Billy the Kid's Old Timey Oddities

by Eric Powell

Book Overview

From the award-winning creator of 'The Goon' comes an over-the-top horror romp pitting outlaw legend Billy the Kid and a band of circus freaks against the evil machinations of the nefarious Dr... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Library Binding
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1435260686
• Release Date: January 2008
• Publisher: Paw Prints 2008-04-18
• Length: 104 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 10.0" x 6.5" x 0.5"

Customer Reviews

Fun "Weird West" Comic

Blending the Western and Horror genres? Genius! Yet hardly original -- it's been going on since at least the 1930s, starting with pulp magazine stories. There's even a name for this kind of genre hybrid -- "Weird West," look it up on Wikipedia for plenty of examples from film, tv, comics, fiction, and even a roleplaying system (Deadlands). This particular iteration begins with the premise that Billy the Kid faked his own death in order to flee into obscurity. Alas, his well-laid plans are undone by a strange collection of circus freaks, whose leader has used some mystic powers to foretell the need to recruit Billy to help them retrieve an enchanted jewel. Billy is thus blackmailed into joining the long journey East and across to Europe, where the grotesque gang must raid the castle of Dr. Frankenstein! It's a wild and wacky adventure, mixing humor with some very dark horror overtones, gunslinging action, and plenty of blood and guts. The full-color artwork manages to be both clean and claustrophobic, as each panel is filled with twisting, curling lines reminiscent of the best horror art. Fun stuff!

H.P. Lovecraft's Wild West

William Henry McCarty, a.k.a. William H. Bonney, a.k.a Billy the Kid, was gunned down by lawman Pat Garrett in 1881. Or was he? Writer Eric Powell posits otherwise, working with the assumption that Garrett unknowingly killed the wrong man and Billy, wanting the law off his back, took the opportunity to change his name and disappear. In Powell's version of events, however, Billy doesn't just vanish into obscurity. Instead, he's recruited by a band of sideshow freaks (or "biological curiosities") to take on the vile Dr. Victor Frankenstein (whose death was also exaggerated) and his minions in Europe, where a valuable treasure awaits them. "Billy the Kid's Old-Timey Oddities" is a hoot and a holler, a fun, yet vaguely disturbing book that blends Old West attitudes and gunslingin' with Old World atmosphere and a varied bag of macabre, malformed grotesqueries. The story is illustrated along unsettling lines by Kyle Hotz and leads readers through a twisted tale filled with tentacles, decapitations, manacles, syringes, blood and other fluids. Let's hope there's more to come. by Tom Knapp, Rambles.NET editor

Holy Smokes!

So...Billy the Kid fakes his death and ends up travelling with a freak show trying to track down the golems heart and find Dr. Frankenstein. Freakin' Hilarious!!! The art is great, the story is very amusing and the ending is good. I like how it leaves things open if Powell wants to continue, but it also makes it a complete story so you are not waiting for more. I recommend this highly....If you like The Goon, you will like this.