Quickshots: Chick Bowdrie

Thanks for the intro, Beverly Garland!

I highly recommend The Collected Bowdrie Dramatizations. The audiobook versions of these come in three sets of six stories. They’re full-cast, with interviews with Louis L’Amour interspersed throughout—he talks about his writing style, his history, and the people he met while doing research. There’s a little bit of music, some great voice acting, and overall they’re just good, friendly, wholesome fun stories.

The series follows the eponymous Bowdrie, who starts off as a young man on the frontier, edging his way from the wildness of the world toward life as an outlaw. But the man manages to correct himself and, with the help of the famous Ranger McNulty, becomes a Texas Ranger. The rest of the stories are about his time as a ranger—investigations, law enforcement, that kind of thing.

Bowdrie’s career mixes classic western flavor with a bit of police procedural, and a good deal of fieldcraft, woodcraft, tracking, and survivalism. If you like any good western, imagine taking your favorite detective thriller—gritty city stuff—and setting it out in the backend of nowhere, Texas. The main character’s just a bit more wholesome than your average private dick.

These really are feel-good stories. There’s action and suspense, sure, but they’ve got that good old-fashioned “right wins over wrong” vibe I usually don’t go for. And honestly, you don’t see it that often unless it’s coming from some preachy alt-right source. But boy—these hit different. Great background listening, great to have with you on a hike or a long drive. Just overall excellent work.

Quickshots: The Rush

 

Yukon.  Gold Rush.  A drunken father, a wayward son, a questing mother.  Death, madness, terror, ice, snow.

Some sexy times.

Spiders.  SIPDERS?!?  Yup, spiders.

That’s The Rush in a nutshell.  Oh, and Mountie, too.

The Rush is interesting graphic novel that is a mix of weird west and family drama, with a healthy dose of survival horror to boot.  The art is fantastic, the writing is crisp, characters are multi-dimensional and believable.  Go read it, true believers.

(Needs Image) Quickshots: Cimarron #19- On a Texas Manhunt

 

I read this one on a camping trip to West Texas, and read it mostly in the afternoons after a long day of hiking the Guadalupe mountains, pounding down Powerade as I sat in the rare shade of my campsite in the flats hoping the temperature would drop below 100 soon. 

Does that explain why I don’t remember much of the plot?  Rapine, kidnapping, revenge, ego, chase, gunfights, fatherly advice, sudden death, and maybe some fucking with a smidge of “the wilderness is the best” thrown in. This is the kind of book that fits great for me out in the woods.  I don’t need lofty literature, I just need to roam and ramble and let me mind do the same.  On a Texas Manhunt was an ideal campfire book.

The fact that I finished it, but have never been able to finish a Longarm book, should speak volumes. 

Quickshots: The Second Glass of Absinthe

 

I usually like short novels, but this one could have used a few hundred more pages.  In this self-described “A Mystery of the Victorian West“ we get, in no particular order:

·       Murder mystery

·       Helena Blavatsky

·       Spiritualism

·       Tarot

·       Bisexuality

·       Incest

·       Labor unrest

·       Violent union strikes

·       Class warfare

·       Mining politics

·       Drug-induced hallucinations

Oh, and one of the main characters is a white woman who lived with the Cheyenne for years in a prior book and is readapting to white society with her new husband.  The book is good, well researched, well written, but it’s a lot to absorb in a little over 300 pages.

Fun fact- the title comes from the eminently quotable Oscar Wilde: "After the first glass of absinthe you see things as you wish they were. After the second you see them as they are not.”

Quickshots: Apache Delivery Service

 

About the only thing that makes this graphic novel a western is the word Apache; regardless, I loved it.  It has some of my favorite story elements:

·       A main character who doesn’t fit well among other people

·       A vast wilderness

·       Shit exploding

We follow Ernie, a US Army forward observer in the Vietnam War, who much prefers to be out in the jungle away from people calling in airstrikes (the eponymous “Apache Delivery Service”, although Ernie is Dine / Navajo) rather than dealing with racist ass hats at the base.  While out on a long solo scout he runs into an out of place by about 15 years French colonial, who enlists him to help find some buried Nazi treasure.  The treasure is, of course, in a mountainous area that may or may not be haunted but is certainly filled with Viet Cong.  Paranoia and mayhem ensues.

The story zips along, the artwork of the jungles and mountains are lush, the main character reminds me of the quiet, reflective moments of Zen that Larry Hama tucked away in GI Joe back in my childhood.  Fantastic read.

Quickshots: Buffalo Trail

Two and a half years ago I quickly read and quickly reviewed a great first novel called Glorious.  I liked it so much I ordered the sequel, Buffalo Trail, and dug right in.  I’ve taken a lot of stabs at it in the last 30 months and haven’t gotten to the halfway part.  I think I’m done.

It’s a shame, because the novel is a buildup to the Battle of Adobe Walls, where the southern plains tribes went to war with the buffalo hunters.  The pacing is interesting, with one chapter following one of the buffalo hunters, the next following Quannah Parker gathering tribes to his side.  It should be good, but every time I got invested in one set of characters we were off to the next, and I struggled to care with the shift.  Tom Clancy did something like this in his amazing Cardinal of the Kremlin, where you got down to the nail biting last chapter not knowing which point of reference character will survive.  Here I couldn’t care.  Go read Glorious!  It was fantastic.

Quickshots: El Topo; Jodo? No Bueno!

Here's an apt description of this movie: See the naked young Franciscans whipped with cactus. See the bandit leader disemboweled. See the priest ride into the sunset with a midget and her newborn baby. What it all means isn't exactly clear, but you won't forget it.

I tell you I tried.  I really did.  As someone who likes creepy, sci-fi, existential, weird, western, and art films, I am right in the target demographic for Jodorowsky.  However, I have not been able to make it through a single movie or comic book of his.  El Topo, his "masterful" western, is no exception.

Quickshots: Eminence Hill

Upon watching Eminence Hill I determined that I need a new metric for a

movie- did the movie put me to sleep? 

Let’s take the same Eminence Hill as an example.  It started off with a tense, dramatic moment setting up what promises to be a bloody tale of vengeance.  Then it kind of wandered off until some spicy campfire scenes grabbed my attention, followed by an absurd scene of a pair of Apaches stealing horses from our main characters by (I kid you not) walking up to them while they slept five feet from their mounts, shushing a captive, then riding away.  The great horse thieves of the plains are surely rolling over in their graves.  At some point conservatively dressed but thoroughly dangerous looking lawman walked into a saloon and ordered some tea after an awkward encounter with…

…and then I woke up.  Mrs. Slap had just come home, we put on some chili, and I don’t think I’ll ever get back to this one. 

The cast, sets, and wardrobe were by turns great or ridiculous.  If I were a more attentive viewer I would have followed the plot better, but consider this- no one has to make you follow the plot to Empire Strike Back.  You are in from the first shot, and I certainly wasn’t on this one.

Quick Shots: Amazon's Edge

Edge was part of a plan that Amazon had when it was first getting into original programming. They produced a big group of pilots and put them out at once, then waited to see what people watched.  There were a lot of short movies, including one based on the long running Edge western series by George G. Gilman.  Edge set out to be the grittiest, bloodiest, most violent paperback western series ever.  The few I’ve paged through were… okay.  Some people loved them, but I never saw how it differentiated itself from all the other paperback western series.

So what was the Edge film like?  It was… okay.  Portraying Edge is Max Martini, who did this film between David Mamet’s The Unit and Tony Scott’s 13 Hours.  Martini has great acting chops with a good script and a good director, as you would see in the work that bookended this one.  Unfortunately here he’s working with Shane Black, who can be great (The Nice Guys, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, The Long Kiss Goodnight, Lethal Weapon 1 & 2) but occasionally turns out bullshit (The Predator).  From both a visual and story standpoint, this one is very mediocre, where not derivative; at some point Edge appears to land in the “Tree of Woe” from Conan the Barbarian. Somehow there is a chastity belt involved, and thus the scene below.  Meh, go watch something else.

(Just found- a great summary of the Edge series!)

Quick Shots: Texas Rising

 Boy, do I love the Texas Rising miniseries that the History Channel put out.  Except, well…

The costumes are great but off by about 20 years.

Santa Anna deserved a better actors than Oliver Martinez.

I’m usually not one to shout “RACISM!!!” like an SJW, but what’s the deal with Amen Igbinosun’s portrayal of Nate?

At some point, someone has to acknowledge that slavery was illegal in Mexico and a big motivator for the revolution was the expansion of slavery-based cotton farming.

The quickdraws with flintlocks looked ridiculous.

At least it’s more historical than Ancient Aliens and Pawn Storage Wars.

Besides all that, I really enjoyed it.  The series has a great feel to it, a pretty wide group of interesting characters, and I really enjoyed the “not quite soldiers, not quite outlaws” nature of the Rangers.  They also did a nice job of seating the Texas Revolution as an engagement between nations and all the accompanying geopolitics.  If you want to break out from the typical western, see some great (if slightly anachronistic) costumes, and catch some snappy dialog by great actors, check out a few episodes.  It's a shame there's not season 2, I would have loved their promised take on the Comanche Wars.

Oh, and the “Yellow Rose of Texas”, the mixed-race prostitute that saved Texas by spying on the Mexican army, plays a prominent (and sometimes) naked role.

Quick Shots: Dead Again In Tombstone

 

I tried.

Dear Lord, I tried. 

I tried because I respect Danny Trejo. 

I tried because any weird western film deserves a respectful watch. 

I tried because of the images below which promised that there had to be something cool and fun and decadent to be seen.

But, ultimately, I gave up after an hour.

Quick Shots: Young Guns II

 

Young Guns II was one of my absolute favorite movies when I was a teen.  I saw both the first and second in the theater.  In retrospect, Young Guns is the superior film.  Better story, better character development, an overall much more grounded film, although it’s hard to see that through the lens of the Brat Pack cast.  For a 15 year old, Young Guns II was the way to go.  The movie is much closer to the Schwarzenegger / Stallone / Van Damme action films that filled out my weekends.  The shootouts are great, there’s a steady stream of one-liners, and Christian Slater’s take on “Arkansas” Dave Rudabaugh tips the cast of characters just over the line to over the top.  If Young Guns is trying to be a film, Young Guns II is comfortably a movie.

It was also the first time I ever fell in love with a saloon girl, saw a bare behind in a theater, and saw that a bunch of people might just get naked and drunk together for the sheer hell of it (as Pat Garrett recounts in the film).  Every time this movie ever ran on cable I’d hang along long enough to see this scene.

Quickshots- Glorious

Can you get excited about a novel that telegraphed it's big mystery around page three?

Sure you can!  Journalist Jeff Guinn's Glorious is a pretty good modern western novel.  Set in St. Louis and Arizona in the 1860s, it plays well with some of the historical oddities of the period like the Robber Barons, impromptu mining towns, prospector culture, and the start of the big cattle ranches.  As a change of pace the hero is no kind of gunslinger; he fires a gun a handful of times at the end of the novel, and is more likely to talk his way out of trouble.

Guinn's writing is fun, fast, and readable.  Glorious is the first of the Cash McLendon trilogy, with the next featuring buffalo hunting and the Battle of Adobe Wells.  As soon as I finished Glorious I read 50 pages of Buffalo Trail (#2) and started looking for Silver City (#3).  Guinn will probably not hit my list of all time favorites, but the books are worth the time. 

Quickshots- The Hawkline Monster

 

Two turn of the century gunslinging hitmen from the Pacific Northwest are hired by a white woman in native dress named Magic Child to kill the monster that lives in the ice caves in the basement of her father’s mansion in remote Oregon.  Yes, you read that right, and it actually gets weirder from there.  This short novel from the 1970s is best described as a literary gothic horror weird western Lovecraftian comedy.  Also, sexy times.  Pretty great read. 

Gaming notes- this book makes a great inspiration for a Call of Cthulhu scenario.  Set in 1902, it’s right smack between the traditional Call of Cthulhu time setting (1920s) and the Down Darker Trails setting (1880s).

 

Quickshots- Western Religion

 

 

Tubi, a free streaming service, has become one of my go to sources of entertainment.  While I love period dramas like The Son, Peaky Blinders, and Babylon Berlin, they require solid attention.  Sometimes you just want to zone out, and Tubi serves up a bunch of mostly forgettable content like low-budget westerns.  One surprise was Western Religion, which kept my attention the whole way through.  With a classic plot of a collection of misfit gamblers assembling at a frontier town for a poker tournament, the film is highly laced with Biblical and occult references to the point where some of it blends into another favorite genre of mine, the Occult Detectives.  There’s a “grey wizard” and a man with a ghostly companion, and an bisexual Austrian morphine & cocaine fiend named Salt Peter (a nod to Saint Peter, perhaps).  The film had a $250,000 budget, so don’t expect a lot, but it’s good Weird Western fun.

 

Salt Peter, the bisexual Austrian dope fiend

Quickshots- Westworld

 

Season 1- This is the best thing ever on television

Season 2- Really liked that Raj scene, couldn’t get myself to finish the season

Season 3- Is this thing still on?

Quickshots- Trailblazer

 

Not good.  Palmiotti and Gray have written some great westerns, and this isn’t one of them.  Interesting concept (hitman goes into witness protection that happens to be in the old west) that could have been held up with decent art, but this is like the Rob Liefeld’s understudies got together and decided to try a western.  Ugh. Cover art is great, though!

Quickshots- Call Down Thunder

 

I’m aging myself to think that anyone remembers the old Disney movie Davy Crocket and the River Pirates, but if you do you may remember Mike Fink, King of the River.  In that movie Fink was a bully juxtaposed against the good hearted King of the Wild Frontier.  The light but great Call Down Thunder by Kerry Newcomb follows Mike Fink’s career from a young ranger in frontier Pittsburgh to a keelboat captain along the Mississippi through the Red Stick War and Battle of New Orleans.  Fink’s more of the good hearted King in this book, and Newcomb introduces a different sociopathic bully riverman counterpoint that mirror’s Disney’s Fink and serves as the main villain for the story.  Bloody fights, frontier mayhem, and a little bit of sexy times makes for one of my favorite reads.

Gaming notes- As usual, I’ve spent way too much time trying to make Mike Fink as a D&D character (in Pathfinder a good River Kingdoms rogue/ranger/horizon walker or barbarian/river druid, maybe even a skjald if you like the hybrid classes). 

 

Quickshots- Linda and Abilene

Among the dregs of B-movies on Netflix you can find a bizarre softcore sexploitation film called Linda and Abilene.  The description reads “In this erotic Western, two orphaned siblings struggle to suppress their feelings when they begin to develop a sexual attraction to each other.”  While that may sound like an interesting premise, it really is a struggle to understand what this film is about.  Mostly what I took away from it is that women in the old west wore pantyhose, and bad men liked to push them to the ground and dry hump them to death.  That is literally how the film begins, and the remainder of the film follows the daughter of our first victim falling into a regular, identical fate, when not doing tedious farm chores.  We also learn that once men see a woman nude they can never get the image out of their minds, and it will drive them forever to savagely dry hump every woman they encounter, or masturbate furiously under the covers.  Ninety minutes of dry humping and masturbation in the Wild West.  Who knew such a film existed?  Or needed to exist?

Quickshots: Outlaw Territory Vol 3 (Plus Good Things To Say About Peter Brandvold!)

Outlaw Territory, Image’s anthology of short western comics, is back for its third and reportedly final installment.  If this is the last, well, I think that’s okay.  Volume 1 has some genius storytelling and artwork.  Volume 2, never quite rising to the heights of the first, none the less was a solid collection of action packed, sexy westerns.  In Volume 3 the good ideas started running dry.

The stories is Outlaw Territory Vol 3 have more rape than sex, more violence than gore.  O Henry’s legacy as a western writer was evident in the first two volumes, where ironic twists were the order of the day.  Here, the key message is that the west was not so romantic, with bloody bodies and traumatized survivors to drive the point home. 

One exception to this was Peter Brandvold’s Rogue Lawman comic- short, fun, sexy, with an ironic twist at the end.  Even the weirdly stylized art, which I hated at first, ended up working well.  I liked this comic better than his first Rogue Lawman novel.

I still respect the folks at Image for making this series, which took some guts to pull off.  I just wished the last hurrah was better.

Crazy artwork, great story, two thumbs up for Mean Pete!