So I finally figured out where Rafael Gallur publishes his fantastic western art- Mexican comic books, like La Ley
del Revolver. While western comics are
few and far between here in the US, they are apparently all the rage south of
the border.
The art is simple, and that’s a good
thing. It’s like Mexico somehow skipped
the Jack Kirby "everything is kinetic and crazy" movement, and then skipped the
Joss Whedon decompressed comics movement that followed. They just kept on drawing as if they were
doing comic strips. And while I love the
changes and experiments in comics art that take place here in the US, I keep
reading these little books and thinking, “huh, these are just fun.”
Fun, that is, if your definition of
fun involves constant sex and Tarantino-levels of violence. The first fight scene I read involved one
cowboy fighting off three bounty hunters.
He cut one’s head off with a bowie knife, threw the knife through a
second’s chest, then set the third on fire before smashing his head to pieces
on a rock.
La Ley del Revolver sure isn’t going
to win and Eisner or a Spur award any time soon, but they are a fun read, like
sinking into a Louis L’Amour novel (if his characters were frequently naked and
eviscerated).
