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of the genre declined. Th e same period, however, saw a rise of the Western in Europe,
where American Westerns remained popular even as European-produced Westerns
rose to the fore, especially in France and Italy. Indeed, the Western strip fl ourished
in all parts of the world (mainly Spain, Argentina and Japan) while it was slowly
dying in the United States. Maurice Horn partly accounts for this fact with the Eu-
ropean and Latin American view of “the Western as a modern allegory of the eternal
struggle between good and evil” (174). Th e lone cowboy symbolizes the rightful heir
to the knight of medieval epics of chivalry. Built by Western movies and Western
comics, the mythology of the American West shares many of the classical elements of
Homer’s Iliad or Odyssey.
Jijé ’s previously mentioned Jerry Spring can be considered the founding text of the
Franco-Belgian Western comic tradition. Pressure from the publisher (Dupuis) forced
Jijé to employ assistants for his successful series from 1960 on, among them Jean
“ Moebius ” Giraud. In 1963, Moebius created the famous Western series Lieutenant
Blueberry with Jean-Michel Charlier. His style would imitate Jijé’s at least until 1965.
Very impressed by his fi rst sojourn in Mexico (1955), Moebius’s fascination with
the Mexican landscape spilled over into his panels, and his “hallucinatory, desert-like
landscapes” became one of his trademarks. “American Western comics remained over-
shadowed by the movies, but Gir[aud] used devices peculiar to comics to produce
eff ects that are impossible on screen” (Screech 2005, 100). Nevertheless, Giraud was
infl uenced by both American and Italian cinema, as Blueberry adapted the styles of Ser-
gio Leone’s Italian Spaghetti Westerns and of the American director Sam Packinpah.
On the other hand, Hermann (Hermann Huppen) and Greg’s (Michel Régnier)
Comanche (1969–80) shows more conventional styles and infl uences. Set on a ranch,
it tells the story of a young and pretty heroine, Comanche, and her taciturn but strong
foreman Red Dust.
Spaghetti Westerns still infl uence the European Western comic, as well as the very
few new American series of recent years such as Loveless (2005–8) by Brian Azzarello.
With Bouncer (2001–8), Chilean writer Alejandro Jodorowsky (1929–) and French
artist François Boucq (1955–) presented the Wild West after the American Civil War.
Th e grotesque poetical style of Jodorowsky and the surreal super-naturalistic drawings
of Boucq unmasked all the myths of the West. In a near glorifi cation of violence, the
borders of good and evil are erased in Bouncer and the reader is confronted with bare
brutality and mystic, bloody action.
Subgenres
In addition to comics that can directly be identifi ed as examples of the Western
genre, a number of comics have participated in a more marginal way. Numerous comics,
for example, have combined aspects of the Western with those of other genres, such as
science fi ction or horror. For example, DC and Marvel especially pushed the “Weird
Western” as a subgenre, as Kid Colt and the Rawhide Kid fi ght against monsters, aliens,
and other characters from horror comics. Meanwhile, the mix of genres was joined by a
