The Lone Ranger #4 sees Mark Russell’s subtle satire once again lurking not too far under the surface of a good plot, with the elitist, white land-stealing bourgeoise talking, ironically, about honour while behaving not anywhere near honourable, before burying their comrade and fellow white collar criminal, Donald Metz, with “Beloved Purveyor of Meats” chiselled into his tombstone. Hardly the most sombre of funerals, but then again, these vaudevillians aren’t to be given our sympathies. I couldn’t help smiling at this graveside humour. It’s a great start to this issue before it descends into darker territory as we are reacquainted with dandy cannibal, and hitman-for-hire, Connor, introduced last issue. Seems this man is something of the detective too, making him a formidable foe for Tonto and his partner, the Lone Ranger.
While The Lone Ranger and Tonto have been one step ahead of the game at every turn, seems our new friend Connor is more than a match for our masked avenger and his friend. What, you didn’t think this was going to be a walk in the park, right? After all, this is comics. Comics thrive on conflict and the chance that our heroes will one day be undone. We also get his ‘secret origin’ and another chance to tie fiction in with historical fact to remind us how the West was won. Or rather, stolen.
I’ve mentioned it before, and I’ll mention it again, but we are living in an age wherein we are now reassessing much of our history as more enlightened 21st century readers. Russell pokes at the still sore wounds of America’s evolution, often achieved at the business end of a shotgun, but any inclusion of historical details merely informs his story and grows it. Whether it’s the invention of barbed wire and it’s significant impact on farming at the end of the 19th century, or the inclusion of other new technologies such as machine-guns, these details serve to validate the narrative and make it a better, more accurate reflection of the era in which it is set. The Lone Ranger is on the cusp of huge changes, if we take a moment to consider him as a fictional construct.
Like The Wild Bunch of the eponymous film, who have been superseded by the technological advancements of the 20th century, The Lone Ranger is about to be replaced in the hearts of the nation with more sci-fi inspired heroes like John Carter and Flash Gordon. But, in Dynamite’s newest series, he’s far from done. There’s life in the old dog yet.
As for the inclusion of cannibalism – and how Connor first comes to eat of the forbidden flesh – this too has its precedent in American frontier history. In the wilder days of the West, stories of cannibalism were not uncommon, and while Connor dresses far more elegantly than his counterparts, he shares their same tastes in cuisine. It’s not all that far fetched really. That’s really putting the ‘wild’ into the ‘Wid West’, that’s for sure.
Bob Q’s smooth, clean artwork continues to impress as he breathes life into each character and adds a glow to proceedings with a warm colour palette that evokes the dusty desert settlements we are all familiar with from such Westerns as Pale Rider and others. It may well be a meticulously clean looking landscape we are seeing, but it hides a lot of dirty deeds underneath. Deeds that may well be unearthed next issue as we head for the final showdown.
Black humoured, historically-influenced and a damn fine read at that, The Lone Ranger #4 is available now from Dynamite.
from Comics – COMICON http://bit.ly/2GduOdk
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