Hoarse & Buggy Productions’ WESTERN TALES OF TERROR title didn’t go over big in the comics marketplace, folding last year after just five issues. This should surprise no one considering the immediate commercial strikes against it, as it was a comic that was:
1) a Western;
2) horror;
3) an anthology;
4) an indie; and
5) in black and white.

Which is a real shame, because it prevented people from seeing how damned good it was. For anyone who harbors fond memories of DC’s WEIRD WESTERN TALES (or even EC’s trailblazing TALES FROM THE CRYPT), it comes highly recommended. It even has its own host, Dead Cowboy Pete – the Dry Gulch version of the Cryptkeeper – who introduces each issue and piece with grave warnings like, “This time we got some stories that’ll curl your arm hair and straighten your public hair. So sit back, relax, and put on your pissin’ pants, so’s you don’t ruin your church clothes. God hates a person what smells like piss.”

WESTERN TALES OF TERROR’s debut issue kicks off with your standard showdown story given a supernatural twist. There are also grim morality (or should that be mortality?) tales involving quicksand and an army deserter, before the title’s first series character is introduced: Hector Plasm. A creation of Benito Cereno and Nate Bellegarde, Plasm is a manga-haired gunfighter and swordsman who protects people from baddies of every dimension. Steve Niles – arguably the biggest name of the bunch – tells the revenge-minded “Reckon This” with his trademark black humor. And almost the entire latter half is consumed by the first of the three-part “Phineas’ Gold,” in which a deformed bank teller with a “pig hand” (think Chris Elliott in SCARY MOVIE 2) is on the run with a gang of robbers who filched his bank thanks to his inside knowledge. It’s a great setup for the chapters to come.

Issue #2 continues “Phineas’ Gold” – written by Joshua Hale Fialkov and Porter McDonald, with ace art from Scott A. Keating – with the gang encountering zombie injuns in a cave, and there’s another amusing Hector Plasm tale. You also get a saloon piano player who witnesses a gruesome slaughter, a gallows builder and a gold thief who has the unfortunate luck to run across a comely ghost and her giant ant-lions. And if you’ve been wondering why no stories have been centered around a whore-filled bordello yet, worry no more.

Issue #3 begins with “Ghosts of the Past,” which is more about mood and tone than horror and humor, and there’s nothing wrong with that every once in a while. But then it’s back to the usual mix of kidnappers, Bigfoot, vampire cowboys, monster hunters and barroom bloodshed, before “Phineas’ Gold” wraps up in an ever-appropriate double twist ending.

A new two-parter begins in WESTERN TALES OF TERROR #4: “The Mineshaft,” from Fialkov (also the series’ editor-in-chief, it should be noted) and artist Mark Dos Santos. It’s about a mining expedition for buried treasure that turns out to be guarded by a giant dragon. The shorter stories concern Native American ghosts out for revenge and a whore on her “job interview,” giving a trial run to a grotesque, rib-slurpin’ fat man. Special notice must be given to Stuart Moore and Jason Copland’s “Other Folks’ Trouble,” the finest piece out of the entire title’s run. Like an Old West take on the film GO, it follows six different townspeople – including the sheriff, the priest, the bartender and the hooker – as they bicker at one another over the course of one morning. Their stories intersect in strange and hilarious ways, and naturally things don’t end nicely, but you’ll have a ball even when the blood starts flowing.

Finally, the series closes with issue #5, with “The Mineshaft” wrapped up as the anti-hero battles the dragon and the Chinamen who serve as her guards. The other pieces involve a Confederate widow who doles out curses, frontier cannibalism, magic, wolfmen, gunfights and a poker game where the stakes are death. Niles also returns with “Gold Miners’ Slaughter,” a standard zombie tale amped up by Scott Mills’ unusual, quasi-Fisher Price style of drawing.

Whether taken separately or as a whole, WESTERN TALES OF TERROR’s five issues showcase a variety of art and solid storytelling from an array of indie talent. It’s all for fun, and fun’s all you get, so it’s a shame it couldn’t continue. I’ll admit I could have that fun much earlier during the title’s actual run, but I’m a wait-for-the-trade kinda guy. Unfortunately, H&B states there will never be a trade release; fortunately, they’ve made all five issues available at a nice discount, so I bit. Hard. Drew blood, too. –Rod Lott

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