ALIENS AND COWBOYS REVISITED (sort of...)

Reading some commentators, you’d think that the concept for Aliens and Cowboys was new. Yet combining western and science fiction genres goes back to the 1950s, if not earlier.

Certainly, the pulps had fun with cross genre books, and comics tended to follow suit.

Here is an eye-catching cover of a DC Comics Special from 1970.

 

The Special is a crafty idea, as it repackages previously published tales about several DC frontier characters within a cross-genre story arc. There’s a book-end and linking storyline ‘Behold the Wild Frontier’ where the modern-day Gramps tells frontier tales to his two grandsons. This arc is drawn by Gil Kane, I reckon (author and artist credits were not given), and here’s the first page.

 

The rest of the stories are drawn by their respective illustrators of the time. There begins a Daniel Boone tale, ‘Son of Chief Black Fish!’ Then Gramps went on to relate the story of ‘The Junior Ghost Patrol!’ featuring Tomahawk. Next up was Davy Crocket with ‘War Stick of Chief Fighting Elk!’ This was followed by Kit Carson and ‘The Raiders of the Oregon Trail!’  We’re moving forward a little in time, I guess, and now meet Buffalo Bill in ‘Young Bill – of the Pony Express!’ No sooner is that story told than Gramps relates the story of Pow-Wow Smith, Indian Lawman. (The only story title that doesn’t boast an exclamation mark!) And the book-end/story arc concludes with Gramps meeting up with aliens. The comic is rounded off with a DPS text story, ‘Death Hunt’, uncredited.

 

[Eli Katz (April 6, 1926 – January 31, 2000) who worked under the name Gil Kane and less famously Scott Edward, Gil Stack and other pseudonyms, was a comic book artist whose career spanned the 1940s to 1990s and every major comics company and character. Kane co-created the modern-day version of the superhero Green Lantern.]

Ah, those were the days.

Lonesome Dove - a point of view

Published in 1985, Lonesome Dove has rightly gained many accolades and is a firm favorite for thousands of readers. At almost 850 pages, it’s a mammoth account of a cattle drive from Texas to Montana, affecting a cast of twenty or so characters. Its size alone deterred me from reading it until now. (I’ve read War and Peace, Gone with the Wind, and the Pillars of the Earth, among other lengthy novels, so I’m not averse to long books; it’s just that I didn’t think I’d be held by a book about a cattle drive for over 800 pages. I was wrong – mainly because of the characters.)


A quotation at the front, from TK Whipple, Study Out the Land, perhaps sums up McMurtry’s intention. “Our past still lives in us … what they dreamed, we live, and what they lived, we dream.” McMurtry seems intent on debunking the myth of the cowboy; here we find they’re ordinary, not particularly bright, with simple empty lives in a gritty unforgiving world devoid of much culture. Yet, despite this, some of his characters grow into mythic proportions. Going on, though belabored by heart-rending grief, is heroic, and that’s what many in this book do: go forward, go on.

McMurtry employs the omniscient point of view (POV), beloved of so-called literary writers. Not for them the struggle to maintain consistent POV, rather they’d opt for the rather lazy head-hopping that thrusts the reader into the minds of several characters in the same scene. There’s nothing wrong with this, of course – though modern agents and publishers tend to prefer consistent character POV.

The main drawback with the omniscient POV is that the reader doesn’t get into any particular character’s head long enough to form a bond. So when a main character dies – and McMurtry does tend to kill off people the reader’s getting to like – the effect isn’t as devastating as it might have been if the character had been more deeply lodged in the reader’s psyche. By its very nature, omniscient POV isn’t as intimate as individual POV. The author is not only playing God, he’s letting you know he is.

That apart, I enjoyed the book immensely and was moved in parts. I felt that the creation of Gus McCrae is a classic – though inevitably we learn most about him from his voice, not his intimate thoughts.

So, don’t be put off by this tome’s length. It’s well worth reading. There’s a prequel and a sequel too!