Lone Ranger Cartoon Art Reference

Lone Ranger and Tonto reintroduce the Midnight Theater

While rereading old posts I ran across one from 2013 about a parody porn movie being made about the Lone Ranger (called, appropriately, Lone Ranger XXX). Just like the low-budget “mock busters” designed to have the look and feel of highly anticipated blockbusters, the porn industry has been putting out parodies of popular films, often sticking much closer to the source material than the powers that be at Disney and Warner Brothers do with the expanding comic book movie franchises. 

I poked around a bit and found that Lone Ranger XXX has indeed been made and released; I also learned that a site called Adult DVD Empire, a sort of Amazon Prime of porn, not only has all of their movies organized by genre, but also has screenshots of most of them. Yes, there’s a western genre label. Yes, I have a lot of screenshots. Yes, there is going to be a Midnight Theater version of Lascivious Screenshots coming to a blog near you.

Ande Parks Explains Why the Lone Ranger Comic Fails

Take a look at the following Q&A from a recent interview with Lone Ranger comics scribe, Ande Parks…

NANCY COLLINS: What do you think today’s comic fan is looking for from a character like the Lone Ranger?

ANDE PARKS: They want to see the man’s values on display. They want to see that pillar of justice. They want the interplay between Lone Ranger and Tonto. They want action, but not without some meaning. I think, in the case of our book, they also want a sense for what the real Old West was like. I hope so, anyway… because we really try to get some of that history into the book. I think it adds another layer. It makes the heroic stories more believable, which elevates the heroism.

Doesn’t that make you want to read Lone Ranger?  Alas, Ande Parks’ Lone Ranger run fails to do any of that for me, which is why I quit reading it in the teens.  I often wonder why Dynamite gave Parks’ a shot at writing Lone Ranger, especially considering the following Q&A:

NANCY COLLINS: How familiar were you with the Lone Ranger before coming on as writer for the series?

ANDE PARKS: To be honest, not very. I had seen the show some as a kid, but I definitely not what you would have called a big fan. The first time I wrote the characters was in the Death of Zorro mini-series, and I struggled to find their voices in that first issue.

Still struggling, dude.  I applaud your efforts, though.

Read the rest here.

Ain't Your Papa's Lone Ranger (but I liked it)

I finally got around to seeing Disney’s The Lone Ranger, and to my surprise I really liked it.

Now keep in mind that I liked it in the way that I liked the Christopher Nolan Dark Knight movies.  For those I put aside three decades of knowledge of Batman and instead chose to see the series as movies about a troubled man named Bruce Wayne who, while baring a resemblance to Batman, is someone else entirely.  Real Dark Knight fans know that Bruce Wayne doesn’t really exist; he’s just the public face that Batman uses occasionally. 

With that in mind I didn’t look for the Lone Ranger I know and love: the nameless, faceless knight of the sagebrush moving between masks and disguises, having long ago left the name John Ried behind.  Nah, you can tell right away that’s not where the film is going, so why not let it stand on its own?

It’s fun. It’s zany.  It’s occasionally touching.  Armie Hammer does a fine job a wet behind the ear, choking on trail dust Ranger finding his way.  It’s never quite explained how he becomes such a raging bad butt so quickly, but we can almost look past that.  Johnny Depp is… well, he’s Johnny Depp, who has gone from a deep, multifaceted actor to a one trick pony, but it is a pony that he rides well.  His dialogues with Silver were a highlight of the movie.

The Lone Ranger does a fine job, right up to the big crazy action sequence that takes up ¼ of the movie and probably ½ the budget.  I wish film makers would save the budget and just give us more story.  When you think about it, what’s the best end of film action sequence in a western?  The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, which is really just three guys staring at each other to cool music for five minutes.  Epic.

Midnight Theater- Lone Ranger XXX

It was only a matter of time.  Anyone think this will be better than the recent Hollywood film?

Lone Ranger and Tonto Out of the Closet

It’s been six months since I’ve written in this blog.  What got me back?  It turns out that the Lone Ranger and Tonto may be gay after all.

It’s an old joke that the Lone Ranger and Tonto were partners by the campfire as well as partners in the saddle.  Two men, alone in the wilderness, forsaking civilization (particularly women) and trusting entirely in each other?  It’s downright romantic. 

The argument against has always been that the 1930’s and 1940’s were simpler times and people didn’t write that kind of thing back then (people who think the early 20^th century was a purer, simpler time may not have heard of things like the Jazz Age or the World Wars).  But what if two clearly gay characters show up in a story?  Can we really dismiss the subtext then?

The 4/13/38 radio episode Reward Money, starts by describing two long time pards:

Jake Caldwell and Lem Purdie had fought hard and work hard through all their years together.  They had seen stampedes, and dusty drives over long trails.  They had known good times and bad.  They quarreled, and each on more than one occasion had saved the others' life. 

They had never been parted, and as they grew old they lived in a small, two room shack, some distance from town, their lifetime savings hidden in their home. It is night as our story opens.  Jake, disturbed by a noise, excited awakens his partner.

(The YouTube link below goes to the same episode, quote above starting around 2:35)

There’s not much subtext here.  Their home, their savings, never been parted, growing old together.  Sounds like a marriage to me.  If we have two male side characters who are in effect married in a story, then maybe all of that burning subtext about the Lone Ranger and Tonto isn’t really subtext after all.

I don’t think it changes a thing about the old stories.  The friendship, trust, and companionship between the Lone Ranger and Tonto are evident in every episode and comic.  The exact physical expression doesn’t matter.  It’s not sex that binds two people together; it’s love.

And no, I haven’t seen the movie yet.  It looks like a train wreck.

Tantric Lone Ranger Rides Again!

As you may be able to tell by the sharp drop in frequency of my blog posts, this is the year that I almost gave up on westerns.  The Lone Ranger and yoga may be what redeems them, but more on that later.  

There were just so many disappointments in westerns this year.  On the comic book front, All-Star Western continues to suck the life out of the genre.  I picked up the latest issue this week and flipped through.  Dr. Jekyll made an appearance, then there was some kind of fight in a slum, and then a Chinese lady is stockings started kung fu fighting.  It is an embarrassment to call this a western.   The backup stories are still great (ironically written by the same very competent team) but I don’t want to spend $4 for a backup story.

Then Peter Brandvold, who I have written so much about in the last year, seems to have lost whatever touch made his Lou Prophet books work for so long.  I’ve tried half a dozen of his more recent novels looking for a return to that wit that made his books great and been disappointed each time (including the one where he said he’d eat the manuscript if I didn’t like it).  His new Rusty Spurr book, which has so much potential, has flat characters that are indistinguishable from one another.  The only time in the last few years that I’ve really enjoyed his books are when he writes weird westerns (Ghost Colts, Bad Wind Blowing); I found Dust of the Damned under my Christmas tree, maybe he’ll be back to form there.

What really killed my desire to write this blog is a tragedy from earlier this year that I still want to write about.  In brief, I have been playing Dungeons & Dragons weekly with the same group of friends for seven years.  Six months ago I worked out a plan with the friend running our game to introduce a gunslinging cowboy into the otherwise pure fantasy game.  It was so much fun that I planned out a five part series of posts to write about it.  That friend died soon after in a tragic accident, leaving behind a wife and two kids.  I can’t come back to the blog without thinking about it.

Oh, and after a sudden onset of gout I’ve become a teetotatling vegetarian.  Takes a lot of the fun out of reading about whiskey swilling fellers eating buffalo when you are sucking down tap water with your tofu.

With all of this disappointment I also almost gave up yoga, something that helped me get over the host of mental, emotional, and physical problems that follow massive invasive surgery.  Something in the practice just wasn’t coming together and I couldn’t figure out why.  I decided before I gave up all together I would go try Bikram, the program that was described to me when I walked in the door as “Simon Says for 90 minutes in a 105 degree room”.  I went in and found a practice that didn’t look a thing like yoga, and though I walked out disappointed I felt somehow good and kept going back.  After my second class I left the building, drove to the local supermarket, and put together a pack of food, water, and hot coffee for the homeless guy at the end of the road.  After my third class I returned to my original yoga home and signed up to learn to be a yoga instructor. 

This is because of westerns, or more specifically because of the Lone Ranger.  I’ve written about the connections between yoga and the Lone Ranger before, and as I move through life they are becoming more palpable.  The notion that one can serve the betterment of humanity, seek to protect life, and do it without the notion of reward (hence the mask) is really entrancing.  Also, he has two Colts and a cool cowboy hat.  It helps that, like the Lone Ranger, I have my own silver mine to support me (in the guise of a great job with a Fortune 100 company).  So the Lone Ranger is my guru, a comic book battle cry is my meditative mantra, and I dream of wearing a mask as I move through the postures of my yoga practice.

Having said that, this movie looks terrible.