Weird Western Tales #41 "The Black Seer of Death Canyon!"

Weird Western Tales #41 August 1977
"The Black Seer of Death Canyon!"
Michael Fleisher, story - Dick Ayers and Frank Springer, art - George Evans, cover

Summer, 1862. Brian Savage finds himself riding near the Canyon De La Muerte when he hears a man screaming for help. Turns out several men are terrorizing an old prospector when one of them is suddenly shot to death. Several of the men take off towards the cliffs where the shots came from, leaving behind one man to guard the old prospector. But, that idea doesn't pay off too well...

Brian grabs up the old man and runs off with the old man and his burro and attempts to nurse him back to health. The old man tells Brian that he was searching for his old pal Skeeter Short. Brian has to tell Skeeter that the old man, Muskrat Charlie, finally hit it rich and that he hid the map. All you have to do is look through the eye... the eye...needle....PLOTZ!! He's DEAD!!!!!

Brian buries the old man and the rides off with the man's burro in tow.

The next afternoon in a nearby town, the thugs that were killing the old man recognize the burro as Brian rides into town. They get an idea and tell the sheriff that Brian murdered the old prospector and stole the burro. Brian says that they are lying, that the men killed the prospector and resists the sheriff's attempt to jail him. One of the thugs pistol whips Brian, knocking him out.

Several hours later, the sheriff is bringing Brian a meal in jail, but when the sheriff tries to awaken Brian, he learns that the form on the cot is just a bundle of blankets. Brian drops from the ceiling and knocks out the sheriff and sneaks out the second story window of the jail. He jumps from the balcony onto a buckboard below, knocking out the driver, and then steers the team towards the livery. As he nears the livery, he jumps off, leaving the woman passenger at the mercy of the runaway horses.

Brian bursts into the livery in order to obtain his horse. He refuses to pay and rides off into the night. In the darkness the sheriff and the thugs laugh to themselves about how easily they let Brian escape so that he could lead them to the map and the treasure.

Several hours later, Brian rides up to needle rock and climbs up so that he can see through the eye. In the distance he spots a rock with a large X on it. Brian climbs down and heads over to the X and finds the map. Just then shots ring out and Brian topples over, the thugs come out of hiding and close in to recover the map.

Just then one of the thugs notices an African standing on a nearby boulder. The African is glowing and is wrapped in a large snake. Suddenly a spear pierces one thug, killing him, and the African vanishes only to appear behind them. He hurls the snake at the sheriff who gets squeezed to death and the remaining two thugs take off.

The glowing African then picks up Brian and takes him to a cave. Three days later when Brian comes to, the African explains that he is Wakwame, a shaman, a seer, a magician, a necromancer who can see the future and speak with the dead. He tells how he was kidnapped from Africa and there was a great revolt on the slavers ship. The slaves managed to kill the white men, but the ship crashed at sea and only he survived.

He gives Brian the map and tells Brian that the treasure house shall be the white men's tomb. Brian thanks him for his help and rides off.

A week later, Brian is riding along and finally locates Skeeter Short. Brian tells the story and Short busts out laughing because the map is for a mine full of fool's gold. Short says that Muskrat must have been senile and thanks Brian for his trouble. Brian rides off and suddenly Short is gunned down.

Brian hears the shots and rides back to find Short dead and the map gone. Brian has seen the map and knows where the mine is located.

At the mine, several of the thugs enter the mine and leave Lance to guard the entrance. They go in and find several bags of gold nuggets and then they realize that it's nothing but fool's gold. They look deeper into the mine and that's when they spot the real gold, further into the mine. Just then Lance stumbles into the mine with a large arrow sticking out of his chest. The thugs whirl around and see Brian standing at the entrance of the mine. One of them opens fire with his rifle and that sounds causes the entire mine to come crashing down on their heads, killing all of them.

Brian rides off, thinking about Wakwame.

Statistics for This Issue

Men Killed by Scalphunter -3
Running Total - 17
Compared to Jonah Hex - 17 vs 17
Scalps taken -0
Running Total - 4
Injuries - Pistol whipped 
Timeline - Eleven days in summer, 1862

All in all kind of a 'meh' story but it was nice to see Brian encounter an African witch doctor and what the witch doctor did with the glowing and the vanishing and the snake did help the book live up to the Weird in Weird Western Tales. The bit with Brian leaving the woman in the buckboard (and probably resulting in her death when the wagon eventually overturned) was a bit unsettling. I know it was supposed to be funny, but it really wasn't.

Next Issue: A bank robbery, blood in the snow, and the start of an ongoing story arc.

Weird Western Tales #37 "Requiem for a Gunfighter"

Weird Western Tales #37 Nov-Dec 1976
"Requiem for a Gunfighter"
Michael Fleisher, story - Rich Buckler & Frank Springer, art - Ernie Chua (Chan) cover

As stated in the opening caption, the following story takes place in Arizona Territory in 1878. Jonah is chasing the Bart Jethro gang. He comes upon a cabin engulfed in flame. He hears someone shouting for help from inside. He smashes his way inside and finds a young man trapped under a fallen beam. Jonah drags him to safety and once they are out, someone starts shooting at them both. Jonah tells the man to stay down and tries to circle around their attackers. When Jonah gets to where the gunfire was coming from, he finds that they are gone but he notices a distinctive hoofprint.

When Jonah returns, he asks the young man if he has any idea who would be shooting at them. The man, Frank Joad, explains that it is Wade Ransome, a killer that Frank's father, a sheriff, sent to jail a year ago. Ransome broke jail a month ago and killed Frank's mom & dad then set fire to the cabin. Jonah gets ready to ride off but Frank begs Jonah to go after Ransome. Jonah turns him down and then Frank asks Jonah to teach him out to shoot, so he can get his parents killer himself. Jonah turns him down again. When Frank asks why, Jonah replies, "All yuh'd have tuh look forward to would be a lifetime of sleepless nights an' a bullet in the spine." and then rides off.

Later, while riding in a narrow canyon, Jonah is bushwacked by the Jethro gang when they throw a huge net over him. Jonah falls off his horse and when the bandits come to get him, he manages to shoot two of them before being knocked out with a rifle-butt. The Jethro gang take Jonah to the top of a cliff and tie him to a huge boulder. After beating and kicking him to get some of their anger out, they push Jonah over the cliff into the river below.

Frank, who has been following Jonah, sees everything and jumps in the river and cuts Jonah free from the stone. Frank asks Jonah one more time to train him & Jonah relents. In the days that follow Jonah teaches Frank the following gunfighting tips:

• Draw and cock the pistol in one motion. This is quicker than drawing and the cocking the hammer.
• Don't fan the hammer. It throws your aim off.
• Stand sideways, you make a smaller target.
• Keep the sun to your back, it will get in your opponent's eyes.
• To make your draw slightly faster, wax the inside of your holster. (If ya know what I mean)

Finally Frank is ready and he and Jonah get the drop on the Jethro gang several nights later (when they are gloating over their $60,000 bank job, or 1.04 million in today's $$). All eight members of the gang raise their hands and Jonah tells Frank to keep them covered while he grabs their weapons. As Jonah advances on them, Frank suddenly holsters his gun. Bart Jethro notices this and states that it looks like they are gonna have a gunfight on their hands. Bart shouts for his men to kill them and the gunfire starts.

When the smoke clears, the Jethro gang is dead and Jonah walks over to Frank and knocks him to the ground, berating him for his grandstanding that could have gotten them both killed. The next day they take the bodies into a nearby town. As Jonah heads into the Sheriff's, he notices a horse with an odd hoof and it matches the track that he found above the burning cabin from many days ago.

He storms into the Sheriff's office and asks who owns that horse. The man talking to the sheriff owns up to it & Jonah tells the sheriff to lock the man up for killing Sheriff Joad and for trying to kill Frank Joad. The man explains that he is Ransome, but HIS dad was a sheriff that was killed by Frank Joad. He had tracked Joad to a cabin and set it ablaze to flush him out. Ransome had to leave when one of Joad's pals (Hex) tried to ambush him.

The sheriff verifies the truth of the story and Ransome decides to go out and get Joad, who is out in the street. Jonah tries to warn Ransome that he won't stand a chance against Joad. When Jonah tries to physically stop Ransome, the sheriff knocks him out with a rifle butt. Jonah comes to shortly thereafter, but by that time Ransome is laying dead in the street with Joad standing over him.

Jonah says that to Joad that he "made yuh! Now ah guess ah'm gonna have tuh un-make yuh." The following page is a beauty of simplicity. All of the panels are devoid of background or the buildings are just a sillouette. This leaves us with only the two men facing off with each other. Joad keeps bragging about how he is faster, younger, quicker than Hex and that it's time Hex steps aside for a better man. Hex then asks Joad, "Yuh know whut, Joad?"



And then they fire, Jonah collapsing to the ground. Joad stand ther gloating that he is the faster of the two and then he drops dead. Jonah picks himself up off the ground, his arm bleeding where Joad shot him. The doctor tries to attend to him, but Jonah shrugs him off. The doc says that it looked like Joad was faster, so how did....

As Jonah gets on his horse he replies "Ah been stayin' alive a long time now, doc. Take muh word fer it, it ain't enough tuh shoot the fastest.. yuh also got tuh shoot the straightest." With that, his horse rears up and he rides off.

Statistics for this issue:
Men killed by Jonah: Hard to say, let's say that Jonah killed over half of the Jethro gang (5 of 8) and then killed Joad. That makes his total 6.
Running Total - 101
Jonah's injuries: Knocked out twice, kicked in the head once, punched in the gut once, shot in the right arm.
Timeline: 1878. Jonah starts off with his striped hatband similar to the one he was sporting back in '67 and then ends up with a concho band.

I enjoyed the story what with the hidden identity of Joad as well as the training session. The art was not my favorite, some of the proportions on the characters seemed out of whack but there were a few panels and the gunfight page that really stood out.

NEXT: Wolves in the wild, Treating an arrow wound, Them Damn Sheepers, and Jose Luis Garcia Lopez.