special topics paper: weird westerns

The traditional Western novel is familiar territory, even for those who may have never read the genre. The tropes, themes, settings, and characters are distinct; even book covers have a similar aesthetic that sets them apart on library shelves. Despite this apparent uniformity, the genre has seen much expansion, adaptation, and progress since its inception. In fact, a strange, surprising subgenre has emerged from this traditional form. The Weird Western, defined as “a Western story incorporating horror, supernatural or fantasy elements and themes” is a fascinating offshoot of the conventional Western genre (Green, 2016, p.2). Often utilizing many of the familiar Western tropes, themes, settings, and archetypes, Weird Westerns manifest the “mystic forces” that lurk in the background of conventional Westerns, allowing “the supernatural” to emerge from the shadows “in the form of monsters, zombies and sorcerers” (Grifant, 2020).

Perhaps surprisingly, this subgenre is hardly new. As Green (2016) explains, it is nearly 150 years old, though would not be formally recognized until much later. The 1868 publication of Edward Sylvester Ellis’ The Huge Hunter or The Steam Man of the Prairies laid the foundation for what is known today as “Edisonade,” “extraordinary dime novel stories of young inventors and their fantastic inventions,” and, subsequently, the Weird Western subgenre (Green, 2016, p.4). Nearly fifty years later in 1923, Weird Tales, a magazine boasting “prophetic tales of dark fantasy, cosmic horror, supernatural revenge, and the sorcery of terror,” would expand this niche with mashups and horror- and science fiction fantasy-inspired pulp stories (Weird Tales, 2022). However, according to Green (2016), due to the combination of “Space Fever” and “rapid social change in perceptions of gender, race, sexuality, and indigenous groups” in the 1960s, the Western novel was on its deathbed (p.5). It was only the Weird Western subgenre that would ultimately revive it. Horror-Western crossovers featuring popular figures from both genres gained cult status, and DC Comics launched Weird Western Tales in 1972, introducing their multi-generational audience to popular character Jonah Hex. By the 1990s, “horror, science fiction, and the fantastic technologies of steampunk each brought new spectacle to the Old West,” generating popular and lasting acclaim for the (at the time unnamed) subgenre that persists today (Green, 2016, p.5).

Fine, Johnson, Lush, and Spurgeon (2020) note that “one of the distinctive features of the western, as important as the showdown or the desert landscape, is its ability to form unexpected combinations with other genres” (p.2). The Western genre by nature lends itself remarkably well to being infused with elements of speculative literature, primarily because of the many commonalities between them. Like horror, Westerns “provoke and reflect our fears about the world around us,” with anxieties about the vast unknown haunting every page (Reid, 2020). It is also notable that Westerns are essentially “undead” themselves – oft proclaimed dead but refusing to die, instead consistently resurrected with new twists on its original form, a horror story of a kind. Additionally, “like science fiction and horror, westerns often reflect societal concerns of the time” (Sabat, 2021). Green (2016) highlights the “shared focus on exploring frontiers and pushing the boundaries of the known” that also unites Westerns with science fiction, as well as themes of “conquest, identity, humanity, and concerns about progress” (p.8). Westerns are also innately fantastical, as the concept of the “west,” with its “fictional world of noble cowboys, escaping the constraints of urbanism and domesticity, a violent male world of rugged individualism and wild landscapes,” has been romanticized from the start (Reid, 2020). 

For an offshoot of a supposedly dying genre, Weird Westerns have emerged as a viable manifestation of conventional Western elements, now given new life with the infusion of speculative fiction concepts. Though not a new development in the literary world, the subgenre has exploded over the last thirty years, thanks to movies, television shows, and video games. With this surge in content and popularity came a necessary formalization of the subgenre, and thus the Weird Western moniker was born, along with definitions to make it easier to identify and classify new entries to the canon, like Paul Green's (2016) five types: Weird Menace Westerns, Science Fiction Westerns, Space Westerns, Steampunk Westerns, and Weird Western Romances (p.2-3). Weird Westerns are a natural progression for the traditional genre and even offer new interpretations and understanding of its familiar conventions. As Cynthia J. Miller writes in her introduction to Green’s (2016) second edition of Encyclopedia of Weird Westerns, these stories “complicate, reinforce, and comment on our understanding of Westerns and the West, both as a reinvention of one of our most tradition-bound genres and as a spectacular reaffirmation of one of its central premises…that the West is vast and full of wonders and marvels…and that there is always more to be discovered, just over the next ridge” (p.4-12). With the Weird Western, familiar territory transforms into an unexplored frontier ripe with opportunity for any reader. 

Weird Westerns mentioned in my paper

• Stephen King's The Dark Tower series
• Cormac McCarthy's novel Blood Meridian
• Wild Wild West (1999)
• From Dusk Till Dawn (1996)
• Cowboys & Aliens (2011)
• Firefly (television series)
• Westworld (television series)
• The Walking Dead (comic & television series)
• Preacher (comic & television series)
• Weird West (video game)
• Deadlands: The Weird West (video game)
• Red Dead Redemption: "Undead Nightmare" expansion pack (video game)

References

Fine, K., Johnson, M. K., Lush, R. M., & Spurgeon, S. L. (Eds.). (2020). Weird westerns: Race, gender, genre. University of Nebraska Press.

Green, P. (2016). Encyclopedia of weird westerns: Supernatural and science fiction elements in novels, pulps, comics, films, television and games (2^nd edition). McFarland Incorporated.

Grifant, K.C. (2020, December 1). What is the weird west: Overview and history. Weird West Fiction.  https://weirdwestfiction.com/2020/12/01/what-is-weird-west-overview-history/

Reid, C. (Host). (2020, November 24). Weird westerns (No. 46). [Audio podcast episode]. In Words To   That Effect. Headstuff. https://wttepodcast.com/2020/11/24/weird-westerns/

Sabat, Y. (2021, June). Genre guide: Westerns for adults. NoveList Plus.

Weird Tales. (2022). About. https://www.weirdtales.com/about