Other Westerns with elements of fantasy, horror or science fiction are 7 Faces of Dr. Horror Westerns began in the 1950s with the vampire western Curse of the Undead, and continued in the 1960s with films like Billy the Kid Versus Dracula (1966), which depicted the real-life outlaw fighting against the fictional vampire, and The Valley of Gwangi (1969), in which Ray Harryhausen's special effects were used to pit cowboys against dinosaurs. Gene Autry, in his first starring role as a singing cowboy, ventures down a mineshaft and discovers a futuristic lost kingdom of the type depicted in Flash Gordon. In film, The Phantom Empire (1935) is sometimes considered the first fantasy Western.
While the origin of the Saint of Killers in the Old West is the only true western element in the comic book Preacher, the series has been described as a " Splatterpunk Western" or a mix of the Western with the Gothic. Preacher Special: Saint of Killers, a 4-issue mini-series, was a spin-off from Preacher by Garth Ennis. In the mid-to-late 1990s, Desperadoes by Jeff Mariotte, from Image Comics/ WildStorm Productions, returned Weird Western comics to the stands at a time when none of the major publishers had Western comics in their line-ups. The main character was Jonah Hex, whose popularity secured his own eponymous series. The title of this series gave rise to the term "Weird West". ĭC Comics added a horror element to their Western stories by introducing Weird Western Tales in 1972.
The Rawhide Kid, another Marvel time traveller, debuted in a 16-issue series, from March 1955 to September 1957, from Marvel's 1950s predecessor, Atlas Comics. He became a time traveller, and ultimately, a mutant. Marvel Comics featured Kid Colt, the longest-running Western character in American comic books, from 1948 to 1979. Artist: Stan Campbell.įrom the 1940s, many Western comics published stories in which heroes would sometimes encounter monsters, aliens, supervillains, etc. Space Western number 44, Charlton Comics, June 1952. Horror author Jack Ketchum's work includes The Crossings (2004), an occult novel set in 1848 Arizona. The prolific Western author Louis L'Amour sometimes ventured into science fiction, as with The Haunted Mesa (1987), which is set amid the ruins of the Anasazi. An example is Dead in the West (1983), in which zombies rise after an unjustly lynched Indian shaman has cursed the town of Mud Creek, Texas. Lansdale has often mixed splatterpunk with alternate history Western. Lansdale, who has written mostly horror Westerns, many featuring the heroic Reverend Jebediah Mercer. It was later adapted into the film version 7 Faces of Dr. The novel concerns the visit to a fictional Arizona town by a magical circus that features legendary creatures from mythology. Finney, which won a National Book Award for the Most Original Book of 1935. One of the earliest novels to introduce fantasy into a Western setting was The Circus of Dr. Howard, published in the May 1932 issue of the pulp magazine Weird Tales, and the novelette "Spud and Cochise" by anthropologist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Oliver La Farge, published in the non-genre magazine The Forum in January 1936. Those men will climb aboard the 311… and will soon realize two sinister truths about the train.ĥ4443 books suggested | I don't feel so good.Two early examples of Western fantasy are the short story "The Horror from the Mound" by Robert E. A train that some believe still rides the iron rails, traveling to places no mortal should ever go, seeing things no one should ever see. It’s the missing 311, the train only whispered about around dying campfires. What they will discover, however, is that the approaching train isn’t the 5409.
They wait for the 5409, which secretly carries a train car full of railway cash-wages destined for workers of the copper and gold mines of British Columbia. In the winter of 1910, just after a snowy sundown, the Leland Baxter gang, a collection of cattle thieves, gunmen, and cutthroats, wait on horses before a tunnel exit. The only thing they found, however, was a lady’s hand fan with an Oriental design, spread wide like a butterfly’s wing. During that search, some of the men swore they heard a ghostly whistle echoing in the cold, Albertan dark. Search parties scoured the tunnel length with torches, searching for clues as to the big engine’s fate. The tunnel swallowed the 311 whole, and the train-and everyone on it-were never seen again. In the spring of 1903, the 311, known to locals as “The Majestic,” carried over a hundred passengers on board towards a tunnel mouth that would allow the thirteen-car locomotive to pass safely through the underbelly of the Canadian Rockies. Blackmore | ? pages | Published: 2019 | Popular Shelves: horror, audible, audiobook, audio, scifi-fantasy