Broken Frontier

“All right kid.  Tell me your story…” – Cole Jarrett, The Ballad of Sleeping Beauty #1

The grizzled gunslinger wasn’t the only one to speak those words.  On Free Comic Book Day 2004, fans across the continent looked at the first issue of The Ballad of Sleeping Beauty and said the same thing to writer Gabriel Benson.  Backed by the art team of Mike Hawthorne and colorist Mike Atiyeh, Benson and Beckett Comics crossed a classic fairy tale with the spaghetti western serial. 

In this re-imagining of the Sleeping Beauty story, readers meet Cole Jarrett, a bitter gunfighter haunted by loss and consumed with the need for revenge.  The legend opens as Cole finds himself in the gallows, ready to be hanged.  There he meets Red, a young kid also sentenced to swing, who spins a tale of a cursed town and a young woman trapped in an endless sleep.  Naturally, Cole has no interest in questing to free the town and save the young woman, but I don’t think I’m spoiling anything by revealing that he has a change of heart. 

Issue #1 of The Ballad of Sleeping Beauty is one of the strongest first issues I have ever read.  Benson, Hawthorne and Atiyeh hooked me from the first page – a gorgeous full page shot of Red and Cole in the gallows as the last light of the day slips towards the horizon.  Capturing the lonely desperation of both the gunslinger and the Old West landscape, the page draws readers deep into Cole’s mysterious world.  Using powerfully haunting flashbacks, Benson relates the tale of Briar Rose, a settler town founded beyond the Mississippi and built on sweat and blood.   Benson adds some interesting depth to the curse, as it stems from the town’s fears and prejudices turning away an old native woman seeking help.  When she returned, the old woman placed a curse on the town’s first born, promising that the child would fall into a deep sleep on her 18th birthday – followed by the entire town.  Benson never takes his protagonists away from the hangman’s noose, but still sets a wonderful premise built on the strength of several familiar elements from the western genre.

Subsequent issues of The Ballad of Sleeping Beauty have lacked the lyrical quality of the debut, but Benson and company have successfully carried over the haunting tone set in the gallows.  Issue #2 is much more of a straight-ahead action story, setting Cole and Red (along with Will, another classic western character archetype - the buddy) on their path to Briar Rose. 

While the inevitable escape from the gallows embraces the western, Benson doesn’t allow readers to forget the dual nature of the book with the inclusion of a spectral native warrior who hunts the protagonists.  By the point that Cole’s rival, US Marshall Drake arrives, readers are left with a tantalizing suspicion that he may be something even darker than just a corrupt lawman.  The entire tale is such a roller coaster ride of adventure and excitement, it’s almost too easy to look over a few failings in the storytelling (Will isn’t actually given a name until the next issue).

Even as The Ballad of Sleeping Beauty draws to a close (the series runs a finite 9 issues, currently on #7), Benson and company have continued to do an excellent job at maintaining the duality of the title.  The flashback is a narrative device that can easily be overused, but thanks in no small part to the chilling unearthly art, these sequences have given what might otherwise be a pat western adventure a haunting and tragic undertone.  Cole, who has the greatest likelihood of becoming a cliché archetype, benefits greatly from these sequences. 

Readers may not like or agree with the gunslinger, but Benson does his job well, so that one can’t help but at least understand the grizzled outlaw’s motives.  Benson is far more cryptic regarding the mystical nature of his adventure and I can’t help but feel that his handling of it in the final issues will be the deciding factor as to whether The Ballad of Sleeping Beauty will be remembered as a good or great comic. 

There are quite a few of these elements that have no apparent explanation, an issue that will hopefully be addressed before the series wraps.  At the very least, this book has featured some truly exciting western adventure moments.  A dramatic train sequence in issue #5 (no small feat capturing this in a static medium) and several moments that capture the isolation and loneliness of the old west (the conclusion of issue #5 and the brilliantly drawn conversation scene in #6) remained with me for a long while after reading them).

In The Ballad of Sleeping Beauty, Beckett Comics has a strong, engaging, exciting and interesting title.  Helped along by some smart marketing (even if you can’t find the free issue #1 in your local comic shop, the publisher has it available online at their website) and an attractive price point ($1.99 US) for the subsequent issues.  While I personally would appreciate a more regular shipping schedule for the title, Benson, Hawthorne and Atiyeh’s smart storytelling has kept this book at the top of my “must-read” pile.

Go ahead gentlemen.  Tell me your story.

- Fletch Adams