The Comic Book Western: New Perspectives on a Global Genre ed. by Christopher Conway and Antoinette Sol (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Comic Book Western: New Perspectives on a Global Genre ed. by Christopher Conway and Antoinette Sol Daniel Pinti Christopher Conway and Antoinette Sol, eds., The Comic Book Western: New Perspectives on a Global Genre. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2022. 328 pp. Hardcover, $99; paper, $30; e-book, $30. The Comic Book Western: New Perspectives on a Global Genre is one of those books that is both a pleasure and a challenge to review. The pleasure comes from how much one learns when reading this collection of essays. The challenge comes from both the book’s overall excellence—reviewers often fear appearing too effusive in their praise—and its all-but-overwhelming scope. Ten essays by an international array of scholars collectively touch on the Western genre in comics form from the Americas to Europe to Japan. Together, the editors and authors make a compelling case for the intrinsic interest and global importance of the comics Western. The book opens with an introduction by the editors that contextualizes this book within some of the most influential and provocative books in comics studies, particularly works by scholars focused on comics canonization and high/low art distinctions (e.g., Bart Beaty, Benjamin Woo, Qiana Whitted). No less crucially, it also places the book in dialogue with contemporary concepts in Western studies, such as Susan Kollin’s work on the postwestern and Neil Campbell’s “rhizomatic west.” Touching on global studies and translation studies as well, not to mention building in a succinct global history of the comic book Western, the introduction effectively serves as a microcosm of the book and leaves one unsurprised that, as the authors assert, “the study of comic book Westerns is growing” (6). The rest of the book is divided into two parts, each made up of five essays. Part 1, “Transnational Histories,” includes essays by the editors—Christopher Conway’s “Comic Book Westerns and the Melodramatic Imagination in Mexico,” and Antoinette Sol’s “Blueberry: Remaking the Western in Franco-Belgian Bandes desinées”—as well as Simone Castaldi’s “Italian Western Comics and the Myth of the Open Frontier,” Johannes Fehrle’s “German Western Readers and the Transnational Imagination,” and Marek Paryz’s “Beyond Parody: Polish Comic Book Westerns from the 1960s through the 2010s.” These last three function, in various ways, as wide-ranging surveys of their respective subjects, with [End Page 181] Fehrle’s being especially interesting in how it charts some of the competition and interplay between East German and West German comics, as well as between comics imported to Germany from other European countries and those produced by German artists. In contrast, Conway and Sol, respectively, have written more deeply focused essays, with Conway offering a transmedial study of El libro vaquero (first published in 1978) in light of Mexican film melodrama, and Sol introducing the reader to the widely influential series Blueberry (first published in 1963) and its intersections with Franco-Belgian painting, literature, and cinema. Part 2, “Critical Reinscriptions,” begins with Manuela Borzone’s “Argentina’s Outlaws and the Revisionist Western: The Case of Héctor Germán Oesterheld and Hugo Pratt’s Sargento Kirk,” which looks at that comic’s postwestern characteristics and includes some of the finest close reading of comics in the collection. Also notable for its excellent comics and visual analysis is Joel Deshaye’s “Canada’s Triumph Comics and David Garneau’s Métis Response to the ‘Indian’ of the Comic Book Western,” which shows how Garneau’s triptych How the West Was . . . “complicates and critiques the expectations of the Western genre” (225). Lee Broughton’s essay, “British Comics and the Western: The Future West, the Supernatural, and Strong Women in The HellTrekkers, The Dead Man, and Missionary Man” looks, notably, at three comic strips (as opposed to comic book series) and how they are influenced by Clint Eastwood’s Western characters even as they incorporate less expected genres and motifs. David Rio’s “A Spanish View of the American West: El Coyote and His Comic Magazine” demonstrates how the pulp hero El Coyote, created by author José Mallorquí, played a particularly important role in the expansion of frontier mythology in Spanish comics...