Saturday, January 08, 2005

My Favorite Spirits, Day 4

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Eisner does High Noon, liberally mixed with Lost Horizon in this story from Harvey's Spirit #2. He proves that he's just as comfortable doing Hollywood-style westerns as he is urban drama in this tale of a small town (called "Boot Camp") high in the mountains, which serves as the hideout for a group of desperadoes led by one Sam Chaparral, who brought them there over a hundred years ago. Tired of living there and of Sam, who's kept them there all those years by threats and intimidation, they organize and "dry-gulch" him (send him out into the desert without water or food), so they can escape- but Sam staggers into a nearby town at the foot of the mountains and is nursed back to health by the son of Chaparral's old partner, Laredo Trent, who hopes to find out where Sam hid the gold bullion they stole so long ago. Upon his recovery, Chaparral shoots Trent for his trouble, but doesn't know that while he was out Trent wired the Spirit in Central City- and the Spirit arrives just in time to hear his last words, which tell the whole story as well as where to find the town. Armed with Laredo's six-guns (the only thing that can kill Chaparral, or so he says), the Spirit rides into the mountains to bring the killer to justice.

I'm not always a real big fan of westerns, and the ones I do like tend to have something a bit odd or different about them- and this story certainly qualifies!

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