COWBOYS & INDIANS & WITCHES & ZOMBIES: COMANCHERIA'S REAVIS WORTHAM

There's something about Texans that make them great candidates for the weird western. From Robert E. Howard in the west of the state practically inventing it to Joe Lansdale to the east expanding it, the mixing of the horror and western must come from seeing unnatural in those natural landscapes. Reavis Wortham, a favorite of mine from Frisco, takes on the odd genre with Comancheria.

For his story, he drops history into the horror, centering it around the story around The Second Battle of Adobe Walls where in 1874 Comanches, led by the great war chief Quanah Parker, attacked a small settlement of buffalo hunters who held them off with smaller numbers. Two Texas Rangers Buck Dallas and Lane Newsome are chasing down the war party and get into a skirmish. A Comanche medicine man puts a curse on Buck where he dies at sundown, but comes alive in the day, turning him into a zombie version of John Wayne. Lifting the curse involves getting a girl captured by the war party back to her home and a homesteader woman the Comanche view as a witch,

Wortham uses the brutal frontier setting portrayed by Larry McMurtry and Cormac McCarthy and pushes it into a realm of true darkness. The violence is often quick in it's dispensation, but lingers in the aftermath. Even Buck and Lane, are de facto heroes, give little quarter. Lane at one point questions about their killing being right. All Buck can counter with is thy are living (and dying) in a place where there is no right or wrong, "...there just is." Everyone is caught in a cycle of killing that may have cycled and brushed up another plane.

The book channels the two Texans I mentioned before. The story is told with Howard's pulp bravado. The action passages pack muscle and there are few chapters where fists, guns, arrows, or all of them aren't flying, including a great shootout with Lane in an Adobe Walls saloon, and a climactic battle where anyone can die (or become the undead). Wortham demonstrates Lansdale's ability put humor with the horror and not diminish either. Buck's dealing with learning how to be undead leads to some funny moments and he and Lane share banter reminiscent of Lonesome Dove's Gus and Call. The humor grounds the characters in both the supernatural and historical context, even when dealing with real figures like Quannah Parker and Bat Masterson.

Comancheria is the first in a trilogy. I can't wait to see to see what tales he has to tell in his world where Sam Peckinpah meets George Romero. The weird western is in good hands.