Go West, Young Comic Book Fan...

Like a lot of Americans of my generation I have always had a certain fondness for Westerns. I’m not a aficionado or anything but I have liked some Westerns very much. Both movies…High Noon, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, The Searchers, The Wild Bunch, Unforgiven…and television offerings…Gunsmoke, Rawhide, Bonanza, Maverick, Lonesome Dove…but, strangely enough, not so much when it came to comic books.

I never warmed much to the western comic book genre…perhaps because many of them (especially Marvel’s characters like the Rawhide Kid and the Two-Gun Kid) just came off as super-hero stories transposed into the 19^th Century and that held no interest to me.

It’s a bit odd to me then that I’m currently buying and reading (and quite enjoying) 3 western-themed comics. The books in question…DC Comics’ Jonah Hex, Dynamite Comics’ Lone Ranger, and Vertigo Comics’ Loveless…are disparate in tone and theme but each is enormously engaging in its own way.

Jonah Hex is not a character I was ever very interested in…though I did give the strange futuristic Hex series a chance…but his new series is a little gem. Writers Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti tell taut, flint-hearted morality tales in which their scarred bounty hunter wades through hunting human prey, getting paid, and occasionally meting out brutal justice (as defined by his own personal and decidedly inflexible code of what’s right and what’s wrong.)

Except for a 3-part origin story, we don’t really get into Hex’s head very much…he is very much like Clint Eastwood’s “Man with No Name” from those classic “spaghetti westerns” from the 60’s…and that’s fine. Aided and abetted by a stellar array of artists (including Jordi Bennett, Luke Ross, and Phil Noto), Gray and Palmiotti are (again with the exception of the origin story) able to tell their gritty, satisfying stories in one issue, which is a delightful change from the so-called decompressed storytelling that too often is the norm at both DC and Marvel these days.

The Lone Ranger is a more straightforward heroic adventure as we follow John Reid, the only survivor of a team of 6 Texas Rangers, in his quest for vengeance, justice, and, most importantly, the building of his friendship and partnership with the enigmatic Tonto, the stern taskmaster who nursed him back to health after he and the other Rangers had been ambushed and he himself had mistakenly left for dead. Unlike Hex, the Ranger makes a decision not to kill, a decision honored…albeit a bit reluctantly…by Tonto, who is very much his partner’s equal in this version of the legendary masked man’s adventures.

Writer Brett Matthews makes the Ranger and Tonto viable for a 21^st Century audience while not compromising the ethos of justice, honor, and righteous vengeance that is the cornerstone of their adventures. He is ably aided with artist Sergio Cariello’s sterling storytelling and art director’s John Cassaday’s evocative covers.

Both Jonah Hex and The Lone Ranger are grand comics indeed…even for someone who thinks they don’t like comic book Westerns.

(I’ll cover the challenging, thought-provoking Loveless in a future entry.)

Once Upon a Time...

Once upon a time…which, as all children and people of good heart well know, is when all tales of note begin….there was a war in the lands where fables and fairy tales are true and not just the fanciful imaginings of scribes like the Brothers Grimm. The forces of malevolence prevailed and those who fought on the side of righteousness fled their homelands for life in the mundane world…for life in our world. Using guile and magic and steadfast cunning, the exiles created a community…Fabletown…hidden in plain view…amongst the mortals and thrived while dreaming of the day when they could return to the land of fables and fairytales and overthrow the Adversary (as the ruler of the malevolent armies was known; the Adversary is, surprisingly enough, actually Gepetto, the puppet maker who crafted Pinocchio) and take back the magical lands that are rightfully theirs.

This then is the back story of Fables, the unflaggingly clever, charming, rollicking, and intriguing Vertigo Comics series created and written by Bill Willingham. The conceit of having legendary characters such as Snow White, Little Boy Blue, Prince Charming, Little Red Riding Hood, Old King Cole, and the Big Bad Wolf interacting in an exile community on Earth could have quickly become gimmicky and cloying in the wrong hands but Willingham deftly avoids every false note and tiresome cliché in his sprawling tales of love, life, adventure, intrigue, politics, and intrigue.

With those Fables who can pass for human living in the city and those who cannot (the Three Little Pigs or the Giants, for example) living, sometimes quite reluctantly, on a secluded farm, the avenues for drama are seemingly endless. And with the breadth of mythology and fable to draw from, the cast of characters are likewise bountiful beyond measure.

Many characters take their turn on the stage but at the heart of the series are the fierce Big Bad Wolf, the son of the majestic and haughty North Wind, who can take human form as Bigby Wolf, the erstwhile Sheriff of Fabletown, and his new bride, Fabletown’s former Deputy Mayor, Snow White. Their prickly…and then passionately romantic…relationship is the emotional foundation of the series. Even having given up their positions in Fabletown for a place out on the farmlands with their children, Snow and Bigby remain important players in the Fables saga.

With the Fables title too small to hold his rampaging ego, one character, the amoral but still charming rogue Jack (almost every Jack in fairytales is and was him) struck out in his own title, Jack of Fables (co-written by Willingham and Matthew Sturges), chronicling his own misadventures (both in the current mundane world as well as his many fantastical experiences in the days before the Fable homelands were conquered the Adversary.)

The Fables experience also flowed through the gorgeous pages of 1,001 Nights of Snowfall, a delightful graphic album featuring Snow White in the role of Scheherazade, the clever woman who survived her murderous husband’s wrath by telling him fascinating tales for 1,001 nights in The Arabian Nights. Charles Vess, Brian Bolland, Jill Thompson, John Bolland, and John Bolton are among the artists who illustrated various chapters in the volume.

Fables (and its spin-offs) are full of love, light, laughter, adventure, and magic. Lots and lots of magic. It’s a wondrous thing indeed.