THEY WENT THAT-A-WAY

Once upon a time, the Western—that wildly romanticized, deeply American vision of cowboys, Indians, outlaws and blazing six-shooters—dominated the pop culture consciousness.  I’ve got photos of myself—three, four years old—wearing my Roy Rogers cowboy suit and riding my hobby horse (a golden palomino, just like Roy’s horse, Trigger), galloping off into the far reaches of my own imagination.  Roy was my first hero:  I watched his TV show, played with Roy Rogers toys (one of the few surviving relics from my childhood is an RR action figure:  Roy, atop a rearing-up Trigger, with a big grin on his face, waving.  I’ve lost Roy’s guns and hat, his saddle’s cracked and Trigger’s tail is missing, but that action figure still holds a place of honor on my office shelf).  My sister and I would even duet to “Happy Trails,” just like Roy and his wife, Dale Evans.  There were other kid-friendly westerns I remember from that age—The Lone Ranger, Wild Bill Hickock (with the squeaky-voiced character actor Andy Devine as Wild Bill’s sidekick, Jingles), Davy Crockett—but Roy, Dale, Trigger, Pat Brady and Nellybelle (which, believe it or not, was Roy’s jeep) commanded my heart.  If there was someone I wanted to be when I grew up, it was Roy, the King of the Cowboys. 

This obsession with All Things Old West only intensified with time.  In the fall of 1960, when I was six, there were just three major television networks and, out of all the prime-time shows they had on the air, something like twenty of them were Westerns.  Maverick, The Lawman, Sugarfoot, Bronco, Wyatt Earp, Wagon Train, Bat Masterson, Bonanza:  each one imprinted on my consciousness like a cattle brand.  It’s no wonder that, a few years later, my favorite book was Robert Penn Warren’s Remember the Alamo!  What boy in the early 60’s could resist the tale of the aforementioned Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie and a hardy band of sharp-shooting hombres dying in the name of (what seemed like) a noble cause?  

As I got older, though, the Westerns lost their grip on my imagination.  Another television show I discovered at a tender age—The Twilight Zone—seeped deeper and deeper into my soul because it touched something essential, vital, in me.  Something metaphysical and cosmically true.  Comic books and science-fiction had a similar effect:  they wove so-called fantasy and so-called reality together in a way that spoke to another dimension of existence; one that, even as a child, I sensed lurking just beyond the periphery of my consciousness.  Cowboys?  Not so much. 

The more I learned about the era, especially the genocide we perpetrated on the Native Americans, what little charm the Old West retained blew away like so much sagebrush.  (To read Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is to have your own heart pierced and broken, chapter after chapter.)  Oh, there was the rare Western film that caught my attention—Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (if you’ve never read William Goldman’s screenplay for this classic, which you can find in his wonderful book Adventures in the Screen Trade, do it now), Clint Eastwood’s  brilliant anti-western, Unforgiven—but, for the most part, the genre became a massive turn-off.  To this day, as I channel surf across the cable dial, the sight of a cowboy hat or six-shooter usually makes me move on with lightning speed.

Which makes what happened in October of 2011 very odd.

I woke up one morning with a story in my head.  I don’t know where it came from, I certainly didn’t ask for it to start playing, like a 3D movie, across the insides of my eyelids.  But there it was:  a Western.  Okay, it wasn’t a conventional western—I’m very protective of new stories, so I won’t be sharing any details here—but it certainly had all the staples of the genre.  I watched the movie play out with curiosity and wonder, rushed into my office to write up some notes based on what I’d just seen—and then forgot about it.  “A Western,” I thought.  “How strange!”

Months passed and I found myself in conversation with my old friend and collaborator Mike Ploog.  We’d been trying to find a new project to work on together but, with several ideas pitched across the Atlantic (Mike lives in England), we weren’t getting anywhere.  Then, suddenly, I remembered that Mike loves Westerns.  That he had a childhood love for Roy Rogers that probably trumped mine.  Excited, I resurrected the idea that had appeared—in a cloud of dust, like a fiery horse with the speed of light (to paraphrase the opening of the Lone Ranger television series)—that October morning and emailed it to Mike.   He was intrigued—I knew he would be—we discussed the idea a little and then...

Mike came back to me with his own offbeat Western idea, one he’d been chewing over for years.  And a problem quickly arose:  No matter how hard I tried to get Mike excited about my idea, he returned to his; no matter how hard Mike tried to get me excited about his idea, I returned to mine.  (Don’t worry:  We eventually found another, non-Western story that excited us both equally and we’re developing it now.)  Still, that brief conversation with Mr. Ploog opened up a corral gate in my imagination and I was stampeded by characters, events, details, themes, concepts that I couldn’t—didn’t want to—stop.  Day after day I’d wake up with another Western epic playing in my head; intrigued, excited, obsessed by this tale.  I couldn't get it out of my mind.

And I kept turning to my wife, scratching my head and saying, “A Western?  Really?”

But when you’re a writer, you just (to keep extending the Old West metaphor, perhaps too far) saddle up the Story, climb on its back and let it gallop off, leading you down the trail—and this one has been leading me down some very interesting trails indeed.   I’m still not sure what destination we’re headed for but, so far, it’s been a fantastic ride.  The idea could evolve into a movie, a TV series, a novel; but, at the moment, I see it as a comic book, an ongoing.  One I could write, month after month, for the next five or so years.  

“A Western?  Really?”

Somewhere in my mind, there’s a four year old, dressed like Roy Rogers, bobbing up and down on a golden hobby horse.

And he’s very, very happy. 

©copyright 2012 J.M. DeMatteis