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[Andrew999]

Who doesn't like a good western?

The landscape must include a small town with a saloon bar, sheriff's office, general store, bank and livery stable - with horse rails outside the saloon. The town is nestled in a semi-desert rural setting with ranches, hills and plains - a river trickling through

The characters include a gunslinger, the sheriff and his deputy, the corrupt mayor, the banker, the old poke who sits on the steps of the saloon drinking rye, the gambler and the stranger with no name from out of town. Women are almost entirely absent - except for cowgirls in boots who can shoot straight and throw a lasso - or young ladies employed at the saloon for dancing and entertainment purposes only.

The Other is represented by the gang of outlaws in the hills - or the Injuns beyond the horizon.

I lean towards the existentialist European tradition of western heroes where a man makes his own rules and lives to his own moral code - the Sergio Leone films, Old Shatterhand and Tex Ritter. Others prefer the rationalist American style of good guys and bad guys where the law must always prevail. There is of course much interplay between the two and a gray area between.

So, we are looking at a mythos close to - but not quite - the reality of its time - not dissimilar perhaps to the perpetual fog of a Holmesian London or the dilithium-fuelled world of a spacecraft that boldly goes where no man has gone before.

There was so much to choose from - but in the end I settled on this. I hope there's something here for everyone:

https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=65739

Deadline for comments is three weeks today - that's October 25th, 2020

Happy reading!

[gregjh]

Artwork is above average, nice colour and smooth detail. The storylines...I really wanted to like them but I just couldn't get past the repetitive cliches in the speech bubbles. Too much "yuh", "tuh" and "injun", etc. It really felt forced and a little lazy which is a shame because it could have been something special.

Still it's good to have a western comic. Can I select a reading group comic at some point in future?

[Robb_K]

I agree with Greg that the artwork is very good.  The historicity and relative accuracy is fairly poor, and the feigned "Western US accent" of American English is way too strong in clich

[SuperScrounge]

Who doesn't like a good western?

While I don't hate westerns, they are very low on my preferences for things to read or watch (romance, horror, & war being lower). Probably because as a kid when looking for something to watch, reruns of western TV shows & movies were everywhere and I wanted something different.

Not that I begrudge the choice of a western comic. After all the purpose of the Reading Group was to show the width and breadth of what comics produced which is interesting. However you asked the question, so I answered. Now onto the actual comic.

Cover - Green Indians??? Aliens or zombies? 

Injun Jones - Okay. The one thing that surprised me was Injun Jones near death, but he got over that super easy, barely an inconvenience.

Paint Pony - Must be thin paint to keep dripping from the blankets for two hours.

Buffalo Belle - Better than the first story.

Winter in the West - Interesting.

Bantam Buckaroo - Okay.

The Unbreakable Bronc - Eh, a little rushed.

Tenderfoot - Just a coincidence that Horace looks like Clark Kent? Okay.

The Getaway - Okay.

Texas Tim, Ranger - Not bad. Although is it likely that the locations of gas lines wouldn't be marked in some way? Did people just not think they might need to repair pipe lines in those days?

[crashryan]

Well, podnuhs, ah reckon yuh all are right about thet thar authentic cowpoke dialogue! Mercy! I know all western comics used this mangled "western" dialogue, but the writer(s?) of this comic poured it on so thick you could slick your hair with it. We'll discuss that later. For now, let's consider Blazing West #11.

The cover: Green Indians. Those guys are fighting green Indians. The latest style in war paint? Or is this a leftover cover for Space Western?

Injun Jones: I am not as conversant with historical details as Robb is, so I can't tell which "facts" are genuine. Obviously the writer did some research. Bits like "When I flattened that midge a while back I accidentally made the sign for Cheyenne!" smack of gleanings from a reference book. From Robb's analysis the research was haphazard. At least the guy tried. The story is so-so. Usually in comics Apaches are bad-guy Indians, rather than good-guy Indians like here.

Buffalo Belle: The story's okay. I don't understand the bit with Belle hooking her foot under Dusty's stirrup. Is she kicking him off his horse? Might have worked better if the art were clearer. Overall the drawing is competent but the artist's layouts and posing are awkward.

Winter in the West: Interesting, with stuff I never knew. The cowpokese is even more irritating here than in the stories.

Bantam Buckaroo: This story flows better than the others and Starr's art is the best in the book. What the heck does "Crimpin' coyotes!" mean? I like "Jumpin' Jimson!" too. Robb, since you seem to know Western stuff, perhaps you can enlighten me. I was under the impression that clip-fed rifles weren't introduced until after the frontier era. Am I mistaken?

Tenderfoot: This one stretched my credibility a bit too far. A large, convincing housing development built of cardboard? Yet no one saw it being built and once it was built no one was curious enough to approach the place. If they had, they might have wondered why gunmen chased them away. The last panel brought me up short. I didn't have a clue that Clark Kent--I mean, Horace Brentwood--and Marge were married. "Our" ranch house? Surely they aren't Living In Sin!

Texas Tim: I was getting burned out by the time I reached this one. 52 pages of ACG westerns proved a bit much for me. But I made it through. The surprise villain was no surprise. I swear, sometimes I wonder where the GCD pulls their artist IDs from. I'm willing to accept Jim's identification of Gutwirth because I don't know Gutwirth. But I'm baffled how anyone could accuse John Celardo of drawing this in 1950, when Celardo was already drawing circles around this joker in the 1940s.

Now about that authentic western dialogue. I will accept the premise that the misspellings are supposed to mimic the sound of movie cowboy dialogue. But one detail bugs me no end: "yuh." "Yuh" is what my English teacher decried as "lazy speech." It derives from speaking quickly and carelessly with the aim of minimizing effort. "Why don't you tell him?" becomes "Why don't yuh tell him?" becomes "Wydoncha tellim?" The trouble is, "yuh" saves effort only when the "you" in a sentence is unaccented. Our cowpoke would say "Take this, yuh sidewinder!" He wouldn't say, "All right, sidewinder, this is for yuh!" When stressed, like when throwing a punch, it's easier to say "you." The writers get this wrong all the time. Like on page 23 when Belle yells "Yuh might just as well, Mister, because yuh're not goin' anywhar!" It's hard to yell "yuh're." Try it. Belle certainly would have said "...because yer not goin' anywhar!" I know, who cares? You're right, it doesn't matter. But it still bugs me.

[Robb_K]

Well, podnuhs, ah reckon yuh all are right about thet thar authentic cowpoke dialogue! Mercy! I know all western comics used this mangled "western" dialogue, but the writer(s?) of this comic poured it on so thick you could slick your hair with it. We'll discuss that later. For now, let's consider Blazing West #11.

The cover: Green Indians. Those guys are fighting green Indians. The latest style in war paint? Or is this a leftover cover for Space Western?

Injun Jones: I am not as conversant with historical details as Robb is, so I can't tell which "facts" are genuine. Obviously the writer did some research. Bits like "When I flattened that midge a while back I accidentally made the sign for Cheyenne!" smack of gleanings from a reference book. From Robb's analysis the research was haphazard. At least the guy tried. The story is so-so. Usually in comics Apaches are bad-guy Indians, rather than good-guy Indians like here.

Bantam Buckaroo: This story flows better than the others and Starr's art is the best in the book. What the heck does "Crimpin' coyotes!" mean? I like "Jumpin' Jimson!" too. Robb, since you seem to know Western stuff, perhaps you can enlighten me. I was under the impression that clip-fed rifles weren't introduced until after the frontier era. Am I mistaken? 

I'm no expert on America's Western history.  But, I did work as an economist for Native Canadian (First Nation) and Native American tribes, off and on, for about 10 years
(1972-80) before I started working exclusively on UN 3rd World projects.  I worked mainly in Western Canada and Western USA. In the latter area, I worked for The Navajo Nation, and The Council of Energy Resource Tribes.  So, working in Arizona with The Navajos and Pueblo Tribes, I also learned about The Apache Tribes (Mescaleros, Chiricahuas, etc.).  I know the geography of the area, and the history of many of the tribes. I also attended my last year of high school in USA, so learned some history of The Western States.  As far as I remember, there were repeating rifles with chambers for multiple cartridges as early as 1864, during the last couple years of The US Civil War.  During the 1870s Winchester and Remington repeating rifles were fairly common.  They were used by many of The Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho warriors at The Little Big Horn, which was why General Custers' troops were slaughtered, as The US Army didn't make repeating rifles regular issue until the beginning of the 1880s, because they didn't want their soldiers "wasting valuable ammunition".  That later time was when the "clip-fed rifles" you mentioned became common all over the western US.

Buffalo Bill Cody couldn't have killed thousands of American bison for The Union Pacific Railroad in 1867 and 1868, if he didn't have a repeating rifle with an easy cartridge reloading system, and had to reload for each individual shot.

But, I'm not sure what you mean by "The Frontier Era".  I guessed by the way things were drawn, that the era of the stories represented in ACG's book was sometime between 1870 and 1890, which would have been a time when repeating rifles were common all over The American West.

[The Australian Panther]

I'm not sure what you mean by "The Frontier Era".  I guessed by the way things were drawn, that the era of the stories represented in ACG's book was sometime between 1870 and 1890, which would have been a time when repeating rifles were common all over The American West.

The period of history in which the majority of Western novels, movies and TV shows are set is from the end of the civil war to the time of the horseless carriage.

In fact, the era known as the Wild West, or the American Frontier, began after the Civil War in 1865 and ended around 1895

https://www.thevintagenews.com/2017/12/31/wild-west-era-2/
I've read many books and watched documentaries on the subject.
People were already going west during and before the Civil War, but post Civil War left many ex-army men who were still armed with their guns. There had also been a weapons race in terms of small arms during the war, so the weapons were state of the art. Also, two factors contributed. Cattle had gone wild and multiplied in Texas and the Railroads were pushing out west. So regular cattle herds were driven up to the midwest to be freighted on the railway. This filled the towns with young men with guns and money. Then there was the discovery of Gold and other precious metals. A ot happened in that short 30 year gap.
An Aside. the 50's and into the early 60's were a time when the US [the entertainment industry anyway] looked back at that tiime and mythologised it. I loved watching the US Western TV shows. Could say I grew up on them. As did much of the world. It wasn't an accident that Kennedy used the catchphrase, 'The New Frontier'.
             

[Robb_K]

Artwork is above average, nice colour and smooth detail. The storylines...I really wanted to like them but I just couldn't get past the repetitive cliches in the speech bubbles. Too much "yuh", "tuh" and "injun", etc. It really felt forced and a little lazy which is a shame because it could have been something special.

Still it's good to have a western comic. Can I select a reading group comic at some point in future?

Just like Australian Panther, I suggest you list any suggestions you have for comic books for our group to review on the bolded, stickied thread at the top of this Forum section, titled: "Put Your Book Suggestions Here". 

Panther, Andrew, or I will choose it sooner or later, depending upon its competition.  I, myself, not knowing much about non-comedy comics, am always looking for non-comedy books to review to make sure we cover a wider span of genres.

[Andrew999]

Last day today for this Western reading group special - thanks to everyone who commented.

I was interested in the comments about dating westerns (somewhere between the 1840s and 1890s for most of them, it seems agreed). I never really gave much thought to that before - always having assumed that they were all set around a semi-mythical 1880 - when the railroads were pushing west and good money could be made from raising cattle on the virgin plains (once those pesky Injuns were removed in a gross act of ethnic cleansing of course)

What drew me to Blazing West was the first-class art, which some of you commented on. I could tell some were irritated by the mock-western diction (I can tell yuh!) but that didn't bother me none - I once worked with a guy from Wisconsin who really did talk like that (Hey, Dave - where are you these days?) I admit though, it was overdone in the first two stories especially.

Married as I am to a redhead, I enjoyed Buffalo Belle - they really can be that feisty!

Good fight scenes in Bantam Buckaroo - mano a mano - but my second favourite strip was Tenderfoot with the obvious Clark Kent references. What a man, Horace turned out to be - some might even say a super man.

Gail Morton in the first frame certainly gains your attention in Texas Tim and the story pans out the way it should - good to see the bad guy wearing a black hat, that always makes it so much easier to understand.

I hope you enjoyed hittin' the trail into the past, pard'ners, but I'm tellin' yuh, the next reading group choice from Monday will be that much dang better - watch out fur't!

[The Australian Panther]

Today being only Friday, there are two more days to comment till monday!
And can I say, none of the reading group selections are ever really closed.
You are free to go through them all and add new comments if you haven't read them yet.   
Monday I will post a choice, but not my own, I'm going to go with the suggestions.
And I still haven't commented on this one.
Cheers!   

[The Australian Panther]

I really wanted to like them but I just couldn't get past the repetitive cliches in the speech bubbles. Too much "yuh", "tuh" and "injun", etc. It really felt forced and a little lazy which is a shame because it could have been something special. 

Agreed. If Done well, it works but here it just grates.

The researcher did a reasonable job finding out which Native American tribes dwelt in the wider region.  But, he also made a few glaring errors

That seems fairly typical for Western Stories, visually Indians have to look like Indians,and bonnets are visual shorthand for Indians.
Injun Jones. Very cliched story in some ways but not entirely.  Interestingly the half-cast white Indian is a standard trope in many Westerns. But a half-caste with a white girlfriend, and the presence of that girl throughout the action is different.
Story, the Indians are manipulated by a bad white man who is selling them guns for his own selfish reasons.
Hero knows the truth but needs to convince others before catastrophe eventuates.
Buffalo Belle. Redheads may be feisty [Red = Iron. Indicates more Iron in the blood?] but its still a cliche. And there are a few Redheads in Western comics. Firehair anyone?  Ends with a girl-on-girl fight. Are there many of those in comics? Answers on a postcard please!
Bantam Buckaroo
The best art in the book is by Leonard Starr but not his best work. An odd story. Seems to be a set-up so Buckaroo can save the day with his blow-pipe.
Tenderfoot. Another cliche. However usually the Tenderfoot suits up in a mask and is secretly the hero. Here he is just the tenderfoot. Clever that he saves the day with a stick against a gun. So he is a hero but still a tenderfoot.
Oh, and while they didn't make houses out of cardboard, the use of pre-fabricated modular housing [which goes back to the UK in the 1600's, was not uncommon in the American West.
Texas Tim - Ranger
Believe it or not the Use of natural gas as an energy source to light towns in the USA goes back as early as the 1820's.
If you cut into a gas pipe and lit it, it would just flame like a gas burner on your stove, much much bigger I believe. And if there was an explosion it would have taken out the whole building. If the money was in a safe, it would likely still be there. Not a good way to do a robbery. I hate stories which don't get the details right. Interferes with my suspension of belief.
This book is clearly one in which the writer [not named] gave full scripts to the artists. That's the books' flaw. The Art doesn't have enough room under the word balloons to breathe. 

Andrew, thanks for the choice. Hopefully we will also look at some other Westerns down the line.

Cheers!

[lyons]

The book was entertaining, and I appreciated the writer's attempt at authenticity.  Good artwork, and an agreeable read.  Thanks Andrew.     

[BlackCat]

I found myself really liking the look of the character, Injun Jones. And I like the name too. In terms of his looks (long black hair, centre-parting) he reminded me of Shang-Chi, Master of Kung Fu. That was nice for me. In addition to this, I thought the artist (Edward Moritz) drew him well. He had a good grip on the character's overall look and style. I think the ambiguity around the character's cultural and ethnic identity gives him additional interest. He is an unusual 'male lead' for a western comic of the period, and I would actually like to draw him myself.

As others have said, I thought the script (by whom?) was too wordy, and was further slowed down by dialogue that was so heavily accented that it was actually hard to decipher and read. That was not particularly helpful. But I thought the story itself was okay. Good enough for its twelve or so pages.