Disposable Lit Reviews

Gigantic Graphic Novels, 2004
144 pp.
ISBN 0-9763038-1-7

Buy it from Amazon.com
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I can tell I’m not the only one who’s been waiting for a good zombie western movie (or ANY zombie western movie, really) among the recent spate of living dead flicks. Rick Spears and Rob G(oodridge), proprietors of Gigantic Graphic Novels, pretty clearly wanted to see one too. And since no one was making one for them (or us) to see, they did the next best thing: They made a zombie western graphic novel that reads like a movie.

The prologue puts us in the Old West, where an Indian tribe sees the approach of the white man with something like cautious optimism. As we know from history, that’s the wrong attitude to take; the white men repay the tribe’s hospitality by waiting until the men are out hunting, then riding in and shooting all the women and children. And when the smoke from burning tepees summons the menfolk back, they get shot too for good measure. The only survivor is an injured adolescent who limps away with his father’s final instruction in his ears: “Remember us.”

In the slightly more recent Old West, then, we’re introduced to the denizens of the town of Lazarus, built on the site of the former Indian village. (Note to self: If I ever find myself living in a Western, I should steer clear of settlements with ominous names.) There’s a hard-ass sheriff, a copacetic undertaker, a harsh whoremaster (or whatever they called “pimps” in the Old West), a pregnant whore, and the pregnant whore’s boyfriend. Don’t get too attached to him, though; we meet him with his head already in a noose for stealing livestock, meant to be the beginnings of their new life together.

And into this stew of tensions and animosities comes a lone Indian, the massacre survivor now all grown up. He rides around the town on his horse, spilling sand (or is it ash? can’t tell) from a saddlebag until he’s formed a complete circle. Then with the blood from his horse’s neck, he completes his ritual… and Lazarus soon earns its name. The long-dead Indians, as well as the town’s more recently deceased, rise up together.

But wait, there’s more to the setup. Because a few days later, a fat Mexican man rides into town, pursued by… Clint Eastwood. Or at least as close to Clint Eastwood as you’re going to get when deliberately not using photo reference. But the hat, poncho, and well-chewed cheroot are dead giveaways. As another reviewer put it, Dead West becomes The Good, the Bad, and the Zombies at this point. The Fat Man and the Man With No Name each end up holed up with a different group of survivors, barricaded on upper rooms while the living dead shamble around the ground floors.

For all the cussing about “decompression” in monthly comic books these days, this kind of original graphic novel is where that kind of drawn-out storytelling works best, especially in one like this which draws so much upon cinematic precedents. There’s space here for long tableaus, for multi-page scenes with no dialogue or other sound except for the imagined whistling of the desert wind. The black-and-white artwork is a both a blessing and a curse; it contributes to a stark, unvarnished look, but it also makes character identification a little tough at points (in a town almost completely populated by scruffy, unshaven cowboys) and saps some of the power from the flame-filled finale.

Yes, it’s terribly derivative, but it holds the interest nonetheless. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if some Hollywood producer hasn’t already plunked down some money to option the book for development… a producer who didn’t even recognize the movie-derived plot elements.

The bigger question is, Is it worth fifteen bucks? That’s a little tougher. You may be happier borrowing a friend’s copy to read. And no, you may not borrow mine.

Nathan Shumate