Review time! with ‘Tex: The Magnificent Outlaw’

“Well, he never traveled heavy, yes, he always rode alone”

The latest album starring Tex, the greatest cowboy to come out of Italy, is here for your enjoyment! Mauro Boselli wrote it, Stefano Andreucci drew it, Vladimir Jovanovic translated it, and Epicenter Comics published it!

Sergio Bonelli Editore, which publishes Tex, generally does a good job getting excellent talent on the book (the first Tex book I got was drawn by Joe Kubert, of all people!), and this album is no different. Boselli has written a few adventures of everyone’s favorite cowboy, and he knows what he’s doing. And Andreucci’s artwork is gorgeous. That adds up to an entertaining and enjoyable comic, which is always nice. The story is a sturdy Western with all the clichés you expect, but Boselli always keeps us on our toes when we expect them, twisting them a little bit so that the plot doesn’t become stale. At the beginning of the story, Tex Willer, our hero, is accosted by men who claim he stole a bunch of gold from a mine and killed three of the men guarding it. Tex knows he didn’t do that, so he has to find out who did so he can clear his name. And the adventure begins!

Tex’s quest is the entire focus of the book, but Boselli takes us on a lot of detours. There’s a town of outlaws where he thinks he can find out who actually stole the loot, and he does. He needs to bring one of them in alive so he can clear his name, but that proves more difficult than it seems, given that these are, after all, bad men. He hooks up with an old coot he knows from way back and a young buck itching to prove his mettle as a gunslinger, and they’re eventually joined by two Indian women some of the bad guys were holding as slaves. All manner of bandits and varmints are after him, he doesn’t know if he can trust his two compadres, and it’s not like he has a lot of food and water out in the wastelands of Arizona and New Mexico. Tex meets up with Cochise at one point, because why not, and he and his allies come up with some clever schemes to stay alive and beat the bad guys. Boselli does a good job keeping us guessing as to whether his allies will stick with him or betray him, and while we’re sure Tex won’t die – he’s a staple of the Italian comics scene, after all – it’s not clear who else will come out of this book alive. So while Boselli plays with stereotypes, he tries to upend those stereotypes, too, which is nice (with the exception of Cochise and his Indian band, who are presented as unequivocally noble, which is a stereotype, sure, but I guess it’s a better one than presenting all Indians as bloodthirsty savages?). Even the outlaws are different from each other, with different motivations. The confrontations don’t quite follow the way we think they’re going to, and Tex doesn’t just get to ride off into the sunset with his good name restored. It’s a rousing adventure, naturally, and Tex is the smartest guy in any of the many situations he finds himself in, but that’s okay – he’s the hero. Boselli is able to put him in a lot of interesting conflicts where he isn’t always able to shoot his way out. Whenever you’re working in a classic genre and you can find ways to tweak it, that’s a good thing, and Boselli does that well.

Andreucci’s art is marvelous, which continues in the tradition of the other Tex books I’ve read (not too many, but all of them beautifully drawn). His line work is incredibly precise, as he uses hatching exclusively to create shades, which seems very labor-intensive but also makes the art look stark and raw, which works well in the Old West setting. He still uses spot blacks beautifully, giving the darker scenes an edge to them, as the characters move in and out of deep shadows. His attention to detail helps make the places Tex and his group inhabit look real, from the wooden houses the outlaws build in their wilderness to the adobe cantinas in the outlaw town. Andreucci uses the space very well, as he needs to draw the desert in such a way that it dwarfs the people but, as this is a European comic and not a DC one, he doesn’t get full-page splashes to convey this, so he often shrinks the people nicely so that the setting overwhelms them. Of course there’s a big gunfight at the end, and Andreucci takes a few pages to get to it, building the tension nicely but showing the changes of the characters’ expressions as they try to figure out who’s going to draw first. The one place Andreucci isn’t excellent is in his depiction of one of the Indian women, Nita. She’s supposed to be beautiful, and she is, but she looks far too much like a 1950s version of an Indian woman, one played by a white actor, of course. It’s not a big deal, but she just seems out of place in this comic, as Andreucci tries to make each character “realistic” for the time (yes, he’s using Western clichés to a degree, but not obnoxiously so). Nita is just an odd fit, but it’s not too awful, just odd.

I can’t find this on Amazon right now (other Tex books are there, just not this one), so if it sounds interesting, you’ll have to get it elsewhere! I dig Westerns, and Tex is a good example of a character who fits into any kind of Western, so the Tex books I’ve read are good. This is no exception. It’s a fun, exciting story with beautiful art. That’s a good combination!

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆