Clockwork Chloe

“I ain’t much for shootin’ unarmed men, so if you got an iron, you better slap leather.”

A great line from a fun short story in the western steampunk vein called Clockwork Chloe.  The story is simply one night in the life of Bert Tillory, a man who has “slept with every woman west of the Pecos” and tells everyone he sees about the deeds.  Bert spends most of the story in a bar recounting his exploits, including the great love of his life, Clockwork Chloe.  With one metal arm, one metal leg, and lots of gears and sprockets, Chloe was the one great love of his hednonistic life.

There isn’t much of the story past this, as the entire thing is less than 3000 words long (by comparison, my average post is about 500 words).  It is fun and zippy, though, with the author clearly stating in his plot outline that the story is an homage (or is the term “shout out” nowadays?) to Spider Robinson's Callahan series. 

Perhaps best of all, Clockwork Chloe is free to download from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords.  At no cost and taking only a few minute to read, Clockwork Chloe is well worth the brief investment of your time to check out.  The author, Ian Healy, has turned out a number of other books as well, including some westerns (with elves).  One more crazy author to add to the stack…

Hell on Wheels Early Reviews

Hell on Wheels still has a few hours to go until it starts, but it is already getting mediocre reviews.  See below.

http://news.yahoo.com/hell-wheels-amc-revive-tv-western-173300805.html

What are Kim Kardashian and Poison Ivy Doing in a Blog About Westerns?

I have been very confused this week by the unfortunate interface of two things that I feel very strongly about, namely Kim Kardashian and Poison Ivy.  You will wonder what this has to do with westerns, and I admit it is only tangentially related.  Do you remember in Lonesome Dove when Gus McCrae said that he should have sided with the Indians and the outlaws?  It is this state of affairs what he was talking about.

Kim Kardashian and the entire Kardashian phenomena symbolizes to me everything that is going wrong with America.  Fame for the sake of fame, wealth for the sake of wealth, contributing nothing meaningful to the world besides making “reality” television.  She is famous for being Bruce Jenner’s step daughter, and making a sex tape (which I gather involved being urinated on) with a B-list rapper.  Somehow she turned this into a multimillion dollar media empire.  Perhaps I should admire the pluck of a young woman who can turn a situation around like that, but I don’t.  She also recently made a quick $17 million by quickly courting, marrying, and divorcing an NBA player in what now appears to be a mostly staged marriage played out on television.  That divorce got more press than the surprise storm that knocked out power to three million people in the Northeast United States.  Oh, and apparently in 2010 PETA named her one of the five worst people or organizations in the world in regards to animal welfare.  The hits just keep on coming.

Now, on to Poison Ivy.  No, not the plant that makes you itch, I have plenty of that growing out of my neighbor’s yard through my fence to fend off the next Pequot invasion (see this post for details).  I mean Poison Ivy, the Batman villain.  My love for Poison Ivy runs deep; that is to say I love this woman as much as a man can love a fictional comic book villain.  It is not just the look, although graphically Poison Ivy moves back and forth from a sultry redhead in tight green outfits to a green skinned siren clad only in vines and leaves, either of which is fine by me.   Poison Ivy is also takes green to a whole new crazy level, which I can respect.  This blog has a long bio on Ivy, but in summary…

So Ivy is basically a hot, redheaded, environmentalist anti-establishment eco-terrorist who has a strong disdain for demure fashion.  The part of me that loves the wilderness and rants about green politics (ie, the part of me that writes this blog about westerns) would seriously consider moving to the DC Universe and joining her gang.  Of course her gang in the DCU is made up entirely of other female super villains in tight latex and spandex with strong undercurrents of lesbianism, so I am not sure exactly where I’d fit in.  I do think I’d make a good Swamp Thing, at least.  Or perhaps I’d just invite her along for a hike with me and the wife.  And is she really so much a villain?  See below and decide for yourself.

With all that said, why am I so bothered?  Just days before filing for divorce to end her sham marriage, Kim Kardashian attended a Halloween costume party dressed as Poison Ivy. Not a particularly good costume, and clearly a costume based on the horrible Batman & Robin movie.  Still, part of me wants to think that this is cool.  Part of me finds the notion of the Kardashian empire repulsive.  It is all very confusing.

Oh, and since you insist, here’s a picture of some cowboys.

Frontier Partisans- a Blog Worth Your Time

Earlier today a gent named Jim Cornelius stumbled into my little part of the blogosphere and suggested that I take a look at his own similarly themed site, www.frontierpartisans.com.  Oh, it’s good.  If you like Slap Bookleather, you’ll love Frontier Partisans.

Tim Truman returns with Hawken

Have I mentioned anywhere is this blog that Tim Truman is a genius?  If not, then I am remiss.  Truman is a fantastic comics artist, writer, and musician.  Moreover, he is a western fan and creator, doing some of the best work in the genre in the 1990’s with Topps Lone Ranger series and the Vertigo Jonah Hex series.  I recently pulled his comics biography of Simon Girty off the shelf and have enjoyed paging through it by candle light in my snowbound, powerless home in New England.  When the power came back on and I was on-line again I was stunned to see that Truman is again gracing us with another western called Hawken, this one apparently weirder than his already impressive creations.  The full story is available here at Comic Book Resources (and practically every other Western blog).  Welcome back, Tim! 

Black Powder- Bloody Frontier Adventure

I was delighted a few weeks ago to walk into my local comics store and find the first issue of Black Powder-Bloody Frontier Adventure.  The stories of the half-horse, half-alligator river men are a piece of the early American rest that I love to read about, but modern tales about them are few and far between.  If you are a follower of a pretty narrow band of US history occurring along the Ohio & Mississippi Rivers and the Natchez Trace in the early 19^th century, then everything that you are looking for is in place.  Familiar places like Hole in the Rock are there, and characters like the horrible Harpe brothers, Tecumseh, and Mike Fink make an appearance.  There is tension between the river rats and the burgeoning industrialists, symbolized in a nice love triangle wrapped around a tale of piracy and kidnapping.  

Creator Dwayne Harris is clearly a fan of the period, well read, and knows how to weave history into the story.  You can almost feel the New Madrid Earthquake waiting in the wings to throw a Deus Ex Machina into the story.  Black Powder appears to be a passion product for Harris, an artist who has worked in a variety of media, including comics.  Often when you get a project with a single creator like this you get fantastic artwork with a mediocre story and lousy characters.  For a comic put together by an artist the writing is actually quite good.  Surprisingly, despite the fact that the creator is primarily an artist, I am not a big fan of the art in the book.  Nothing wrong with it per se, just not my taste.  Regardless, Harris is writing about the coolest time in American history and doing it with style.  Let’s hope #2 of this six issue series sees the light soon.

My Heart Rebels and Longs for Vast, Open Fields

Today, there is no perfect western.

That’s a shame, because that is what this blog is for.  Any media, cross genre, out seeking the perfect western.  Lately I am having trouble finding anything that engages me. 

I blame the mountains.  Two weeks of hiking in Utah has ruined me for the virtual experience rather than the visceral one.  I don’t want to watch, I want to do.  I don’t want to be served, I want to create.  I don’t want to let the news tell me what’s happening, I want to go to Wall Street and see for myself.  I don’t want to read Batman comics, I want to be wrapped up in a Poison Ivy plot.

There just doesn’t seem to be magic today in the words on the page or the motions on the screen.  I keep ranging about looking for something that can take me back to a high, dry place in the hours between work and sleep and am coming up short.  My own novel lies untouched for weeks, yet my masterful article on financing safety technology for concrete pumpers (from my day job) is the talk of the office.  Truth be told, I have no idea what a concrete pumper is.

A.B. Guthrie’s The Way West has been sitting nearly finished on my book shelf for several years.  Many years ago I gave a copy of The Big Sky to my father, an avid reader of Bernard DeVoto’s histories, and suggested that we read The Big Sky together.  I had no idea what an emotional trainwreck reading that novel would be.  The story of Boone, a not too intelligent, overly violent man and his quest to find peace in the mountains ends in a series of tragedies and disasters.  My father read The Big Sky, then its next five sequels (including the Way West) within a month.  He sent me his copies and told me to keep up.

When I finally slogged my way through the beautiful but tragic language of The Big Sky I set out to read The Way West.  While The Big Sky’s narrator was little more than rage barely restrained, Dick Summers of The Way West swims in a constant tide of melancholy and introspection.  As he travels by wagon train over lands he rode as a mountain man he laments the passing of his old world, where adventure and danger lay in every pass, where the attentions of young native women were easily had, where every daybreak was golden and every breath magnificent. 

Of course Guthrie won a Pulitzer for The Way West.  Who doesn’t feel that way?  In the history Greek Adventure: Lord Byron and Other Eccentrics in the War of Independence, there is a line that says men are often drawn to lands where they were young and successful.  Thus for me England, Scotland, the Rockies, are part of the sad dream of the past that Dick Summers sees riding through the plains. Knowing that The Big Sky ends in a series of tragedies I have never had the guts to see what happens to Dick Summers in the last pages of The Way West.

Where westerns are failing me lately, my mind returns again and again to a single line from a comic book with the unlikely title of G.I. Joe: Cobra Special #1- “I’m a veteran businessman, but my heart rebels and longs for vast, open fields.”  Nothing else in this world sums it up better.