Broken Frontier

Most of the press releases for BOOM! Studios’ new western series, Pale Horse, brag that this is a title poised to revolutionize the genre. One such example can even be found on this site, here. It’s a pretty huge claim, really. There have been a lot of fine western comics over the years. Moebius’ Blueberry and the work of Russ Heath come to mind right away. Then, there are more recent books like Scalped and Loveless to consider, as well.

Usually, when a publisher goes out on a limb like this, they’re onto something. They tend to know a good thing when they see it – especially if they figure they’ll make a decent return on their investment. Unfortunately, such is not the case with Pale Horse.

That isn’t to say that Pale Horse is a bad book. It truly isn’t. There are a lot of good things about this comic. The script is tight and the dialogue appropriately sparse. The art looks appropriately gritty and tells the story well, at a breakneck pace. The colorist uses an appropriate palette, with lots of warm, earth tones and services the story well instead of overwhelming it. Everything is as it should be – you know…appropriate.

That’s just it though. Pale Horse is just appropriate. There’s nothing really special here and certainly nothing revolutionary.

The plot follows an ex-slave and former Union soldier named Cole, who after his Native American wife is raped and murdered, kills the men responsible in broad daylight in the middle of a saloon. After retrieving his infant son, Cole goes on the lam, earning his keep as a bounty hunter, while staying one step ahead of the law himself and rearing his boy from the back of a horse.

At its core, Pale Horse is a book about vengeance – good, ol’ fashioned, brutal, efficient vengeance. Although Andrew Cosby and Michael Alan Nelson attempt to put a fresh spin on this timeless theme by making their anti-hero Cole an ex-slave and father, I couldn’t shake the feeling I’d seen much of what I found in Pale Horse before. Ed Brubaker deals with similar themes in Loveless to greater effect and Clint Eastwood set the standard for western yarns, years before in film, with Unforgiven.

Perhaps it’s unfair to judge the first issue of a new series against such pivotal works as Loveless and Unforgiven but then again, it was the publisher who said Pale Horse would revolutionize western comics, not me. Such strong statements come with a price, especially when they are so far from the truth.

Pale Horse doesn’t blaze any new trails artistically or thematically as promised. Rather, it seems content to ramble along the same well-trod paths of its forebears, stuck in a wagon rut of mediocrity and empty hype.