Breckinridge Elkins, Robert E. Howard's comedic mountain man

Good grief, there is a Breckinridge Elkins web comic!  To be honest, I probably knew about this in my first time pass through this blog, but I had a chance to give it a good read lately and I really enjoyed it.  Not sure what else this guy has worked on, and it's amazing that the site is still up after a decade.  

Breckinridge Elkins is by far my favorite Robert E. Howard character, more so than Conan and Solomon Kane.  His mountain man stories are where Howard really started to come into his own as a writer and folklorist, and where he put most of his efforts in the last years or his life.  The Conan stories (the originals, not the pastiches or stories adapted into Conan stories) read like man managing his bipolar disorder through writing.  By the time we get to Elkins, it felt like he had passed a rough patch and was enjoying his professional life.

Then his dog died, his mother died, and he put a .38 in his own brain.  He was 36.

Breckinridge Elkins is a reminder that adversity can be overcome, life can be good, and it can also be fleeting.

Enjoy.

Next Town Over- More Weird Western Webcomic Goodness

Erin Mehlos, an astute reader, commented recently on my enjoyment of weird western webcomics and asked politely if I had read one called Next Town Over, a comic of which she happened to be the creator.  I had never heard of it (clearly I need to spend more time cruising the web for something besides nekkid cowgirls).  Oh, am I glad she wrote me.  Next Town Over is great.

A nice mix of western, steampunk, and sorcery, Next Town Over uses sparse dialog and fantastic artwork to tell the story of a young woman out for revenge again a demonic villain of gentlemanly comportment.  Or something like that.  All this prose I keep churning out at night writing my own novel is making me overly flowery at times.

  A demonic villain of gentlemanly comportment

Did I mention that art?  Some comic book artists are great artists, but great comic book artists understand their medium and transcend drawing and move into storytelling.  Jack Kirby, for example, was in my mind an absolutely terrible artist (what is with those haircuts?) but knew how to string together frames of action like no one else.  Mehlos really owns this in Next Town Over.  The layouts of the pages are great, particularly where she takes a colorful page in the present and rends it to show a scene from the past in black and white bleeding through.  It is new and creative in a way that is a joy to read. 

New pages appear weekly, and the series is available in print as well.  Please go check it out.  And if there are any other cool western web comics out there (or even bad ones) please drop me a line and let me know. 

Zombie Ranch- DIY of Web Comics

Remember what I said about having doubts about web comics?  Zombie Ranch is an example of why I am sometimes skeptical.  Set in a future after the Zombie Apocalypse, Zombie Ranch tells of a future where the horrors of the zombies have been turned into pharmaceutical  miracles, leading to the big business of zombie ranching (on zombie horses, of course).



I read the first couple of pages in shock at how bad it was, then kept reading a couple more pages, then a couple more, then, inexplicably, it actually started working.  The art is semi-amateurish computer graphics, but sure is better than what I could do.  The writing isn't great, but it is fun, and since I have never buckled down and published a comic myself, who am I to criticize?  Somehow when you throw all this together it actually becomes an intriguing story that you have to keep flipping through.

Zombie Ranch is, well... it's kind of fun.  Clearly someone has put a lot of time and thought into it.  There’s even a theme song:

Every sunrise they greet a new dawn of the dead
They’re out boltin’ and brandin’ and countin’ the head
No glory, no diamonds, no frills and no mansion
It just, just pays the bills when you’re out zombie ranchin’

They’ve stepped to the call with one foot in the grave
So far from the walls of a Safe Zone enclave
So come on and ride with the bold and the brave.

Though this kind of strife, might set city folks to blanchin’
It’s just a day in the unlife, when you’re out zombie ranchin’.
It’s just a day in the unlife, when you’re out zombie ranchin’.

Zombie Ranch!  Round up some walking dead today.

Guns of Shadow Valley

I must admit that I have always been a little skeptical of web comics.  The notion of skipping the “Big Two” and their outdated distribution and advertisement schemes sounds good, but I have always doubted that a web comic would come out with high production values.  Boy, was I wrong.

The Guns of Shadow Valley, by David Wachter and James Andrew Clark, is a weird western with a superheroic steampunk twist.  The creators describe the story like this: “Somewhere in the mysterious Shadow Valley lies a secret that could forever change the face of the frontier. To protect that secret, a posse of gunmen with special abilities must come together and defend against a tribe of ghostly warriors, an advancing army led by a deranged Colonel, and the perils of the valley itself…Set in the 1870s in the Oklahoma Territories, Guns is a tale of intrigue and adventure that puts a new spin on the Old West.”

Starting in July of 2009, The Guns of Shadow Valley has been putting out one new page per week for nearly two years, and is now up to four chapters.  I started reading the comic last night, started up again this morning, and was almost late to work because I had to read JUST ONE MORE PAGE!  It is with some dread that I realize I am almost caught up, and will have to wait one painful week after another anxiously between each new page. 

As an extra treat, comics blogger Amber Unmasked is a fan of the comic, and has shot a Shadow Valley photo set for her web site (along with the accompanying video below). Having a sexy cowgirl / fangirl advertise your site never hurts.  I wouldn’t watch the video at work, and you really want to watch where you check out her (sometimes NSFW) site.

When you want to advertise a web site, a naked cowgirl really helps