Book Review- The Comic Book Western: New Perspectives on a Global Genre

 Reviewed by Chris York

Christopher Conway and Antionette Sol. The Comic Book Western: New Perspectives on a Global Genre. University of Nebraska Press, 2022. https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/nebraska/9781496218995/ 

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 Christopher Conway and Antionette Sol have assembled a well-conceived and well-executed anthology exploring the development of the Western genre in international comic books. Their introduction lays the foundation for the book by briefly summarizing the origins of the genre within the American comic book industry and the conduits through which the genre initially established itself in other nations. The introduction, however, is the last time the United States is the focus of the anthology. All ten of the subsequent chapters of the book are devoted to the Western within different comics traditions, Though Conway and Sol discuss the role of U.S. companies in popularizing the Western comic abroad, nearly all of the chapters are devoted to stories developed within the comics industries of these different nations, as opposed to merely imported comics.

            It may seem counter-intuitive that a genre so steeped in the ideological morass of exceptionalism, individualism, and colonialism peculiar to the United States would enjoy enduring popularity with international audiences. Even a casual observer of comics around the world, however, knows that the Western’s appeal is widespread. The Comic Book Western addresses how the genre gained a foothold internationally, but also how the genre evolved and, in many cases, thrived within these disparate cultures. The overarching premise of the book is that the global popularity of the Western genre has endured because creators “reterritorialize” or “destabilize” the conventions of the genre, adapting its recognizable conventions to fit within different cultural milieus.

The structure of the individual chapters is remarkably uniform for an anthology. Though the book is divided into “Transnational Histories” and "Critical Reinscriptions,” the difference between the sections seems to be one of degree. All of the chapters trace the growth of the Western within a specific comics tradition, many of them reaching back into the 19th century to identify the culture’s first exposure to the western form.  Each chapter also provides a deeper analysis of a specific title or titles to illustrate the unique character of the Western in that nation. Furthermore, the anthology strikes a good balance between chapters that focus on well-established, critically-acclaimed titles, such as Blueberry and Sargento Kirk, and titles that are more obscure.

            Each chapter traces what the editors call the “vital dialogues with local and transnational currents” that comprise the Western tradition around the world (3).  For instance, Sol’s chapter on Blueberry and the Franco-Belgian tradition identifies 1960s counter cultures as part of the impetus behind Charlier and Giraud’s anti-hero. While the counter-cultural revolutions of the 1960s changed the Western in nations around the world, Sol also notes that Blueberry’s aesthetic owes a great deal to the “local” cinematic tradition of the French New Wave.

            Much of the “reterritotrialization” occurs through the merging of genres. Manuela Borzone’s chapter notes how Argentinian creators merged the Western with their own gauchesca tradition. Similarly, Christopher Conway shows that, despite their almost exclusive portrayal of American settings and the absence of Mexican characters, Mexican Westerns are infused with melodramatic conventions of sentimentality and family values that make them a uniquely local product.

            In addition to the nations mentioned above, The Comic Book Western includes chapters on Germany, Italy, Poland, Great Britain, Spain, Japan and Canada. Joel Deshaye’s chapter on Canada is noteworthy because it includes the only exploration of an indigenous creator using comic book conventions and Western themes. Several chapters touch upon the portrayal of Indigenous Americans, but Deshaye’s discussion of David Garneau’s comics-inspired paintings—which make use of panels, gutters, and thought bubbles—is the only chapter to address an artist whose heritage is from one of the indigenous nations that the genre so exploits.

            The anthology contains sixteen black and white illustrations. Many of the images are covers. Nearly all of the images do important work, and the authors all explicate them well. However, I found myself wanting more. With such a wide range of source material, at least some of the comics are bound to be unfamiliar to portions of the readership. This is not a problem unique to this anthology of course. I would guess this was a limitation imposed by the publisher and not the editors. A more liberal use of images could have better illustrated points the authors are making.

            In the end, though, my criticisms are few. Conway and Sol have assembled a rich anthology, a balanced, insightful volume that effectively addresses the global nature of its subject. In their introduction, they articulate the modest hope that the book helps “to make the study of comic book Westerns less implausible than it has been”(6). I have no doubt of that. In fact, I suspect comics scholars interested in the Western genre, or in comparative studies in general, will find this a useful resource for years to come.

 

Table of Contents
Introduction: The Globalization of the Comic Book Western by Christopher Conway and Antoinette Sol

Part 1. Transnational Histories

1.      Italian Western Comics and the Myth of the Open Frontier by Simone Castaldi

2. Comic Book Westerns and the Melodramatic Imagination in Mexico by Christopher Conway

3. German Western Readers and the Transnational Imagination by Johannes Fehrle

4. Beyond Parody: Polish Comic Book Westerns from the 1960s through the 2010s by Marek Paryz

5. Blueberry: Remaking the Western in Franco-Belgian Bandes dessinées by Antoinette Sol

Part 2. Critical Reinscriptions

6. Argentina’s Outlaws and the Revisionist Western: The Case of Héctor Germán Oesterheld and Hugo Pratt’s Sargento Kirk by Manuela Borzone

7. British Comics and the Western: The Future West, the Supernatural, and Strong Women in The HellTrekkers, The Dead Man, and Missionary Man by Lee Broughton

8. Canada’s Triumph Comics and David Garneau’s Métis Response to the “Indian” of the Comic Book Western by Joel Deshaye

9. A Spanish View of the American West: El Coyote and His Comic Magazine by David Rio

10. Faraway So Close: The Representation of the American West in Igarashi Yumiko’s Mayme Angel by Rebecca Suter

Index

Exhibition in photos: Christophe Blain at the 49th Angoulême International Comics Festival

 Christophe Blain, dessiner le temps. Sonia Déchamps, Antoine Guillot and Jean-Baptiste Barbier. Angoulème. Vaisseau Moebius. 17-20 March 2022.

Twice the winner for Best Album at the Angoulême International Comics Festival (2002 for the first volume of Isaac le pirate; 2013 for the second volume of Quai d'Orsay), Christophe Blain was honored with a major retrospective that framed the body of his comics work through the lens of his own cinephilia. The presentation of the exhibition within a large darkened set of rooms invoked the space of the cinema theatre, and the whole thing even ended in a rounded room that displayed his film poster work on its walls while a screen hanging down from the middle of the ceiling projected a 5 minute interview clip showing Blain speaking about some of his fetish films and their influence in his work. 

Blain's visual virtuosity with his brush and pen and inks is on fine display here. The exhibition is packed with a surplus of original pages, including a large number of preparatory sketches, that were all individually accompanied by the artist's own commentary. Everything about the exhibition, from its scenography to the non-chronological organization of Blain's work to the flow of the text and the commentary, teased out the wide extent to which Blain's cinema obsession informs almost every aspect of his comics. Some references are quite obvious, such as his clear love of the Western genre and its visual and narrative codes, but some revelations offered some new avenues of appreciation such as his admission of how the French dubbed soundtracks of many of the Hollywood films of the 1950s-60s play a major role in how he treats the rhythm and tenor of his dialogue.

As a cinephile myself, I greatly appreciated this opportunity to recontemplate Blain's comics and how he treads the intersection of bande dessinée and cinema. Antoine Guillot's intelligent framing and guiding narration through the exhibition does an excellent job of highlighting aspects of Blain's work in both a cinema and bande dessinée context. All of this work is not in vain as the wonderful catalogue collects and reprints almost the entirety of the exhibition: all the original artwork, all of Guillot's text and also all of Blain's commentary - only the collection of sketches is missing. 

-Nick Nguyen

All photos taken by Nick Nguyen

Photos are organized in an attempt to present a visual chronology of the exhibition installation as experienced in a sequential walkthrough.