Wednesday, August 24, 2011

WEIRD WESTERN TALES #1 by Evan Keeling



Evan Keeling is a born and raised Washington DC comic artist and writer. He is a founding member of the DC Conspiracy, a collective of Washington, DC area comic book artists and writers and has been self-publishing comic books for print and for the web over the last five years. Evan has also been one of the principle organizers for the DC Conspiracy’s yearly counter culture Festival for the last four years. He has worked with numerous DC area bands, producing posters, CD covers, videos and t-shirt designs. He contributed art to the Eisner nominated anthology Trickster: Native American Tales: A Graphic Collection. Currently he is coloring Matt Dembicki's great white shark epic XOC coming out in 2012 from Oni Press. As well as working on CrumbSnatchers, an all-ages comic written by Stephanie Butto and Nancy boy a teen-crime tale written by Jason Griffenhagen. His website is http://www.etkeeling.com


Evan says: When Jon approached me about this project the first characters that came to my mind were Firehair and Hawk son of Tomahawk. When I approached him about doing something with both of them one of the western titles he suggested was Weird Western Tales, and the ideas just flowed from there.

Firehair is the only surviving orphan of a raid on a wagon train. Raised by a Medicine man of the Blackfoot Indians. Skilled in the fighting and spiritual ways of the Blackfoot Indians Firehair has pushed himself to be the best and prove himself to his tribe. But he has never been accepted in the Indian world or the white world. So he has been roaming the country looking for a place to make his home. He thinks he might have found it in Echo Valley with his friend Hawk “son of Tomahawk” Haukins.



Hawk is the son of famous frontiersman Tom Haukins and his Indian wife Moon Fawn. They have made Echo Valley their home for quite a while. Although his father trained him and he is quite accomplished in fighting and tracking, Hawk would prefer to spend his time running the Echo Valley Saloon and perusing the ladies.



As our story begins Echo Valley has been set upon by a number of supernatural attacks and unbeknownst to Hawk the force behind them is his uncle Wise Owl and his puppet Lazarus Lane also known as the vigilantly El Diablo. El Diablo generally is patrolling the area helping out the helpless, but at times he is drawn to his resurrector Wise Owl to do his bidding.



The stories and story arcs at the beginning would center around Firehair and Hawk reluctantly getting pulled deeper and deeper into battling the supernatural creatures that are drawn to the mystical energy that Wise Owl is gathering around him through his dark rituals.


Firehair was created by Joe Kubert. Read more...
Hawk, Son of Tomahawk, was created by Robert Kanigher and Frank Thorne. 
Read more...








Evan has included several pages of sketches for his concept of the series, which may be found below the cut:










3 comments:

  1. One of the most detailed pitches and it makes the book shine! Great idea, and though El Diablo keeps popping up, Firehair and Hawk have long been dormant properties, rife for exploration.

    Would read? Yes, I'm definitely into this.

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  2. Love the detail behind this one. All of the sketches and the story ideas are fantastic.

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  3. Big fan of both of these characters, as well as El Diablo, and I dig these designs so I'm all for this.

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