jebediah's insouciance to the celestial plane: Jebediah doesn't care, doesn't give a damn, and yet doesn't give up, for whatever reasons you or I might attribute to him. This minimalist approach to character-building creates a vacuum ripe for inference, which is one of Lansdale's inherent talents with writing his characters, especially Jebediah Mercer: what he doesn't say or do is more interesting and revealing than what he does say or do. And what he does best is fight monsters, although his luck at survival, even though he really could care less for one outcome or another, comes into play more often than not to save his hide. 

Saving others isn't one of his strengths, however. In Dead in the West he gets in the middle of a wronged Indian Medicine Man and his wife and a town that went loco one night. One spidery demon and a lot of walking undead later he's fighting for his life, and for those of his newfound friends, against the corrupted townsfolk who have preacher and said friends holed up in the church, which is quickly becoming unholy ground. In the second story, Deadman's Road, Lansdale fleshes out Jebediah's inner workings and the landscape around him.

The trail he rode on was a thin one, and the trees on either side of it crept toward the path as if they might block the way, and close up behind him. The weary horse on which he was riding moved forward with its head down, and Jebediah, too weak to fight it, let his mount droop and take its lead. Jebediah was too tired to know much at that moment, but he knew one thing. He was a man of the Lord and he hated God, hated the sonofabitch with all his heart…and he knew God knew and didn't care…

That landscape involves transporting a prisoner along a stretch of road haunted by a cursed monstrosity that was once human but not at all humane. Crumpled pages from Jebediah's pocket bible are used to create an impassable circle of protection, and silver bullets, because "sometimes it wards off evil," do come in handy this time around. Moonlight, a supernatural brawl in a derelict cabin, and Candyman-like bees provide a chilling shine.

In The Gentlemen's Hotel, the preacher comes up against werewolves that have eaten their way through the town of Falling Rock. With the assistance of a ghost to provide the backstory, and a saloon gal to provide the oak handled parasol, the atmosphere is tense and the werewolves thick. Lansdale tosses in a little shapeshifting action to spice up the action.

The Crawling Sky is the most Lovecraftian in context, but you may be hardpressed as to what's worse: the horror from the well or the "rip on the forest" town of Wood Tick's inhabitants. They'd give Innsmouth's fishy folk a run for their money even if Wood Tick's just got plain old unsavory folk. Lansdale's Necronomicon-like book, The Book of Doches, is used by Jebediah to figure out what's devouring mules and families. Again, classic pulp-horror elements are brought into play to build the eldritch terror, bring it home–literally–and fight it off. 

The last story takes place near and in a mine, and 4-foot troll-like monsters are as much silver-happy as the unhappy miners trying to get to it. Much ungentlemenly behavior is engaged in and Jebediah manages to keep his horse and acquire a traveling companion at the same time. Although she could use a bath. The traveling companion I mean. We also get a glimpse into how practical and dead sure the preacher can be when one unlucky fellow warns he'll get even with him later. Jebediah figures why wait and shoots the varmint dead away saying "do not announce your intentions, I am a man who takes them to heart."

This is one weird western series you can take to heart, too. 

 

An advance reader copy was provided for this review.

Book Review: Portlandtown
A Tale of the Oregon Wyldes

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Zombos Says: Good

The gifted Wylde Family runs a bookstore in Portland, Oregon, a soggy place most of the time, both inside the bookstore (I’ll get to that) and outside the town. The mayor wants the rain festival to be very wet, which complicates matters as zombies invade the flooded town (I’ll get to that also). I won’t get to why the mayor and the town celebrates rain, but you’ll be able to figure that one out on your own.

Joseph Wylde is legally blind, but he still see’s more than most other people, and his wife Kate has the uncanny ninja ability to make herself unseen. Author Robert DeBorde doesn’t explain these abilities much, but they come in handy when Portland’s mayor comes calling with an odd matter or mystery for them to work on, knowing they are a unique pair of sleuths who can handle the unusual. They’re like a Wild West version of John Steed and Emma Peel in The Avengers television series, without their eccentricities.

While the mayor is preparing for the rain festival he asks the Wyldes to investigate the mysterious storm totem statue he’s acquired, hoping it will unleash a steady flow of droplets for the festivities and make him look like a demi-god as he calls forth the rain with it. He does, it does, and he ends up looking less a demi-god and more a horse’s behind, but the torrential result provides the rapid climax to Portlandtown: A Tale of the Oregon Wyldes. Unfortunately for the Wyldes, early experiments with the storm totem while in the bookstore prove successful.

Kick and Maddie, the Wylde kids, are Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew-ish spunky, and lend a hand as needed when not helping to run the bookstore. Their family business becomes very lively when the walking dead come to town. The zombies are courtesy of one formerly dead gunman who comes back to settle an old score and rack up a few new ones. He’s the Hanged Man, and aside from the spellbook he uses to come back to life, he also brandishes a handgun that doesn’t need to be reloaded and doesn’t miss its target. The gun’s handle is also colored red–some say it was stained red from the blood of its victims. Kick and Maddie wind up playing bobbing apples to the zombies dunking for them in the flooded streets of Portland, providing much of the energy of the novel’s showdown between the marshall who put him six feet under, and the Wylde family member who helped (and barely survived the ordeal).

The marshall is Jim Kleberg, Kate’s dad, and his memory of past events, and how he wound up keeping the deadly handgun, come to light slowly, through flashbacks and remembrances. As he remembers piecemeal, more graves are dug up, more dead rise, and various characters who aren’t overly fleshed out in this first entry in the series come into play.

The spellbook belongs to Andre in San Francisco, who, with his mysterious female assistant, fight supernatural monsters like the Hanged Man. Not lost on Andre is his culpability in creating such a monster, so guilt drives him as much as his duty. The sorceror’s cookbook appears to contain enough promising evil spells for future novels, so let’s see what DeBorde can cook up using it. How Andre and the Wyldes mesh is not fully explained here, leaving much room for backstory in a subsequent novel.

A rousing shootout at a traveling carnival sideshow when the Hanged Man reanimates, after reluctantly being sold to the proprietor as an attraction, perks up the middle of the story, and the Hanged Man’s unsavory ability to raise the dead as he passes near them creates a modicum of suspense. I’d expect townsfolk would be more alarmed and more confused when their relatives come back to bite them, but DeBorde keeps it low-key and never capitalizes on the gruesome or kinetic potentials of having so many feisty undead lumbering around.

Keeping his words between young adult in tone and historically informed but not preponderantly so, DeBorde doesn’t pile up events or action quickly, and his fairly straight trail of characters’ bad decisions (like digging up the Hanged Man in the first place) and wicked intentions (what the Hanged Man does directly and indirectly because he’s so darn bad), is easy enough to follow. His paragraphs and interludes can be bland at times, or quaint–take your pick, but DeBorde provides clean starting and ending points with some keystones left unturned in-between.

Writers with a hankering for continuing series tend to do that. The only advice (or hope) I’ll mention is that the second novel in the series, should it come to that, better switch from sarsaparilla to whiskey. Reanimating Readers will need something stronger to mosey down this trail again.

Cowboys & Aliens (2011)
Aliens Home on the Range

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Cowboysandaliens
Zombos Says: Very Good

Three things make Cowboys & Aliens a sure-fire, popcorn-gumption summer movie: Harrison Ford, Daniel Craig, and it shies away from the lackluster graphic novel it’s based on. Grimy tough cowboys, vile aliens, and noble Indians go head on in rousing, mixed-genre action after outlaw Jake Lonergan (Daniel Craig) wakes up with a Clint Eastwood glare, no memory, and a very useful weapon wrapped around one arm.

Mixed genre meandering between Westerns and science fiction isn’t new: Gene Autry tackled invaders from the underground nation of Murania in 1935’s The Phantom Empire, along with a robot, a few musical interludes, and ray-guns. There aren’t any robots or musical numbers in Cowboys & Aliens, and the time period is Arizona in the 1870s. The invaders come from outer space instead of inner space, although they do bury their mining ship deep to extract gold, and as Ella (Olivia Wilde) says, they look on humans as we would insects. She should know since she’s also an alien (no spoiler here, it’s telegraphed loud and clear the minute she appears). Her race was decimated by these gold-loving, vivisecting monstrosities with their surprise– coming-out-from-where?– appendages. As bug-eyed, mucousy, multi-limbed, naked alien creatures with advanced technology go–this motif is becoming as old as the Western hills–they at least provide a bona fide threat to the townspeople of dusty Absolution, and are more tension-building than the graphic novel’s more cartoony predators.

In his review, Roger Ebert mentions that if you take away the aliens you’d still have a good Western movie. He’s right. At its core, Cowboys & Aliens brings to its rugged terrain the tried and true: the ornery cattleman making his own law; his out of control son bullying townspeople; an honorable sheriff upholding the law though it could get him killed; a struggling, tender footed saloon keeper who doesn’t carry a gun but needs to; the common-sense, steady as a rock preacher (the intimidating Clancy Brown from The Burrowers); and the notorious outlaw regretting his past deeds as soon as he remembers them.  The shaggy dog and worried kid round out this home on the range.

Harrison Ford’s Woodrow Dolarhyde is gruff, civil war weary, and bitter, providing lots of room for potential soul-searching growth, especially with his son Percy (Paul Dano). He and Lonergan lock horns over stolen gold, but a strafing run by marauding spaceships brings everyone quickly and reluctantly together. Percy and townspeople are lassoed by the small ships and whisked away until Lonergan’s weapon activates. A posse is formed to go after one alien that escapes from its downed ship. The trail leads them to an upside down riverboat steamer–far from a body of water– where they spend the night to get out of the rain. The alien attacks, making the posse a lot leaner.

Needing more help, Lonergan seeks out his former gang, but they aren’t happy to see him after he absconded with Dolarhyde’s gold coins from their coach robbery. Another attack by the aliens saves Lonergan but brings in the Apaches, who are uniquely persauded by Ella to provide a medicinal remedy for his amnesia, which brings a heap of guilt and remorse as he remembers, along with the location of the alien mothership he had escaped from. Everyone saddles up for the showdown with the Apaches taking the high ground, the cowboys taking the low ground, and Lonergan heading into the mothership to rescue the townsfolk.

As current horror and science fiction movies would have it, the aliens are tough as rawhide, pug-ugly, much stronger, and they fight hand to hand (they’ve got a lot of them) without using any of their advanced weaponry. Jon Favreau captures enough of the tumbling tumbleweed desolation and the stable of writers (7 plus!) behaved well enough to capture Wild West grit.

I think Louis L’Amour would have liked it, although I personally think adding a Gatling gun alien mow down would have made it a hog killin’ time to the manor born for sure.

Graphic Book Review: Cowboys and Aliens
Saddle-sore Adventure

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Cowboysaliens Zombos Says: Fair

Miss Verity: This doesn't look good, Zeke.
Zeke: Nope, it don't.

After seeing the movie trailer I have high hopes for Cowboys and Aliens. The only reason Western Sci Fi hasn't worked in Hollywood is Hollywood.

Simple ideas can get overly complicated and cluttered with witless additions in the process of making a movie (like Sonnenfeld's unpalatable Wild, Wild, West); and demanding ideas get simplified and sanitized, losing nuance and subtlety important for defining the story (the remake of The Haunting, for instance).

The challenge presented to Cowboys and Aliens is taking the bland, uninspired graphic novel it's based on, with its single bold idea, and building it into an inspired movie. There's a lot to go wrong if Hollywood thinks a few big name actors will be able to carry this premise seriously, and with integrity, without a good script. Worse, still, if they stick to the graphic novel.

Fred Van Lente and Andrew Foley's Cowboys and Aliens avoids the rich culture and ambiance of the Western, choosing instead to fanboy the characters, simplify the dialog, and rush through simplistic, threadbare situations. Names like Zeke, Miss Verity, and Shaman Skunk Belly may have fanboys grinning, but it will be a hard sell on the big screen if these characters don't go deeper than this.

Luciano Lima's artwork, devoid of period detail and subtlety, brings no panache to the novel. The exciting cover showing a cowboy squarely aiming at an alien ship overhead, his horse running at full gallop, shows an energy and a situation that doesn't appear in the story. A tacked on prologue, drawn by Dennis Calero, promises sophistication the rest of the novel fails to sustain. It compares the alien colonization of other worlds to the American Indian's displacement by settlers; but this deep-seated, tone-setting theme is glossed-over in the story.

Zeke and Miss Verity are fighting off Indians attacking a wagon train the two of them are escorting in the opening panels. This quaint staple of most early television westerns is interrupted by an alien ship crash landing nearby. The aliens decide to claim the planet, the Indians and settlers decide otherwise. Alien technology conveniently becomes usable by Zeke, and not much time is spent on the expected disbelief-giving-way-to-plausible-acceptance of alien creatures suddenly appearing with magical gadgets. As to be expected, the ending leaves franchise possibilities open.

Clearly, the promising idea of cowboys and Indians and aliens mixing it up in the Old West sold. Now the question is, can the movie sell the idea to its audience?

Book Review: Encyclopedia of Weird Westerns

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Encyclopedia of weird westerns Zombos Says: Very Good

Westerns aren't dead: though pocked with bullet holes, they'll probably live on as long as we can keep them new and interesting with near-infinite variations on their central themes. I think that's better than good. (Mike Hoffman, foreword)

I became hooked on the outre Western tale after watching Gene Autry's The Phantom Empire (1935) serial. To see cowboys, ray weapons of mass destruction, a mysterious subterranean empire's technology being sought after by unscrupulous businessmen, and Gene Autry getting a snappy song or two sung in-between the cliff-hangers–left quite an impression on my young mind back then. I didn't consider myself a greenhorn when it came to the weird western genre until Green's book proved me wrong. There's a lot more in them thar hills then I realized.

Paul Green's Encyclopedia of Weird Westerns: Supernatural and Science Fiction Elements in Novels, Pulps, Comics, Films, Television and Games is a rich vein for prospectors mining those dusty hills of the Wild Weird West. It's the kind of book I like to dog-ear and write in, and carry along with me, in my urban saddle bag, to refer to often.

Arranged in A-Z listing format, Green identifies these sub-genres: Weird Western (horror, supernatural, fantasy); Weird Menace Western (horror and supernatural themes, but concluding with a rational explanation); Science Fiction Western (future technology, aliens, alternate histories); Space Western (space opera with Western elements); Steampunk Western (set in the Old West and incorporating Victorian sci-tech); and Weird Western Romance (traditional romance involving time travel or the supernatural).

Phantom empire robot The Western genre, whether old-timey or saddle soap new, provides a simple backdrop for quintessential themes of characterization, plotting, and rip-roaring action that is ripe for mixing with the bizarre, the steampunk, the techno-goth, and the traveling horror sideshow's worth of oddities. From aliens to zombies and the robotic to apocalyptic, Green does a good job of rounding up diverse material to explore further, especially in areas you may not have thought much about, like The Prisoner's Living In Harmony episode (p165), or the Beany and Cecil episodes Phantom of the Horse Opera (p30) and Dragon Train (p30). A short synopsis describes each entry. Here's an excerpt from the one for The Phantom Empire:

Twelve-part serial starring Gene Autry in a unique mix of singing-cowboy and science fiction genres. The ancient civilization of Mu, located beneath Autry's Radio Ranch, is threatened by speculators buying the Muranian supply of radium. Autry attempts to save the people of Mu and protect his Radio Ranch.

Hokum? Sure. Fun and imaginative? Yes, without a doubt. And that is what the weird western is all about. From the not so serious to the sublime, the frisky to the outlandish, Green provides a broad range to send your posse after. His bibliography will also point you to additional Internet and print resources. An appendix categorizes entries by genre, which I find the most useful for discovering new comics, movies, and other weird westerns I haven't read or seen yet. Illustrations are sprinkled throughout.

So saddle up pardner and don't hit that winding trail without the Encyclopedia of Weird Westerns as your guide.