By Stevie Rosenfeld
The American cowboy is a myth in itself. It conjures images of tumbleweeds rolling across a dessert plain, leather coats and wide brim hats, lively bars full of gambling and oil-flavored whiskey where the music only stops after a mysterious stranger takes a step onto the creaking wooden floor. The cowboy story might be the closest thing the post-colonial United States has to folklore. Unfortunately, the story hasn’t come very far since actual cowboys herded cattle in the real old west.
Kelly Sue DeConnick changed that.
Pretty Deadly is a graphic novel series that began in 2013 with The Shrike. The series follows Deathface Ginny, a vengeance driven marauder as she tracks down the beaten and blinded Fox and his young charge Sissy. While the reader doesn’t immediately know why Ginny hunts the two seemingly harmless panhandlers, they know one thing: she will not be stopped.
The cowboy myth is defined by a single, hardened man—the lone ranger. This is someone who cares not for the rules of law, but holds his own fierce moral code. He’ll never start a fight, but he won’t leave one unfinished. He’s charming and attractive, but knowingly silent.
DeConnick makes no attempt to separate Ginny from this trope, she falls into it gracefully and elegantly while still carving her own path in the genre. Perhaps this is why I, and so many other readers, have a hard time calling Ginny a “cowgirl.” The few female cowfolk in the media are usually depicted as mirrors of male characters, usually as a weaker, less developed version. Yet Ginny’s drive and power doesn’t serve to contrast her to other characters, but to frighten them. Even when Ginny is in service to her father, the audience is acutely aware that he can only push her so far before the rubber band snaps back.
This is all before the trip to the underworld and back, of course.
That’s the miracle of DeConnick’s writing; she builds the world before you even understand what kind of world you’re in. As Sissy spins the fantasy tale to an audience for pennies in the introduction of The Shrike, you don’t immediately recognize it as more than a fantasy. After all, why would a ten-year-old in a raven feather coat reading tarot and passing a hat know anything about the reality of life beyond death? But as the story unravels, you realize the childish fantasy had some truth in it, as they often do.
Fantasy books often have to choose between worldbuilding, story, and character. And while the mystery surrounding many of Pretty Deadly’s characters often makes it difficult to discern their exact intentions, the world of Pretty Deadly and the people within have a depth and life of their own that only grows as the story moves forward. Even before you truly know who each character is, you feel as though you still
Since many characters embody the “man of few words and loud actions” type of cowboy, you always feel they have a deep and noble cause. Such as the reaper Alice, a servant of Death, whose only indicator of a past is her coldness to Ginny. Yet rather than feeling that something is lacking, DeConnick makes the reader lean in closer when Alice does speak.
Part of this compelling nature is of course due to artist Emma Rios, whose mastery of facial expressions and body language makes emotions jump from the page. From Fox’s stiff gait to Johnny Coyote’s loose gesturing, Rios drawings appear to move and speak like actors on a stage. Adding to the cinematic elements, the panels of Pretty Deadly are diverse in shape and size. Close ups of violence interspersed with wide shots of rolling skylines, the life of a single insect depicted larger than the entirety of hell and heaven. The paneling choices display a masterful understand of contrast and similarity’s coexistence. Rios demonstrates the way things so wildly different have a sameness at their core, something seemingly ever-present in the untamed west our characters trek through.
The image of one man, his horse, and his gun against the world is compelling. It conjures ideas of independence, strength, and triumph over enemies. Yet, in building her fantasy world of reapers, witches, and spirits, DeConnick creates a more realistic image. One in which people are alone, and find each other, and lose each other again. One in which good guys win, and lose, and aren’t perfectly good all of the time. One in which people do their best, and don’t always succeed, but keep trying anyway. This may not be the wild west American Dream readers are used to, but it’s one they love and understand.
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