Timothy Truman fires off “Hawken”

Oh, man! This is cool…

The great graphic artist Timothy Truman is coming out next month with a new Weird Western titled “Hawken.” According to Comic Book Resources:

“‘Hawken’ tells the story of aging gunman Kitchell Hawken and his bloody, one-man vendetta against the Tucson Ring, a brotherhood of arms merchants and corrupt politicians who once employed him.

“‘Hawken has been many things in his day,” said Tim Truman. ‘Scout, tracker, scalp-hunter, raider, hired gun… But mostly, he’s been a nasty son-of-a-bitch.’

“In each issue, the team will reveal new pieces of the character’s past. ‘Suffice it to say that after a lifetime spent doing some very bad things, Hawken had one last shot at redemption. The Ring took it away. Just what a any good Western revenge epic needs. However, in ‘Hawken,’ that’s where things get strange.

“Strange indeed. Hawken has unusual companions on his war trail: The ghosts of every person he’s ever killed, cursed to assist the old man against their wills. ‘In many ways, it’s not the ghosts who haunt Hawken. It’s Hawken who haunts them. They try to trip him up at every turn.’

“Renowned for depicting hard-scrabble, violent heroes, Tim admits that the new book ups the ante. ‘Folks would be hard pressed to find a character as ruthless and pissed-off as Kit Hawken. He has good reasons for his rampage, and believe me, a rampage it is. For once, the bad men have truly messed with the wrong guy.’”

I am a long-time admirer of Timothy Truman. His aesthetic, his outlook — everything matches up with my own. He’s a frontier historian, whose collection of illustrated biographies of Ohio Valley frontiersmen, “Straight Up to See the Sky” is a wonderful introduction to frontier partisans both famous and unsung.

His graphic novel “Wilderness” was one of the first efforts to reassess the career of renegade frontier partisan Simon Girty — and a powerful and compelling effort it was.

A tale of the dark and bloody ground of the desert Southwest with a twist of the weird… Who could ask for more?