I was reasonably impressed by the first outing of Western Tales of Terror, but the second issue is stronger than the first. Two of my favorite features from the first issue return, and the standalone stories feature familiar names like Phil Hester (Deep Sleeper), Todd Livingston (The Black Forest), Raven Gregory (The Gift) and Eric J (Rex Mundi), all doing excellent work in the western/horror genre. The anthology is a much-maligned form, but with themed anthologies like Flight and Western Tales of Terror making a strong showing and new offerings like War, Negative Burn and Four Letter Worlds in the offing, 2005 might be the year of the anthology. Even if it's not, Western Tales of Terror should go on every indy-buying fan's wish list.
There are inevitable comparisons when it comes to anthologies with a horror bent. EC comes up quite often, most notably Tales From The Crypt, and so does the classic TV show Twilight Zone. Those are definitely influences on Western Tales of Terror, down to the commonality of twist endings and the use of a snarky narrator to introduce the stories. The snarky narrator, a crude zombie cowboy, is a lot of fun, and there are some good laughs to be gotten out of his short introductions to each story. The twist endings are as a rule somewhat predictable but not too predictable, just right for the vein that Western Tales is aiming for. Western Tales shows an influence from these classic anthologies, but it doesn't ape them.
By far my favorite stories in this volume were the two that returned from the previous volume. I usually hate multi-part stories in anthology books, but "Phineas' Gold" is the exception, delightfully violent and witty, poking fun at the zombie genre even as it celebrates it, and throwing in uniquely western twists like zombie whores and ancient indian zombies. The core of "Phineas' Gold" is the characters, an uncouth group of criminals who are nonetheless kind of charming, and Fialkov, McDonald and Keating have a lot to be proud of in this story. The other returning feature is a new story of "Hector Plasm," a professional ghosthunter. Benito Cereno (of the excellent Tales From the Bully Pulpit) does a fun take on the ghostbusting expert, not technically a western since it's set in modern-day, but it's set in the west, so it's close enough. And Bellegarde's art is just the right mix between cartoony and detailed, with some especially nice work on the cause of the whole problem and the gross ghost dog early on in the story.
However, there's really not a bad story in the bunch of these stories. David Hopkins and the Halls present a mood piece called "The Stranger Waits For Me" that works largely because of psychological identification with the lead character, and Raven Gregory and Cardinal present a story of just desserts for a greedy outlaw in "The Gold Rush." I have to specifically single out the Halls' ability to make their bad guy dangerous and scary without ever really showing him, and have to credit Cardinal with some creepy, half-visible monsters that allow the readers' imaginations to do the rest of the work, all without sacrificing any storytelling clarity.
Then there are the stories I expected to really enjoy, because I've enjoyed the other work by some or all of their creators. Phil Hester is an accomplished writer as well as a talented artist, and "The Gallows Builder" with art by Nick Stakal helps reinforce that fact. The notion of a spectral gallows builder that punishes the guilty is interesting enough, but the twist in how and why it punishes is even better, and helps push the story beyond good into great. Meanwhile, Todd Livingston and Eric J tell a story that appears at first blush to be about an enterprising whore coming to town, but reveals its horror twist at the end in an "I shoulda seen it coming" way that provides a very satisfying ending. 8/10
