The Johnny Bacardi Show

Check that page out! Isn't that beautiful?

Several times over the last (almost) six years, I've mentioned my love for the TEX ARCANA series by John Findlay, originally serialized in Heavy Metal magazine in the 80's, and continued to this day at Findlay's Tex website. It's an imaginative and whimsical mashup of humor and the supernatural, set in the Old West (a setting in which you don't always get the two mixed together) and brought to life by Findlay's insanely detailed crosshatch pencil style. It was a highlight of what was probably the most creatively fecund period in that publication's history, and I enjoyed it as much as anything that they ran.

But by the beginning of the 90's, I had stopped buying HM (and Tex had stopped appearing there before that). I always thought I'd get the collected trade someday, but it wasn't a priority, even though I had parted with my Heavy Metals in 1987. I still fondly remembered the series, though, and years later I was overjoyed to find not only Findlay's website, but to see that he had been doing new installments on a semi-regular basis! It wasn't perfect; the website isn't exactly crafted for ease of browsing- one has to click on a entry portal for each book, then click through each page (many are app. 20 long) to get to the new page of the story. The only way to know that he's updated is a tag at the bottom of the gateway web page (my lack of webpage building experience is showing here; I don't have the proper jargon I know), which actually isn't working right now. There's no RSS or Atom feeds, either, so that rules out subscribing via feed reader.

But I want you guys to check this out so much and follow it that I thought what I'd do is try to keep checking the site periodically for new pages, and when I found one I'd post a panel from the new page and a link. Hopefully Mr. Findlay won't mind if I draw attention to his site this way, without infringing on his copyright by posting whole pages (yeah, like I did above. It's a one time thing, OK?) or stories. I might try to email him someday to ask him to talk to his webmaster to improve the functionality of his site...

Anyway, so far, he's done four "books", the first three of which are collected in this publication, as well as available to read for free on the website.

Here's book one, book two, and book three.

Here's page one of book four, "The Story of the Woman in White".

You can read by clicking on the pentagram icon on the lower right hand corner of the page. Hope you dig 'em.


Of course, this is all © 2008 John Findlay.