In “Soliciting Multiversity: Dark Horse’s September 2012,” we were excited to announce the return of one of my all-time favorite comic book characters: the Shaolin Cowboy, created by Geof Darrow. In “The Shaolin Cowboy Adventure Magazine,” a pulp-style trade paperback coming out on the 24th from Dark Horse, the Shaolin Cowboy returns in a prose novelette written by frequent Darrow collaborator Andrew Vachss and fully illustrated by Darrow himself. Also on the way from Dark Horse next year is a three-issue miniseries picking up the adventures of the Cowboy where Geof Darrow had left off. “Shaolin Cowboy” was originally a bimonthly comic published by the Wachowski’s comics imprint Burlyman Entertainment, reaching seven issues before being quietly discontinued mid-story-arc in 2007. This series remains one of the jewels of my personal collection, and is a book I’m eager to share with you all.
Geof Darrow is one of those great talents whose work has inspired a generation of emulators. A three-time Eisner Award winner, he is a master of the line and an expert in texture. He got his start in animation, doing character design for Hanna Barbera cartoons like “Super Friends” and “Richie Rich.” In 1982 he met, Jean “Moebius” Giraud, who gave him his start in comics by co-creating the extremely limited edition art portfolio “Le Cité Feu (City of Fire).” He is most famous for his collaborations with Frank Miller, “Hard Boiled” and “Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot,” and for his frequent cover art for such titles as “Transmetropolitan,” “Concrete,” “Dark Horse Presents” and numerous variant covers for the Big Two. He has also collaborated often with the Wachowskis, and is credited as “Conceptual Designer” for all three Matrix movies. To give just two examples, the Sentinels and the insane human power plant are both classic Darrow designs. When the Wachowskis started their own comics imprint, Burlyman Entertainment, in addition to having him contribute to the “Matrix Comics” anthologies, they published two of his creations: “Doc Frankenstein” and, of course “Shaolin Cowboy.” Lately, his work can be found in spot illustrations in each issue of the newest volume of “Dark Horse Presents,” and as illustrations accompanying short prose stories also written by his friend Andrew Vachss in that same Eisner-winning anthology.
One of the many aspects of Darrow’s work that makes him so great is how he pays loving attention to every detail. Each minor background character appearing in a single panel, every graffiti-covered boulder, each lizard in the desert comes alive with its own unique personality and characteristics. Each page is a gold mine of Easter-egg-like details–tattoos, flyers, graffiti, background conflicts, and more. With the level of detail Darrow pours onto every page, you could spend over an hour reading each issue and still have missed much of it. Geof Darrow draws a page like I imagine God creating the universe–paying personal attention to ensuring each person and every snowflake is unique.
The only aspects of the artwork Darrow doesn’t handle personally are coloring, lettering and design. Peter Doherty’s vivid coloring brings Darrow’s flawless line-work to life for the first five issues. Lovern Kindzierski and Alex Wald contribute colors to issues six and seven, respectively. Doherty also lends his hand to the lettering and cover designs for all seven issues, and doing a fantastic job of it, too. Every page, from title page to charity advertisements for Protect.org (an organization providing legal aid for abused children, on whose committee both Darrow and Vachss serve), is beautifully designed. The series also saw an impressive list of artists on variant covers, including Moebius himself, Mike Mignola (colored by Dave Stewart), Scott Gustafson, Ricardo Delgado, Kevin Nowlan and John Severin.
“Shaolin Cowboy” is full of humor, both in your face and subtly hidden. Each page is dripping with irony, absurdity and profanity, and littered with wry puns and random pop-culture references. My favorite gag is that the Shaolin Cowboy does not speak much; the main narrator of the story is his talking donkey, the long-winded Lord Eveyln Dunkirk Winnieford Esq the Third. The Cowboy lets his donkey do the talking–in essence, the Shaolin Cowboy speaks out of his ass. Nearly every issue begins with a monologue from Winnieford, dubbed the “Ass-ologue,” co-written by the Wachowskis and depicting the donkey as a world-wise and experienced celebrity fallen on hard times. It’s as if “Shaolin Cowboy” is Winnieford’s own memoir of his adventures traveling with the Cowboy, and Geof Darrow is merely a hired scribe and illustrator, slavishly working to appease the whims of the donkey.
Continued belowThe story opens with the Shaolin Cowboy wandering through the desert on his ass and getting ambushed by a massive posse of all the enemies the Cowboy and Winnieford had acquired in previous escapades. The posse is so large that Darrow drew an astounding 10-page spread to show us all of them. The ultraviolent battle in which he defeats them takes up the first two issues, in which it is revealed that the leader of the posse is a King Crab whose entire family was massacred by the Cowboy to appease his epic hunger for shellfish. In the third issue, the man and his steed come across a baby and three demons–and that’s when things start to get really weird. A giant lizard with a city on its back, the Cowboy battling a swarm of sharks with chainsaws affixed to both ends of a metal staff, Zombie Queens and freestyle-rapper demons all await you in this outlandish story.
I suppose one could make the argument that the Shaolin Cowboy is a superhero, since his kung-fu is so great that he can battle against overwhelming odds, fighting even the supernatural. It does share many characteristics with superhero comics: hyper-realism, over-the-top action sequences and a plethora of nasty villains. However, it is far from your traditional super-hero story. It’s more of an action/fantasy epic, like a modern-day “Conan the Barbarian,” heavily influenced by Japanese and European storytelling techniques with a healthy dose of comedy to boot.
One of the problems I have with reading many superhero comics today is that I feel like they’ve lost sight of how inherently ridiculous they are–grown men and women running around in tights and costumes, trying to punch their problems away…and yet it’s treated like a Big Deal, a serious, world-changing event. For example, in “Ultimate Comics: The Ultimates” #16, [spoiler alert] Captain America becomes president of the United States, and jumps in a jet, flying around punching all of the country’s problems away. No one in the story seems to grasp the absurdity of their situation. The only character smart enough to know that you can’t simply punch people in to getting along with each other is the villain! “Shaolin Cowboy” does not suffer from this problem, it knows it’s ridiculous. It aims for and embraces ridiculousness, taking it to the next level: utter insanity.
“Shaolin Cowboy” is the joy of comics, triple-distilled down to its truest form, shaken up with over-the-top action and served on the rocks of absurdity to keep you from taking it too seriously. It’s a drink best sipped slowly, so you can taste all the hidden flavors of this glorious cocktail Darrow has mixed up for us. You’ll want to come back for another taste again and again. It’s a good thing, then, that each issue was printed on high-quality paper with strong card-stock covers capable of withstanding multiple readings uninjured. The materials really do justice to Darrow’s inkwork and Doherty’s vibrant colors. All of the issues are still available through Burlyman Entertainment’s website. Issues #3-7 are still available for cover price, but I recommend looking for #1 and #2 on Amazon or eBay, better prices can easily be found there. Sadly there is no trade collection, but with the new book and miniseries on the way, it’s quite likely that there will be one in the future.
Speaking of the future, I strongly encourage you to order a copy of “The Shaolin Cowboy Adventure Magazine,” which in addition to the aforementioned Shaolin Cowboy novelette “The Way of ‘No Way!'” by Andrew Vachss and Geof Darrow also includes a second novelette, “Time Factor,” by Michael A. Black and illustrated by Gary Gianni. It also includes a series of faux instructional pamphlets drawn by Darrow called “The Shaolin Cowboy’s Helpful Hints,” teaching the reader how to properly use household appliances to eviscerate one’s enemies. The book comes out on the 24th, so make sure your shop is ordering a copy by reserving one for yourself. And don’t forget to add the new miniseries to your pull lists–you can find a preview for #1 in the “Adventure Magazine” if you still haven’t realized how bad you want this.
