FOREWORD
DAVID BOOP
Collected here are stories from my idols, my mentors, my peers and my friends. When I sent out invitations, I asked each author to give me their favorite and/or most famous characters in all-new stories set in the Old West. They did not disappoint.
From Warden Luccio to Bubba Shackleford, they came. We get a visit from Mad Amos, and Dan Shamble shambles by. A barmaid lives up to her name “Trouble,” and a dragon named Pete wants to court the sacrificial girl, not kill her. Chance Corrigan, Hummingbird and Inazuma, Bose Roberds. Never before have these characters shared the stage like this. Cowboys and Dinosaurs. Adventurers and Aliens. Time-Traveling Samurai and Clockwork Gunslingers. Vampires. Zombies. They’re all in here.
Why weird Westerns, though?
Well, because unbeknownst to many, the genre has a long, proud history these creators all wanted to be a part of.
Do you remember the Wild, Wild West TV series? Maybe you read Jonah Hex, the Two-Gun Kid or other cowboy comics. Did you, like me, watch old B-movies and serials such as Valley of the Gwangi and The Phantom Empire on Saturday afternoon TV? How many of you snuck to the living room once your parents were asleep to see Billy the Kid Versus Dracula during a late-night movie monster marathon on Halloween? I certainly did. Seriously, there are far more weird Westerns out there than you can imagine. So much so, somebody filled an entire encyclopedia of them.
The Encyclopedia of Weird Westerns by Paul Green [McFarland; 2nd ed. February 25, 2016] explores a whole cottage (cabin?) industry that stretches back to the earliest days of the American West. Did you know one of the first dime novels published in the U.S. would be considered steampunk by today’s standards? The Steam Man of the Prairies is a fictional account of a man crossing the West in a carriage pulled by a thirty-foot steam-driven robot.
Researching the titles listed in Green’s encyclopedia, I met many new characters cut from the same piece of rawhide as two of my favorite protagonists: Indiana Jones and Brisco County Jr.
And now, thanks to the authors represented here, you are about to meet a few of them yourself.
So, find a comfy chair, kick up your spur-heeled boots, and relax as we return to the dust-covered land of ancient magics, mysterious creatures and pioneers hell-bent on survival.
Welcome back to the Old West.
DB 12/16