Influenza Books

This graphic novel, taking place in the Old West--specifically, Naciemento, 1879--has strong characters, terrific pace (though this is not an actionfest, be aware) and a plot with some nifty twists. But the plot twist I take issue with is the part where a priest called Padre Montalvo summons up a tentacled demon by trying to sacrifice the whole town (judged as wicked and in need of cleansing). This is the element of the story that makes it a weird Western/Fantasy hybrid, but it just doesn't seem to fit in with everything else.

The desperadoes of the title are four in number... four friends on the run from a vengeful sherriff; they are Gideon Brood (apparently he shot that sherriff's wife), Jerome Alexander Betts, Abby DeGrazia, and Race Kennedy. When Jerome is shot, the group scurry into Naciemento despite a "Quarantine" sign...that is not so obscured by snow that the reader can't see it, but I guess our desperadoes miss it. Anyway, the beauty of the plot is that each of the four friends experiences his or her own personal adventure while staying in a town bedecked with countless crosses serving as anonymous headstones for the many dead from Influenza. Collectively, the desperadoes are blamed for exacerbating the epidemic, and for this, plus other reasons, they accumulate enemies while Jerome tries to recuperate by helping Padre Montalvo restore his church. The more we see of Montalvo, the more sinister he becomes--who's the female hostage stashed in a back room? By the time Abby has torn herself away from the town doctor she has become smitten with, despite his possessiveness, and gotten some key information from am Indian named Old John, the Padre has halfway succeeded in turning Jerome against his friends, and seems on the verge of conducting some terrible occult experiment.

Then we arrive at the blood-soaked demon-summoning, which turns the story into a dungeons-and-dragons epic battle for several pages. Is this typical of at least one plot thread in any "Desperadoes" graphic novel? It seems to ruin the mood of a very subtle story about four strangers holed up in a dying town. I thought this was about a realistic epidemic, but that aspect of the story gets shunted aside in favour of tentacles. We go from quiet campfire scenes with jaded Gideon Brood trying to mentor young Race Kennedy--but discovering that Race is not so naive or moldable in his philosophies as Brood thought--to Brood and Abby trying to sort out their feelings for each other while she is distracted by Dr, Balsam, to a scene out of Lovercraft. Then, the denouement, where lawmen finally show up after tracking Brood successfully, ordering him to surrender and face trial in Santa Fe--this part, again, is more realistic, though featuring a tense stand-off and some action.

I bought this graphic novel knowing there was a tentacled monstrosity in the middle of the cover, and intending it to feed my interest in Western 'hybrids" (tales of the Old West featuring bizarre SF or Fantasy elements). But I wasn't too many pages in before I was hoping that maybe the tentacled green beastie from another dimension would not show up at all, and so not ruin a quiet tale of desperadoes and townsfolk haunted by their own inner demons, and the threat of fatal illness. But, yeah, for better or worse, there's an evil clergyman with a penchant for human sacrifice, pentagrams, bullet-stopping spells. Oh well. If you want a quiet Western somewhat hampered by fantasy elements, then you could take a peek and see if it all fits together better than I say.