The Lone Ranger No. 1
Dynamite Entertainment
Nowadays, of course, the cowboy seems to have ridden off into the sunset permanent-like. Post-Unforgiven, it seems like the only Western stories that still find an audience are those that take a similar deconstructionist approach. Think Jim Jarmusch's dreamy Dead Man, Robert Rodriguez's winking El Mariachi trilogy or HBO's foul-mouthed Deadwood.
This is the landscape that the new Lone Ranger comic rides into, and though there's no doubting the property's name recognition ("That Masked Man" is like the Superman of cowboy heroes), it's hard to imagine a more unlikely character to flourish in a 21st century Western. The catchphrases are so common they've devolved into self-parody, and Injun sidekick Tonto has become synonymous with pop culture racism.
Well I'll be damned if writer Brett Matthews hasn't gone and made the Lone Ranger work, at least for his first issue. By starting long before the story we're all at least half-familiar with, Matthews and artist Sergio Cariello introduce us to a young boy named John Reid, son of and brother to a couple of Texas Rangers. He grows up to emulate the other men in his family, but an ambush kills the whole posse except for him. Now it's up to him to become the Lone Ranger and seek vengeance.
Matthews and Cariello play the big, melodramatic moments so straight that they feel like a classic big-screen horse opera, while infusing the proceedings with a gritty violence that ensures you make it all the way to Tonto's bad-ass, last-page appearance without the Overture of William Tell entering your head at all.
Marvel Team-Up No. 24
Marvel
Marvel Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada got some flak a few weeks ago over something he'd said at a Chicago comic convention regarding homosexual characters in the company's comics. Quesada said Marvel would steer clear of featuring gay characters because if they did, they would have to label the comics for mature readers only. This led to a blast from the gay press, particularly The Advocate, and a public mea culpa from Quesada, who went on to point out that the company already does have gay characters in comic books that aren't labeled mature. Both the Young Avengers and Runaways are team comics with young gay couples on their rosters, and the title Marvel Team-Up was starring a brand-new gay character named Freedom Ring.
The cool thing about Freedom Ring was that his sexual orientation was completely incidental to the character and story, and he was introduced at the exact same time DC was blowing trumpets over their new lesbian Batwoman character. In his clarifications regarding Marvel's policy on gay characters, Quesada pointed to Freedom Ring in MTU as an example.
In last week's issue No. 24, however, Freedom Ring gets killed off. This being comics, he could come back to life next month, but if the gay press is still paying attention, the timing is pretty awful.
Ultimate Marvel Team-Up Ultimate Collection
Marvel
In happier Marvel Team-Up news, this week saw the release of a new complete collection of writer Brian Michael Bendis' entire 16-issue run on the short-lived Ultimate Marvel Team-Up title, in which he paired his Ultimate Spider-Man (basically a relevant and accessible 21st-century version of the character), with similarly accessible "Ultimate" versions of other Marvel characters. More exciting, however, was the fact that it paired Bendis with a cavalcade of some of the industry's quirkiest artists, many of whom had never before worked for Marvel (and whom it was hard to imagine doing so at the time). With a line-up including Matt Wagner, Mike Allred, Chynna Clugston-Major, Terry Moore and Jim Mahfood, one contributor once joked that the title was Bendis' attempt to make sell-outs of the entire indie comics industry.