Midnight Western Theatre #1

Midnight Western Theatre #1

Scout Comics 2021

Written by Louis Southard

Illustrated by David Hahn

Coloured by Ryan Cody

Lettered by Buddy Beaudoin

Welcome to the Midnight Western Theatre! Our feature presentation is a series of tales spanning across the turbulent 1860's of the United States of America. It is a time where rights have been wronged! Where the guilty plague the innocent! Where man and beast have little difference! HOWEVER, the new frontier has far more dangerous threats than the folly of man! Threats that are MYSTERIOUS!!! STRANGE!!! DEADLY!!! In such a chaotic era, who is brave enough to face these most dastardly beings?

Well I wasn’t quite sure what to expect here but I will say this much I couldn’t be any happier with what we’re seeing here. The opening is interesting in that we see a father with his daughter heading out west to claim a stake in some land. It’s important for what comes later, at least that is what I am assuming since it is the opening to the series after all, and I have to say it hit me in the intrigues. I love when this happens because it makes me want to see what’s to come and it drives me to move forward and I have to say my instincts in this are never wrong.

I am totally digging the way that this is being told. The story & plot development that we see through how the sequence of events unfold as well as how the reader learns information is presented extremely well. The interest factor comes heavily through the fact that once we jump twenty years into the future of the opening and have no clue what is going on other than what we see. This is amazing because it opens up the readers’ mind to the possibilities thus ensuring that they’ll be back to see if any of their homebrewed ideas come to fruition. The character development is interesting. It’s a shame our pair couldn’t arrive in time to save the mass extinction event but then that’s okay on some level. Alexander’s characterisation is phenomenal and I cannot decide what i feel and think about him yet but I have my ideas. The pacing is superb and as it takes us through the pages revealing the the characters and their world all i’m left with is wanting more.

How we see this being structured and the layers within the story peeking out make what we see that much more intriguing. With how everything works together to create the story’s ebb & flow is incredibly delightful to witness.

The interiors are interesting. They are a lot more on the simple side than I was expecting but then again it’s the work on the backgrounds that really grabbed my attention. There we see various techniques being employed that really enhance the mood, tone and field of the story. The linework itself is strong and thick and the detail work it creates through its varying weights is extremely well rendered. The way that we see the composition within the panels and how this brings us depth perception, a sense of scale and that overall sense of size and scope to the book is good to see. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels show a solid eye for storytelling. The colour work is nicely rendered as well. How we see the various hues and tones within the colours utilised to create the shading, highlights and shadow work is well done. The colour blocking mixed with how the crosshatching and other techniques change the hues is beautifully rendered.

​

I’m more than intrigued by what is going to come next. This has all the earmarks of a book that’ll come out of left field and take over the talk at the watercooler. Who knows it could become something we cannot live without.