Tex Willer - John Coffin's La Banda, review: don't take your guns to town
Tex Willer - John Coffin's La Banda, review
With Tex Willer - John Coffin's La Banda the volumes rise to 5. We recall that the series tells the adventures of the young Tex in those years that have remained unexplored so far that have seen him running around the southwestern United States as an outlaw following the events that saw him avenge the murder of his father first and that of his brother Sam then - you can retrieve our review of Tex Willer - Alive or Dead! for a more complete picture of the premise of the series.Tex Willer - John Coffin's Band Specifically, this fifth volume collects issues 24-28 of the regular series and is placed after the excellent Tex Willer - In the Land of the Seminoles where Tex, always on the run from the law, had even tried to seek refuge in Florida where he had remained in spite of himself entangled in the guerrilla war between the army and the fierce Seminoles tribe.
Tex Willer - John Coffin's Band, don't take your guns to town
After having achieved a certain notoriety, Tex receives a letter informing him that his brother is been murdered. Back in the Nueces valley, he decides to track down and punish the culprits. Thus begins an all-out fight with Tom Rebo's gang whose members fall one after the other under the blows of his colt. While the newborn Texas Rangers body discusses the size on his head, Tex has made several friends among them, including Kit Carson, Jimmy Jones himself gives Tex a disconcerting news: John Coffin, Tom Rebo's accomplice and the only person able to exonerate him is still alive.
Tex Willer - John Coffin's Band
Just when Tex seems to be surrounded, two rangers arrive to give him support: the suspicious Buck Barry and the faithful Dan Bannion. Only thanks to their providential intervention, and above all to that of an unexpected colleague of theirs, will Tex really manage to narrowly escape her and consume her revenge but without being able to exonerate himself. For this reason it is time to leave the southwest again and head north trying to reunite with Kit Carson on a dangerous mission.
Tex Willer - John Coffin's Band, a circle that closes
Nueces Valley, The Magnificent Outlaw, Justice in Corpus Christi, The Avenger and the classic The Past of Tex are all the works that Mauro Boselli lines up and revisits, ideally completing the chronology of the origins of Tex. An operation that lasted several years and which finds its definitive (?) Fulfillment in Tex Willer - La Banda by John Coffin. It is a volume in which two souls coexist, albeit elbowing, one more "historical" and the other more urgent and angular, which translates into a narrative with an always sustained rhythm halfway between the more classically frontier one and the western of synthesis of Italian matrix but not only.Boselli plays with the classic Texian stratagem of narration in analexys. The story of the murder of his father and brother, and the subsequent search for and revenge against their killers, are relived through sudden episodes that show a Tex who is often impulsive in his decisions and hasty in his ways. This is ideally the common thread that unites the analysis with the story in the present in which the meeting with Dynamite (which deserves more breathing space, perhaps in a special one) and the heterodiegetic point of view of the Texas Rangers act as glue. on the enterprises of the young Tex himself.
Tex Willer - John Coffin's La Banda is certainly a preparatory volume that will make the readers of the classic Tex happy and that represents a sort of closure for readers who in a series of heterogeneous publications had seen the figure of the young man emerge Tex. Even narratively, while presenting some clearly distinguishable connotations, this volume is closer to Tex Willer - Alive or Dead! and Tex Willer - The Two Deserters more than Tex Willer - Pinkerton Lady or Tex Willer - In the Land of the Seminoles which instead contributed more vigorously to expanding the Texian canon towards a more marked autonomy between classic Tex and young Tex.
Tex Willer - John Coffin's Band There could not possibly have been a better interpreter than Bruno Brindisi for Tex Willer - John Coffin's Band. In fact, the designer also plays graphically between analysis and narration in the present, slightly varying his approach both in terms of filling the spaces within the individual squares and inking. It is evident, in fact, in the sequences in analexys, how Brindisi maintains a more minimal approach, evidently inspired by Galep: the lines are more continuous and thin, the shots closer together, the backgrounds are present but suggested.
But as we go. the episodes in analexes reach the narration in the present the hatching increases as the backgrounds become more detailed. The line becomes more broken and the blacks also increase, and therefore the inks play a role no longer than mere filling, but an expressive tool. From this point of view it is very interesting the decision to apply the blacks often with a brush, leaving the background intentionally "grainy". While maintaining the setting of the table strictly anchored to the 2 × 3 scheme, Brindisi allows himself here some quadruple and more long shots as well as some shots less linked to close-ups or American shots.
