Comments on: John Seavey’s Storytelling Engines: Bat Lash

By: Robert R.

Robert R. — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 14:54:24 +0000

I tend to think that Bat Lash was just too smart for his own good. It’s a great book, but it sometimes seems like a lot of hoops have to be jumped through to get Bat Lash into the proper place. Entertaining hoops, but the very nature of Bat Lash is that he’s ostensibly not seeking trouble.

Compare that to Jonah Hex. That’s a guy born to seek out trouble. The scar indicating a violent past. The Confederate outfit. It’s easy to send him on a mission to seek out a bounty. And it’s easy to imagine people wanting revenge. And, he doesn’t fit in anywhere.

By: Patrick Joseph

Patrick Joseph — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 13:11:42 +0000

With Maverick, Support Your Local Sheriff, and Support Your Local Gunfighter it seems to me that the satirical cowboy was at its peak in the late 60′s and that James Garner was the poster boy for the genre. I imagine more 10-14 year old children saw that stuff than saw Sergio Leone’s movies. Also, Gunsmoke and Bonanza were big on TV at the time, so I am not certain that the intended audience for most comics at the time wanted grittier, morally ambiguous westerns.

Regardless, Bat Lash is clearly out of place in the comics landscape of the time. Westerns were not a top tier genre in comics, and there really haven’t been any wildly successful western comics, TV shows, or films in the last 40 years. Critically successful? Absolutely. Successful beyond expectation? Of yes. But nothing that was a financial bonanza (sorry).

Anyway, I’m really glad the effort was made to look at this unique series and to figure out where it fit in the cultural landscape. To meet you on your own terms, this is a great Conversation Engine.

By: Bernard the Poet

Bernard the Poet — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 12:52:00 +0000

John, it’s good to have you back, I’ve missed you.

Saying that, I’m not sure that I’d agree with you central premise that any comedy western published in the late ‘Sixties was destined to fail. You mention Spaghetti Westerns as ushering in a new era of gritty westerns, but those films had a lot of comedic moments, particularly the Terrace Hill ones, but the Clint Eastwood ones as well. The biggest hit of 1969 was Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, a comedy western.

Of course, it’s difficult forty years later to judge why a particular comic failed, but I know that when I read them all those years ago, I found the central character to be the problem. He claimed that he wasn’t looking for trouble, but month after month he involved himself in other people’s problems. It just didn’t ring true.

I wonder if Aragones agrees with me. When he decided to spoof the Sand and Sandals genre with Groo, he created an agressive character that actively sought out conflict. This worked much better.

By: Jeff Ryan

Jeff Ryan — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 12:37:53 +0000

No one is better at drawing a vacant face than Sergio.

By: Gavin

Gavin — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 10:05:38 +0000

Sergio’s best work to this date has still got to be his margin work in Mad Magazine. I love his early Groo, but it didn’t have the impact on me that the Mad stuff did. He could tell a story in the corner of a magazine that was one or two panels long and it would make you smile much wider than the movie parody it was wedged up against. He will always be one of my favorite artists from the 70′s and early 80′s in that type comedic artistry. I think only Fred Hembeck would come next in a tie with Scott Shaw for getting me to appreciate the lighter side of comics.