With Grindhouse Stories, Glénat Editions is launching a new comic book collection inspired by B-movie cinema. Red Clay Chronicles is a centerpiece. This powerful mystical narrative collides with the western genre.
A white among the Comanches
After John Tanner, Justfocus continues to explore Indian America. In 1854 in Kansas, a gang of thieves kills an entire family but a boy escapes the massacre. Fleeing into the forest, he is taken in by Comanche. As an adult, Red Clay is so fully integrated that he fights against white people and his skin color is even an asset during surprise attacks. We then think of Clint Eastwood's Ruthless or Arthur Penn's Little Big Man but with the added visions. Indeed, the cartoonist was a storyboarder in animation. The screenwriter whose first comic book was also a film screenwriter after writing crime novels. As the war prepares, a dream about his family upsets his plans and pushes him to leave the tribe… 
A tale of revenge
This white Indian discovers that the man who killed his family leads the militia of a very large cotton plantation. Nacoma then forgets the preparation of war to devote himself exclusively to revenge. By this mute hero, the book reads very quickly but the comic plays thoroughly on the disturbing and dark atmosphere. Indeed, like Red Clay's psyche, the layout is deconstructed and the immersive drawing throughout the page reinforces this impression of diving into the mind of an unbalanced man. Roland Boschi's vivid and unfinished line perfectly transcribes the race of a man caught up in powerful feelings. However, every decision of the anti-hero of this story is not logical but dictated by dreams. He goes looking for the culprits and, during this quest, he saves a German immigrant. Intrigued, the latter decides to accompany him and turns out to be a liar and very violent. The duo participates in a grandiose train attack.
A country at war
In Red Clay Chronicles, the United States is not a new country for settlers seeking a better future but a hell where violence is constantly present. Individually, Red Clay, a child destroyed by civilization, has found a new home among the Comanche. This kidnapping not only saved his life but instilled in him other moral codes. More generally, the country is in civil war between indigenous and white. The Comanche tribe attacked nearby farms. It was also fractured by the division between whites in the context of the pre-Civil War. Private militias want to prevent the abolition of slavery in Kansas. Illustrating this merciless world, Roland Boschi shows raw scenes – tortures from the first hut, the corpses of settlers in a corner… – but without ever pouring into a free gore. We understand it during the many bonuses of sketches on the page before colorization. 
Blood and stupor flow from the comic by the talent of Roland Boschi who plunges the reader into a hallucinated world. Red Clay Chronicles proves the value of Grindhouse Stories. The creators of this collection are pop culture fans who regret that it has lost its bite by becoming institutionalized. Through these comics, they have the will to find the subversive spirit of these films and succeed in this acid western. Feel free to follow this link if you want another recently released western.
