Tex: The Lonesome Rider

By Claudio Nizzi & Joe Kubert. English-language adaptation by Pete Carlsson & Philip R. Simon (Dark Horse)
ISBN: 978-1-61655-620-4(HC)                      eISBN: 978-1-63008-169-0

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Pure Poetry in Perfectly Rendered Motion… 10/10

One of the most popular western strips ever created, Tex premiered in September 1948, the brainchild of writer Gian Luigi Bonelli and artist Aurelio Galleppini. Very much an Italian synthesis of the classic Hollywood western, the strip is both mythically traditional and unflinchingly dark in a way US material wasn’t until the advent of the filmic “spaghetti westerns” of the 1960s and later. Gosh, I wonder if there’s some kind of connection there?

Bonelli was a prolific writer of books, articles screenplays and comics for more than fifty years and artist Galleppini eventually dropped a prestigious career as a book illustrator to draw approximately 200 issues of Tex and four hundred covers.

Comics featuring Tex Willer and his legendary allies Kit Carson, Kit Willer and Tiger Jack have been translated far and wide for decades, scoring big not only all over Europe but also in Brazil, Finland, Turkey, India and elsewhere. Guest artists for specials have included Ivo Milazzo, Jordi Bernet and the masterful Joe Kubert.

Kubert was born in 1926 in rural Southeast Poland (which became Ukraine and might be Outer Russia by the time you read this). At age two his parents took him to America where he grew up a Brooklyn kid. Joe’s folks encouraged him to draw from an early age and the precocious prodigy began a glittering career at the start of the Golden Age, before he was even a teenager.

Working and learning at the Chesler comics packaging “Shop”, MLJ, Holyoke and assorted other outfits, he began his close association with National/DC in 1943. A canny survivor of the Great Depression, Joe also maintained outside contacts, dividing his time and energies between Fiction House, Avon, Harvey and All-American Comics, where he particularly distinguished himself on The Flash and Hawkman.

In the early 1950s he and old school chum Norman Maurer were the creative force behind publishers St. Johns: creating evergreen caveman Tor and launching the 3D comics craze with Three Dimension Comics.

Joe never stopped freelancing, appearing in EC’s Two-Fisted Tales, Avon’s Strange Worlds, Lev Gleason Publications & Atlas Comics until in 1955 when, with the industry imploding, he took a permanent position at DC, only slightly diluted whilst he illustrated the contentious and controversial newspaper strip Tales of the Green Berets (1965-1968). From then, he split his time drawing Sgt. Rock and other features, designing covers and editing DC’s line of war comicbooks. He also drew his fair share of westerns such as DC’s incarnation of Firehair, Tomahawk and Son of Tomahawk. He later created a host of superb. Hard-hitting mature reader graphic novels such as Fax from Sarajevo, Jew Gangster and Yossel: April 1943.

In his quiet moments he also created and ran the Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art, training and mentoring a host of new funnybook superstars beside many of his fellow comics veterans.

Hugely popular and venerated in Europe, Kubert stretched his wings in 2000 by adding Tex to his list of achievements, written by Claudio Nizzi for Sergio Bonelli Editore’s premier Tex Albo Speciale/Texone imprint. Nizzi began writing comics in 1963, and created many popular series – such as Larry Yuma, Captain Erik and Rosco & Sonny – before moving to Bonelli in 1983 to craft stories of Mr. No, Nick Raider and Tex.

As is the case with all such long-lived action icons, the working premise of the Western Wonder is devilishly uncomplicated. Former outlaw Tex Willer clears his unjustly besmirched name and joins the Texas Rangers. He marries an Indian maiden and becomes an honorary chief of the Navajo (called “Eagle of the Night”) after she dies.

Over the years, Tex travels far and wide to dispense justice and has encountered every kind of peril you might have seen in western films, but like any great comics character also has a few outlandish arch-enemies such as evil prestidigitator Mefisto, piratical foreign prince Black Tiger and master of disguise Proteus.

After being published to great success and acclaim as The Four Killers in Italy in 2001, this particular tale finally became available to English speakers in 2015 as a sturdily redoubtable hardback (and latterly, ephemeral eBook) packing the entire pulse-pounding saga into one fearsome fable of electrifying energy and dogged determination…

Following an informative and appreciative Foreword by co-translator and letterer Pete Carlsson, the drama opens with the aging lawman approaching the remote farm of his old friends the Colters. He will not get there in time…

On finding the slain and defiled bodies of the family, doctored to appear the victims of an “injun” outrage, Tex reads the trail signs and deduces the killers are three white men and a renegade Indian, before setting off to arrest them. At this stage he is ready to let the law judge them. However, after being ambushed and thrown him off a cliff, the miraculously still surviving manhunter is ready to do whatever is necessary…

When the killers split up, the patiently remorseless peacekeeper becomes repeatedly embroiled in the webs of brutal violence the quartet spin around them and many more people will die before justice is finally served…

Raw, primal and visually grandiose, Tex: The Lonesome Rider is a stripped-down epic of the genre in the manner of Unforgiven and Once Upon a Time in the West; a masterclass in civilisation triumphing over chaos and greed, played out in a pitiless arena shaped by Big Sky Country aesthetics with the iconic scenery honed by a matchless craftsman into a major player and contributor to the mood of the story.

This is the genre at its most potent, pure and powerful: perhaps the best and credible cowboy comic you’ll ever see.
© 2001, 2005, 2015 Sergio Bonelli Editore. Licensed through Panini SpA All rights reserved.