Broken Frontier

Western provides the readership with a twisting tale of characters caught up in the inescapable consequences of their personal histories.

In Wyoming in 1868, young Nate Chisum becomes the victim of his brother’s scam to pass the boy off as the long-lost nephew of the wealthy Ambrosius Van Deer, supposedly abducted by Indians in a massacre years before. When the elder Chisum’s duplicity goes horribly wrong, the only people left alive are a horribly wounded Nate and Van Deer’s young daughter Cathy.

Fast forward fifteen years and Nate, now calling himself Nate Colton and left with just one arm after the events of that day, arrives in Wichita and finds his life inextricably entwined once again with an unsuspecting Cathy. Working for the crooked town sheriff, Nate becomes caught up in local plots while effecting his own schemes. But fate has its own twisted plans for the one-armed gunfighter and the events of the past are about to catch up with him in the most dramatic fashion…

Created by the team behind the legendary European comics series Thorgal, Western is part of Cinebook’s Expresso series: comics albums that are either complete tales or comprise of two volumes to tell a finite story. For those who bemoan the lack of “done in one” tales in modern American comics - that lost storytelling art that so many readers demand yet we are constantly, and bizarrely, told there is no audience for by the bigger, trade-obsessed publishers - this Cinebook imprint is a godsend that deserves immediate and eager attention.

Van Hamme’s tautly plotted story fuses those staple genres of classic Hollywood ages gone by, being equal parts Western and Noir in content. Western is a twisting tale of characters caught up in the inescapable consequences of their histories. There’s a sense of ominous predestination throughout that tinges the album with a strangely engaging feeling of bleakness and moral desolation. In Nate Colton, Van Hamme presents us with a sympathetic protagonist who is a product of his own desperate circumstances; a morally ambivalent individual whose more dubious actions are predicated on a simple need to survive rather than any overt malice.

On the visuals, Rosinski brings an intricately detailed eye for historical accuracy to the proceedings. The murky, sepia-tinted colouring add to the austere atmosphere and tense build-up of the narrative. Rosinski occasionally breaks the story with interspersed double-page paintings that are both beautiful in and of themselves, and also quietly reflective of the preceding themes of the book.

Replete with overly coincidental yet dramatically satisfying ironies, Western has an air of the classic 1970s era of Jonah Hex to it. Cinematic in scope, without ever slipping into the trap of reading like a film storyboard, Van Hamme and Rosinski’s period thriller is a worthy and highly recommended addition to the ranks of Cinebook’s translated European treasures.