Tex Arcana was a continuing comic serial that ran in magazine Heavy Metal way back in the early 1980s. I missed it in its first incarnation, but had it pointed out to me that the entire run, plus two more unpublished volumes of the serial were available online, for free, at www.texarcana.com. You're welcome. Do not write to tell me I never do anything for you.

The series is set in the Old West, in the town of Hangman's Corners, "a sleepy cow-town nestled on the frontier". In the first page, we have a cowboy-looking fellow on a ridge overlooking the town. But unlike most westerns, he's trailing a long black cape and speaking aloud to nobody in articular: "Perfect! Now I'll find myself a cave and rest until sunset." Yes, it's the Old West meets vampires... initially.

The titular character is, in reality, a man named Doc Mason who is a bit of an expert when it comes to matters that surround the occult. Despite having the comic named after him, he really doesn't play as big a role as one might expect. In Tex Arcana, much of the action and character development happens elsewhere - to the townspeople around him. In fact, much of the character conflict in the book comes from elsewhere. Even minor characters get storylines, including the vampires, who, while portrayed as antagonists, still encounter problems that become the focus of various threads.

If you're confused by the concept of sympathetic antagonists in a book that sets itself up as a straightforward "occult detective vs. vampire in the Old West", don't worry - because the comic gets a lot weirder than that.

When the head vampire realizes he's in trouble once the townsfolk catch on to him, he attempts to summon demonic help via pentagram. Unfortunately for him, what he summons are a pair of cartoony and bumbling demons in the likeness of Sunday newspaper strip characters in contrast to the rest of the artwork, which, up until that point, is quite realistically rendered. It gets even weirder when said characters break the fourth wall and assault the book's creator inside his own home, forcing him to complete the storyline. At this point, a caption apologizes and explains the section "represents an awkward attempt to resume the narrative after an extended absence from the magazine." So on top of genre, pulp, and mystic/occult influences, we can also throw various underground comics of the 1970s into the influence mix as well. All of this is still in the first book, which runs 58 pages in length, and is remarkably dense in both content and text.

So it's an odd and worthwhile book to note, because while it certainly wears its influences and elements with quite a bit of clarity, it really doesn't follow any of the conventions of said influences and elements. It merely using them as devices in what boils down to essentially a very strange mish-mash of partial character studies and story arcs in the form of journeys said characters embark on.

What makes it particularly interesting, is that unlike the majority of journey-type plot threads, (which can be easily executed given the linear format of most comic books), the characters in Tex Arcana never quite manage to get anywhere, physically or spiritually or otherwise. They never grow or develop, and they never manage to escape their points of origin despite their efforts or urges to leave. While I'd normally dismiss such grave structural flaws as the result of shoddy craftsmanship or a bad peyote trip on the part of a comic's creators, in this case I'm not so sure that this is the case. Jails and imprisonment play into a large part of the imagery, and the book contains a heavy amount of literary references and structures throughout. As I've mentioned, it's extremely dense for a comic and takes some time to digest mentally despite the seemingly straightforwardness of the narrative. The attention to detail in the artwork looks like it may have been excruciating.

Speaking of the artwork - it's all very, very good. Of particular note are a large number of full panel splashes that I'd be incredibly proud to have airbrushed on the side of my custom van. Even if you're not into the heavy literature end of comic books and/or, you know, thinking about stuff like allusion and symbolic device usage, this book is worth a look for the pictures alone. And yeah, there are plenty of giant breasts scattered throughout, too.

So in the tradition of most literary work (rather than genre work) I've surmised that Tex Arcana is trying to say something. But what? Like much of its arcane and cryptic content, I'm afraid I'm not versed enough in the arts to figure it out. Despite my puzzlement, it would be stupid of me not to recommend the book. It's a book you really won't be able to stop looking at once you've started - which is a remarkable given the grand tradition of throw-away comic books. That, in fact, might be its point, in the end. Or not.