{"id":16892,"date":"2017-05-31T07:00:44","date_gmt":"2017-05-31T07:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/?p=16892"},"modified":"2017-05-28T19:32:00","modified_gmt":"2017-05-28T19:32:00","slug":"los-tejanos-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/2017\/05\/31\/los-tejanos-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Los Tejanos"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nBy Jack Jackson<\/strong> (Fantagraphics Books)
\nNo ISBN<\/p>\n

I’m reading lot of graphic novels digitally these days, and what strikes me most is just how much superb classic material – especially genre works with war and western themes – still isn’t available. You try tracking down a The Haunted Tank<\/strong> or Joe Kubert Sgt. Rock<\/strong> and see what joy you get\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

Known as ‘Jaxon’ in his underground commix days, Jack Jackson’s infectious fascination with the history of Texas was seeping through into all his work even from those early days. Portions of Los Tejanos<\/strong> first appeared as comicbooks Recuerden el Alamo<\/strong> and Tejano Exile<\/strong>, originally published by Last Gasp in the mid-1970s, which the author dutifully and effectively fleshed out for this extremely early prototype of the modern graphic novel.<\/p>\n

Drawn in a captivating, cross-hatched style evoking plate-etching that simply screams \u00e2\u20ac\u0153true story\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, Los Tejanos<\/strong> delivers a breathtaking wealth of information, social texture and sheer entertainment. It will even teach you a little history you might not have known.<\/p>\n

Los Tejanos <\/strong>tells the story of Juan Nepomuceno Seguin<\/em>, a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Texian\u00e2\u20ac\u009d of Mexican birth who sided with rebels fighting for independence. Before becoming part of the United States of America, Texas was briefly a nation unto itself, having won its freedom from a Mexican empire that was bloated, corrupt and in decline.<\/p>\n

How Seguin turned his back on one culture, only to be eventually betrayed by another during a period when Hispanic and Anglo-Saxon cultures constantly battled for hegemony in continental America, seems to echo even now with relevance. If you listen to politicians, that battle still isn’t over\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

The eventual fate of Juan N. Seguin makes for powerful reading, rich in fact, well-paced as narrative, and even delivering the occasional solid horse-laugh. But the true measure of a history book – and this most wonderful tome is certainly that – is how the material impacts on the contemporary. Here it also succeeds. The issues were germane in 1840, they were just as much so in 1982, and they still are now.<\/p>\n

Why this epic isn’t required reading for every US history or sociology course I’ll never understand. Why it isn’t universally available is even more baffling\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6
\n\u00c2\u00a9 1982 Jack Jackson. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Jack Jackson (Fantagraphics Books) No ISBN I’m reading lot of graphic novels digitally these days, and what strikes me most is just how much superb classic material – especially genre works with war and western themes – still isn’t available. You try tracking down a The Haunted Tank or Joe Kubert Sgt. Rock and … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Los Tejanos”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[115,122,99],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16892","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biography","category-historical","category-westerns"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4AFj-4os","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16892","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16892"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16892\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}