Midnight Western Theatre #1

Midnight Western Theatre is a high concept done right. And that concept is “vampires in the old West”. (The writer calls it “goth cowboys”.)

Red Tom and his gang have taken over a town and are kicking back in the saloon when two strangers come to town. (They’re the ones shown on the cover.) The tables turn on Tom when he tries to scare them off.

It’s written by Louis Southard and illustrated by David Hahn, an old favorite of mine. The cover is by Kalman Andrasofszky.

I love the strangers. The woman, Ortensia, doesn’t care about much of anything. The guy, Alexander, is a fussy aristocrat who complains when people keep shooting him. (Hahn’s smooth-line style works particularly well to make him look just a bit alien.) The designs are clever, and I want to cosplay them. I want to spend a lot more time with these two.

That leads into my quibbles with the issue. Time is spent showing us the bad guy being bad, which isn’t really necessary, since we all know what “head of a villain gang” means in this kind of story. There’s also a twenty-year-prior opening that means starting momentum for the reader is delayed. That’s the kind of thing that will make more sense in the eventual collection but feels like space-filling in this short single issue, which is mostly a shootout that serves as a character introduction.

Give me more with our leads! Pack in the story to make the comic a better deal! (This is my fatigue with the single-issue format showing itself.) Anyway, if the t-shirt designs were better (they should be black, for one thing), I’d get one already.

Issue #1 is out this week. Issue #2 is available to order now from your local comic shop with Diamond code APR21 1893. (The publisher provided a digital review copy.)