Here are comics and graphic novels featuring dramatic stories about cowboys, gunfighters, lawmen, bounty hunters, outlaws, and Native Americans, depicting a rural America populated with such iconic images as guns, cowboy hats, vests, horses, saloons, ranches, and deserts!
“Such is the paradox of the Western in Franco-Belgian comic strips: far from its original territory, the Wild West is reinvented with a distance and freedom that the Americans themselves could never have allowed. After all, this is fairly normal: the European Western – and this is where all its charm lies – is living proof of enthusiasm that only passions that are condemned to remain a fantasy know how to galvanize.”
From “The European Western: an Unusual Evolution” by Stéphane Beaujean, Artistic Director of the Angoulême International Comics Festival
1880. Kansas. Elijah Stern, the local undertaker, leads a calm and solitary life, until one day he is asked to carry out an autopsy on a man found dead in a brothel. Taking on the role of forensic pathologist, he discovers that the man had not died of natural causes and finds himself involved, against his better wishes, in the middle of a bonafide investigation. But Stern has no idea that the key to this case lies in his own past…
Undertaker Jonas Crow is charged with transporting the coffin of an ex-miner become millionaire back to the mining vein that made his fortune. The funeral should have been a calm affair, but there’s an unexpected turn of events: on the eve of his death, Joe Cusco swallowed all his gold, so as to carry it with him for all eternity. Unfortunately, the secret was leaked, provoking the fury of all the miners of Anoki City. They can’t just leave such a fortune to be buried while they’re sweating their souls away in the mining shafts! As Jonas says, “death never comes alone…”
Our story starts in Washington, 1870. Matthew Montgomery has an important post at the Ministry of Defense. He’s rather an inflexible man who always respects the rules, which is why he warned his daughter, Helen, not to leave with that idiot, Glover. Of course, she did it anyway, and now she wants to come back and expects to be pardoned. But when Matthew arrives home the night of his Helen’s return, he opens the door to find his wife and daughter slaughtered in the hallway, and a strange star engraved on his daughter’s breast. His whole life is turned upside down. Traumatized, he starts out on the trail of the killers, with just one clue to help him on his way: a name – Jason Cauldry, from Topeka. Matthew wants to know why some stranger came such a long way just to etch that damn star onto his daughter’s body, so he sets off on a long journey, crossing the Appalachian mountains and the Mid-West, all the way to Topeka. But what will he find there?
Does Lucky Luke know what he’s getting himself into when he arrives at Froggy Town on a stormy night? As in many cities of the Wild West, a handful of men pursue the madcap dream of finding gold. Luke is just looking for a place where he can make a quick stop to replenish his tobacco supplies. But he can’t refuse the request for help made by a committee of citizens to find the gold that was stolen the previous week from the poor miners. With the help of Doc Wednesday, Lucky Luke leads a dangerous investigation while facing up to the ruthless siblings—the Bones brothers.
A lone cowboy rides into town and all hell breaks loose… Sound familiar? Here is yet another take on the beloved Wild West trope, complete with corrupt law enforcement officers, a town drunk, guns for hire, a brave young woman trying to hold on to her failing ranch, vicious people with wealth and power trying to take it from her, a couple of cow-herders, and a colorful cast of characters with names like Red Dust, Ten Gallons, and of course… Comanche.
Rain Wolf, a young native American, is in trouble. He just killed a white man in an act of self-defense. Justifiable in the eyes of the law… when it’s a white man who does it. Bruce, the son of influential railway magnate Vincent McDell, springs his friend Rain Wolf from jail and vows to protect him. Rain Wolf has no choice but to go into hiding. Sent along to accompany him by the tribe sages is Little Moon, the woman Bruce’s brother Jack is in love with. Little Moon is at the age to marry, but she doesn’t yet know who her husband will be. Her mystical grandfather gives her a monocle with strange powers that seems to be guiding her. Meanwhile, the Cody brothers are called upon by the dead man’s mother to bring down the man who killed her son. They’re hot on the trail of the two runaways, having first kidnapped Blanche McDell. But they’re not the only ones…
He’s got a yellow shirt and a red neckerchief, unruly locks and a sprig of grass in his mouth. He maintains law and order at the Nothing Gulch School, and he runs faster than his shadow as soon as there’s even the slightest hint of chores to be done. It’s Kid Lucky, a young cowboy knee-high to a grasshopper, always ready to discover the customs of the Wild West, and, most of all, to muck about with his buddies. This is the birth of a legend: the greatest (but still quite small) cowboy of the Wild West! In this first album, Kid Lucky learns his very first cowboy lessons.
From the very first moment he meets “Sentence” Sykes, young Jim Starret instantly recognizes a legend of the Old West, just like in the comic books he learned to read with. But his new hero is nowhere to be seen when the fearsome Clayton gang murders his mother before his very eyes. From that moment on, the now-orphaned Jim becomes obsessed with a sole objective: joining Sykes to track down his mother’s killers. But what he doesn’t yet realize is that legends of the Old West are forged by their demons.
Two families are en route to Wyoming when an ambush by Crow warriors leads to a massacre—and two little girls missing. Logan, a young man who served as a scout for the small convoy, brings the only other survivor, old Giuseppe, back to civilisation, and makes him a promise: he’ll find the girls. Meanwhile, Salmon Leap, a young Lakota warrior turned away by the father of the woman he loves, seeks a glorious death—and along the way finds Sharon, one of the two girls… In the vast, wild expanses of an America still in formation, the destinies of two men and a little girl will intertwine, uniting them beyond all of their differences. A pure western.
“What… a… darn… stupid… contraption!” The 1st Columbia San Francisco Bicycle Race seems like the perfect opportunity for Albert Overman to impress the nation with his revolutionary design. But when a rival manufacturer hires two goons to intercept him, it‘s up to Lucky Luke to save the day once more. The lonesome cowboy will find himself swapping stirrups for pedals as he heads west in the saddle of Overman‘s invention. Will he make it to the starting line in time, or will the dawning of the modern age be stopped by ruthless thugs, stubborn hillbillies, and wary Apache? And what will Jolly Jumper think of his cowboy changing steeds?
Kansas, 1861. As tensions rise between the Northern and Southern states, a fanatical, violent preacher leaves a trail of corpses behind him, all the while calling people to take up arms against pro-slavery states. Close on his tail is a lone rider with a strange gift: he can read the past and future of those he touches. In the small town of Holton, a showdown is brewing, but things aren’t quite as they seem…
The westward drive of Americans after the Civil War was unstoppable. For some, the vast territory meant new wealth and new opportunities. The ever-progressing railroads made many rich. Whereas others found their fortune selling the flesh of the less fortunate. In a brothel in Omaha, all manner of destinies intersect in a violent collision that many won’t survive. This is the incredible story of Martha Cannary, a young woman who shrugged off what destiny had in store for her and made herself into a legend.
The year is 1849, and the future state of California is under the control of former soldiers from the Mexican-American War. Their leader, General Gomez, is busy buying up the locals’ land for pennies on the dollar, so that he and his cronies can maximize their profits from the coming gold rush. But he and his men are dogged by a series of masked, would-be avengers all calling themselves Zorro. They are an almost laughable annoyance, simple peasants living out the fantasy of a local legend. Until one man shows up and starts picking off Gomez’s men one by one, as stealthy as a fox. He brandishes a sword which he uses to carve the letter Z into his victims’ cheeks… Could this be the true Zorro?
Even a hero from the Far West needs a vacation from time to time, and looking after a few Swiss cows seems like the perfect opportunity for Lucky Luke. These milk cows happento produce the precious substance necessary for the production of authentic Swiss chocolate! The West has just discovered cocoa, and chocolate should soon be a commodity in all mouths. And yet… between vicious autograph hounds, the chief of the Chicoree tribe, and two cowboys whose frustrated love leads to even more frustrating brawling, will Lucky Luke end up yearning for a reunion with the Daltons?
Five women from various backgrounds are brought together by fate to fight as allies for their survival. A retired schoolteacher, an Indian who’s handy with a bow, a young, immigrant widow from London, a brothel worker who’s made off with the till and a fourteen-year-old slave who’s been put in a cage. This unlikely band of adventurers must fight off the violence men resort to when caught in greed’s ubiquitous grip. They’ll do it with arrows, pies, brooms, pots, knitting-needles, and a lethal revolver that becomes even more dangerous in the hands of the sharpest-shooter of them all: a teenager who’s been whipped, locked in a cage and freed only to fall victim to pneumonia. These women have got each other’s backs and don’t take kindly to the worst mankind has to offer.
Five women from various backgrounds are brought together by fate to fight as allies for their survival. A retired schoolteacher, an Indian who’s handy with a bow, a young, immigrant widow from London, a brothel worker who’s made off with the till and a fourteen-year-old slave who’s been put in a cage. This unlikely band of adventurers must fight off the violence men resort to when caught in greed’s ubiquitous grip. They’ll do it with arrows, pies, brooms, pots, knitting-needles, and a lethal revolver that becomes even more dangerous in the hands of the sharpest-shooter of them all: a teenager who’s been whipped, locked in a cage and freed only to fall victim to pneumonia. These women have got each other’s backs and don’t take kindly to the worst mankind has to offer.
You’ve followed his adventures through the Gold Rush, the building of the Continental Railroad, and the taming of the frontier. Now Chen Long the Chinaman, the triumphant creation of Olivier TaDuc and Serge Le Tendre, is back for his greatest adventure of all: finding out he’s a father. Twenty years after his violent past drove away his true love Ada, the Civil War, prison camp, and opium have left Chen Long a broken-down shell of his former proud self. Can the tiger rise to save his son? A fitting conclusion to an epic series that explores forgotten pockets of western history.
Header image: Stern © Frédéric Maffre & Julien Maffre / Dargaud
