Review by Win Wiacek

Feel like a scary western today? Here’s one from Australian raconteurs Christian Read and Michael Maier. They create a bewitching alternate reality where dark bloody deeds are matched by dire demonic forces and the decent guys called upon to combat them have to dabble in the diabolical too.

The full colour mystic mayhem begins with the recollections of an Oxford-educated shaman detailing his life following his return to the land of his birth. By Spring 1877 the great Indian Wars are over. Custer is dead, but so is Crazy Horse. The Whites are greedily covering the entire country and an erudite, educated man with the wrong skin tones is reduced to playing scout for a bunch of barely literate morons wagon-trekking across the plains to California. They need him, but regard their supremely capable guide with suspicion, disdain and barely disguised disgust.

One particular incident of second-guessing his decisions involves a detour around a stony butte that simply reeks of bad magic. Accusing him of leading them into an ambush and other dishonourable deeds, the lazy, work-shy Christians drive him to ignore his instincts and better judgement and reluctantly check out the pinnacle personally.

Wicasa Waken, outcast Shaman of the Oglala Lakota, Ten Shoes Dancing of the mighty Sioux and lately graduated Master of Arts and Literature, Oxford, England (1875), always knew devil magic when he smelled it, but – since his teachers taught him to treasure human life – he remained faithful to their training and climbs a mountain into hell. At the top he encounters five-headed snakes and zombies and a strange white man they were taking their time killing.

The pioneering settlers are ecstatic to have celebrated dime novel hero the Eldritch Kid join their party and, whilst still treating his rescuer like a barely housebroken monkey, the grim gunslinger is welcomed like a messiah. It’s hard for even the most enlightened man to watch a surly, taciturn, creepy freak basking in hero-worship, hot vittles and wanton female attention.

It’s not just this becoming-nation America that is awash with blood and wickedness. The entire world is swamped with boggles, spectres and worse, but since the War Between the States, the Kid has achieved a certain notoriety for dealing harshly and permanently with all things supernatural and predatory. Nevertheless, he’s a mean, mercenary bastard and a tough man to like for the philosophically inclined, poetry-loving Ten Shoes until the wagons arrive at a thriving prairie town the shaman knows wasn’t there a month previously.

A loveless alliance is forged in that ghastly spirit-trap and, as the wagon train proceeds towards California, the kid finally opens up enough to share the history that made him the most feared gunhawk in the West.

Bleak, moody, spectacularly action-packed and cathartic, Whisky & Hate merges black hats, white hats, alternate worlds, haunts and horrors, stunning visuals and macabre twists – what more could you possibly ask for? A sequel, perhaps. That’s Bone War.