Have Gun, Will Travel by Noel Loomis

I found this TV-show tie-in novel at PulpFest this summer. It seemed a happy coincidence: Our family has been watching, off and on, seasons' worth of episodes of the show for the past three years thanks to through-the-mail rentals of DVDs and streaming video online. I had no idea a tie-in novel existed for Have Gun, Will Travel, so I was pleased to delve in to see how the prose Paladin compared to the phosphor-dot Paladin; and the book gave me the opportunity to finally read a western by Noel Loomis.

Just as most of the episodes begin in San Francisco, so does this novel. The first several chapters, in fact, take place there as Paladin encounters a flamboyant actress and some menacing gents who seem to follow Paladin and the actress around but demonstrate no clear association with the woman. This bit of mystery stirs Paladin's attention, of course, as does the seeming connection between the actress' recent visit to Santa Fe and a request for Paladin's help that originates from that same town.

A foiled stage coach robbery, a run-in with attacking Indians and a chase by Mexican bandits all seem somehow connected to Paladin when he learns that the woman who has requested his help—Mrs. Marsh—wants him to find her husband. The husband, Joe, runs a newspaper in Santa Fe, but has stirred up suspicion against a local rancher, Whipple, by accusing him of gun running to Mexican revolutionaries. Joe has disappeared in Mexico, supposedly joining the revolutionaries there. Paladin finds all this somewhat confusing, since Mrs. March apparently loves her husband, but allows Whipple to court her.

A trip into Mexico turns deadly as Paladin joins a revolutionary camp and finds Joe Marsh. The latter is an idealist who imagines the revolutionaries will bring freedom to Mexico, but he is blind to the ugly banditry demonstrated by his fellows.

Paladin ties up all the loose ends by the last page, of course.

Loomis captures the onscreen persona of Paladin very well. I could easily imagine some of the dialog as spoken by Richard Boone in his black attire. There are, of course, the spot-on moments of Paladin demonstrating his higher learning and his sardonic commentary on the activities of his companions—both the apparent good guys and and obvious bad guys.

Whether this is a good sample of Loomis' work is hard to say: work-for-hire tie-ins don't necessarily show off a writer's typical style or concerns, but one can easily argue that a given writer would be chosen for a project because his style and concerns closely match those of the property for which he would be writing a novel. I suppose I'll have to read more by Loomis to find out whether that's true.

Noel Loomis, Paladin, and San Francisco

Certain writers are consistent (at least in what I've read by them) in touching, at some point in a story, on the noble work of settling the land and expanding the nation from shore to shore. Some writers in whose works I've noticed this theme are Tom Blackburn, Norman Fox, and Thomas Thompson.

I started reading a book by Noel Loomis today -- I haven't read anything by Loomis before, so I don't know if this is a consistent note in his work or just apparent within this book, which is a TV show tie-in novel. It's a paperback I picked up at PulpFest a few months ago, Dell R156: Have Gun Will Travel.

Loomis has a great way with description.

The book's second paragraph runs like this, talking about Paladin's home, San Francisco:

In this wild, wicked city on the bay, the mornings were cool as the fog blanketed the hills and human sounds were quiet and subdued; the afternoons were sunny, and the city came awake, and the sound of human voices arose as the fog rolled back down the precipitous streets; then the city was taken over by the nights that never seemed to end. For in the mud of the hilly streets, in the yellow gaslight of the saloons, in the plush and elegant parlors of the love palaces, there was spawned a violence that lives yet today in the littered and windswept streets, in the sharp and suspicious glances toward a stranger, in the dark feelings that flow over a man when he passes a narrow alley, in the strident clang of the cable cars as they hurtle down Powell Street to the turn-around.

There's a bit of Raymond Chandler there, a foreshadowing of dark violence with hints of noir, and as Loomis phrases that last, long sentence, the reader feels like the San Francisco of the past and that of the present are sharing a common space and time, that the old and new are really the same and unchanged. It's a neat bit of writing.

Showcase Presents: Jonah Hex Volume 1

Jonah Hex volume 1, DC Comics: 2005

Jonah Hex may be the most resilient of western comic book characters. He certainly isn’t the longest-lived — Hopalong Cassidy and the Lone Ranger have been around a lot longer — but Jonah has suffered some indignities that perhaps even those stalwart heroes may not have been able to survive. Perhaps that may be too damning a statement — Hoppy’s original Mulford novels and Louis L’Amour’s stories continue to appear in print, despite the watered-down Bill Boyd version that most people may have recalled from late-night films and cable TV; and new incarnations of the Lone Ranger continue to ride despite the lackluster 1981 film. But neither Hoppy or the Ranger were inexplicably sent to the future to battle aliens, as Jonah’s publisher allowed in a remarkable display of creative shark-jumping. (Whoever okayed that goofy plot for the recent Jonah Hex movie also should get a good talking to.)

Okay, back to the book at hand.

This Showcase Presents volume collects the stories that launched Jonah Hex for DC Comics. John Albano’s scripts and Tony de Zuniga’s art captured an appropriately gritty Spaghetti Western look and feel for this western comic series, imparting a hard-boiled, somewhat noirish, somewhat existentialist tone for Jonah’s wild west. It’s a world that the Lone Ranger could never have ridden in safely. It’s a world that works very well for this character: the newest continuing Jonah Hex series published by DC captures well this type of setting and story. Returning Jonah to his roots was an excellent creative move.

When Michael Fleisher takes over the scripting reins in the 12th story, he starts providing some backstory to the character by adding a running subplot tied to Jonah's years in the Confederate Army during the Civil War. He also softens Jonah’s gruff character (around the edges, at least), and the pages get filled with a lot more word balloons — the growing wordiness of the stories is a detriment. Still, Fleisher told a lively tale, and Jonah remained a colorful character.

The art styles in this volume run from the evocative grittiness of de Zuniga to the heavier hand of Noly Panaligan, to the remarkable fine-linework of George Moliterni, to the slick superhero-style work of Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez. Garcia-Lopez would eventually become THE Jonah Hex artist, but these early outings on the character don’t show his work at its best.

I was pleased to see one story illustrated by the inestimable Doug Wildey, but his work on this episode was a bit disappointing and far from his best, which probably is found in his series of stories about his western character Rio.

Altogether, this is a nice introduction to the character of Jonah Hex, and offers a good sampling of some fine storytelling by John Albano and Tony de Zuniga. The stories hold up well (the first appeared in 1972) and set up a strong foundation for the lightning-fast gunfighter with the mangled face. Now I’ll be looking to read Volume 2.

"Trail of the Golden Horseshoe" by W. Ryerson Johnson

Street & Smith Western Story Magazine for November 8, 1941

Ryerson Johnson wrote engaging genre fiction for the pulps. For proof, if you haven’t yet encountered Johnson’s work, just read any of his tales that are available for download at PulpGen: “River Round-up,” “The Avalanche Maker,” and “Killer Canyon.” By 1941 he had several years of fictioneering under his belt, starting with his ghosting at least three Doc Savage novels for Lester Dent in Land of Always-Night, Fantastic Island, and Motion Menace.

Maybe that's why "Trail of the Golden Horseshoe" is a bit of a let-down for me. It features lively incident, but the characters don’t seem as distinctively drawn and as memorable as in other Johnson stories I’ve read. Characters here are two-dimensional stereotypical B-Western roles. The hero – James “Gun-Cat” Bodman – is drawn and characterized more by his “tags,” as Lester Dent might call them: his physical traits that mark him as distinctive, such as his flashing green eyes and his unusual posture when drawing and firing his gun. The story feels like an entry in a series, but I’m not aware of a Gun-Cat series by Johnson. If someone knows more, please let me know.

The overall effect is that of a story intended for a juvenile audience – imagine a Lone Ranger or Roy Rogers story in one of those laminated hardbacks Whitman published in the 1950s and ‘60s and sold through dime stores – that, while well written, is still juvenile. This story doesn’t quite meet the level of adult western storytelling typical for the fare within the pages of Western Story Magazine in the 1920s and ‘30s. It seems better suited for Street & Smith’s Wild West Weekly (which ended its run in 1943).

Granted, the western market had changed between the 1920s and the early 1940s. The hero pulps had influenced mightily the types of stories that appeared in other pulp genres. Simply the title -- "Trail of the Golden Horseshoe" -- reflects the influence of the hero pulps. Writers of more literary or adult westerns would be aiming at different markets, perhaps, than WSM: Frontier Stories, Adventure, Argosy, Blue Book, or the slicks, such as Saturday Evening Post, Colliers, Liberty, or Country Gentleman. As pulp researcher Tom Krabacher said of another pulp-era author who faced the industry changes in the 1930s and ‘40s, “Increasingly, characters are delineated just enough to carry the action forward.”

These quibbles aside, for this tale Johnson hangs his plot on a clever little mystery and two murders. The puzzle and its associated threats are tied to a gold-smuggling scheme conducted to thwart the plotting of a gang leader to take control of a mining camp. His gang has the camp and its owner under siege, and his extortion attempts will keep the miner from using his gold to pay off his debts – the paper for which is held by the bad guy.

Of course, a pretty girl – the miner’s daughter – plays a part.

The Gun-Cat is heroic, plays an undercover role to learn more from the bad guy, and demonstrates his expertise with his guns and fists.

Overall, this story is entertaining as light reading. I’ve seen better stories from Ryerson Johnson, and I expect I will again.