After Raiders of the Transvaal, JustFocus continues to focus on westerns with the third volume of Marshall Bass published by Delcourt.
In the forests of the wild west
The western that has gradually disappeared from cinema screens is now a very popular genre in comics. France. In this genre, Marshall Bass is a successful series and one of the most original. It also allows you to discover a new country of comics, Croatia. Darko Macan (Soldier X) is the screenwriter while the drawing and choice of colors are by Igor Kordey (Star Wars, Tarzan, The Secret History).
All the action takes place in a well-known geographical setting, on the border between Mexico and the United States and on an Indian reservation. Bathsheba, an African-American peasant woman, mourns the departure of her daughter and the coldness of her husband while a wealthy Mexican landowner covets her. She rejects him curtly and the rest of the story will focus on the next trio: the girl on the run, her Indian lover and Marshall Bass, the father of the runaway. The whole album is collected in time over two days of fugue. As in a play, all the characters cross paths at random. This horseback roadtrip takes place in the middle of a forest in winter superbly rendered by Igor Kordey. Violence is omnipresent, we kill for a blanket or because of an insult, animals come to eat the corpses.
A different western
The dialogues are believable and touching. We are very quickly interested in a story much more original than it seems. Indeed, we leave the WASP stereotype with an invigorating racial diversity compared to the movies: Bass is an African-American mixed-race, his daughter ran away with an Indian. The genre is also shaken. Bass is assisted by a trapper who is actually a woman. While Raidersof the Transvaal was geographically exotic but fairly classic, Marshall Bass has a more modern narrative. The characters are original and often more complex than the first impression they want to give for example a legend of the West, a sheriff's killer is actually a sentimental who killed by mistake or a bounty hunter dressed all in black trying to be threatening but, tuberculosis, he does not stop coughing.
Men are all idiots. No one is perfect and the tragic is always present. Marshall Bass did not know how to love his children and his wives. In this volume, he will not cease to receive reproaches at a distance or in person. Incorruptible, he will go to great lengths to enforce the law.
A superb drawing
This dark tale is embellished by dark colors yet in the middle of the immaculate white of winter. Kordey, named three times best cartoonist in Croatia, has a dark and original style for a western. Indeed, he does not choose photographic realism but the expressive faces are sometimes close to a beautiful caricature like these white trappers resembling gnomes.
His name is No one proves once again that Marshall Bass is a brilliant western series. JustFocus can only push you to throw yourself on this easy-to-access series where each volume focuses on a story.
