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Re: #41 Bonelli - Black Tiger

Post by Jabroniville »

Wow, now THIS guy's interesting! I mean, on the surface, he's clearly just another take on the "Yellow Peril" threat, but published years after the peak of the genre. But then I see all the stuff you've added about how much the writers hated racism and prejudice, and added a lot of depth to things. His followers being desperate and feeling abandoned helps make him a much more varied threat.

Interesting that Bonelli used the "type" repeatedly, but in different ways.

I do enjoy his origin story- more than some typical "Mysterious Oriental", he's actually a member of ROYALTY, and the victim of colonialism- this makes him a lot more "legit" than if he were merely some sneaky, quasi-mystical weirdo with a criminal organization. One with a lot of caucasians in it, oddly- it seems his practicality outweighs his racism on most fronts.

It's curious that he's a great fighter- not dealing in as much trickery as his contemporaries makes him a lot more believable as a threat- a more "American Comic Book" kind of villain that Tex's other foes, in that the boss is the best fighter as well as the smartest. Heck, he's so dominant that it's kind of surprising that Tex can even pull out a win- given that they're only humans, you'd think the Pards would almost certainly fail against such a powerful, secretive organization with such mighty agents working for them. Heck, Tex nearly dying in the final battle is a pretty big thing- without help, he'd have been a goner!

The famous "Shirtless Swordfighting Scene"? Damn- if you're gonna steal, you steal from the BEST. That sounds like great fun :).
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Re: #41 Bonelli - Black Tiger

Post by Woodclaw »

Jabroniville wrote: Sun Dec 02, 2018 10:36 am Wow, now THIS guy's interesting! I mean, on the surface, he's clearly just another take on the "Yellow Peril" threat, but published years after the peak of the genre. But then I see all the stuff you've added about how much the writers hated racism and prejudice, and added a lot of depth to things. His followers being desperate and feeling abandoned helps make him a much more varied threat.

Interesting that Bonelli used the "type" repeatedly, but in different ways.

I do enjoy his origin story- more than some typical "Mysterious Oriental", he's actually a member of ROYALTY, and the victim of colonialism- this makes him a lot more "legit" than if he were merely some sneaky, quasi-mystical weirdo with a criminal organization. One with a lot of caucasians in it, oddly- it seems his practicality outweighs his racism on most fronts.
Interestingly enough the only mystical-based character at the top of one of these "yellow peril" groups was the monk Padma (who had powers similar Mephisto's), most of the others were much closer to a typical crime boss, although making very liberal use of poison and daggers, rather than guns.

As for the presence of white people among his followers, the trick was that Sumankan used them, but never really "let them in". People like Mason and Rickers were more or less given protection for money and nothing more.
Jabroniville wrote: Sun Dec 02, 2018 10:36 amIt's curious that he's a great fighter- not dealing in as much trickery as his contemporaries makes him a lot more believable as a threat- a more "American Comic Book" kind of villain that Tex's other foes, in that the boss is the best fighter as well as the smartest. Heck, he's so dominant that it's kind of surprising that Tex can even pull out a win- given that they're only humans, you'd think the Pards would almost certainly fail against such a powerful, secretive organization with such mighty agents working for them. Heck, Tex nearly dying in the final battle is a pretty big thing- without help, he'd have been a goner!

The famous "Shirtless Swordfighting Scene"? Damn- if you're gonna steal, you steal from the BEST. That sounds like great fun :).
Unfortunately, while the swordfight between Tex and the Black Tiger is often considered one of the most interesting and dynamic action scene in the entire 70 years run of the character (mostly because it was pretty rare to see Tex handling a melee weapon except a bowie knife), at the time Claudio Nizzi was already feeling tired of the character. Bonelli senior was very protective of his character (much like Walt Disney was with Mickey Mouse) and Nizzi was wearing out on the constant "Tex needs to win" mentality. During the end of his tenure he started several attempts to make the character more human, having him losing some fight, saying some stupid things and taking some blatantly wrong decisions. Of course this caused a massive outrage among the fans and, to be fair, not it wasn't entirely out of place. While I didn't mind when another character had to barge in to save Tex (one of the dfeining traits of the characters is to be extremely lucky), other times he just took stupid decisions that simply didn't gel with his personality.
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Re: Warehouse W - Bonelli Comics: Mephisto, Yama, Proteus, Black Tiger

Post by Jabroniville »

Ah, did some looking into your other bios about Nizzi- I'd forgotten that the middle writer of Tex's books was another guy, unrelated to the others. So was Nizzi a somewhat unpopular writer, or was he just a controversial one? Are some of his tales more "Rule of Awesome", or just feature the characters behaving in a way required to get to the next plot point?

Actually, doing writer bios might prove to be fun- I see he also did a Police Procedural book :).
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Re: Warehouse W - Bonelli Comics: Mephisto, Yama, Proteus, Black Tiger

Post by Woodclaw »

Jabroniville wrote: Sun Dec 02, 2018 11:42 am Ah, did some looking into your other bios about Nizzi- I'd forgotten that the middle writer of Tex's books was another guy, unrelated to the others. So was Nizzi a somewhat unpopular writer, or was he just a controversial one? Are some of his tales more "Rule of Awesome", or just feature the characters behaving in a way required to get to the next plot point?

Actually, doing writer bios might prove to be fun- I see he also did a Police Procedural book :).
Claudio Nizzi has a really good record as a writer and he's extremely popular. Before working on Tex he invented and wrote another cow-boy hero, Larry Yuma, who had a much more "Man With No Name" vibe and style. Larry series interrupted by the untimely death of Carlo Boscarato (the penciler) and Nizzi went working for Bonelli in 1981. From 1982 onward he became the lead writer, but always with a rather strict supervision from Bonelli senior. After the old man's death in 2001, Nizzi tried to humanize the character, but these attempts were not as good as many hoped.
Some of the most die-hard fans (read: assholes) accused him of always taking the easy way out of some situations by having opportune character intervantions and so on. To be fair, I think that he did a really good job, but sometimes he simply went a bit too far into trying to push the story over the characters.

My personal opinion is that Nizzi and Bonelli were simply the product of two very distinct backgrounds. Bonelli senior was a fan of pure adventure, the west of his stories was taken (and reshapen) from the early movies of the genre, his heroes were inspired by the characters played by Henry Fonda and Gary Cooper (often considered the main inspiration for Tex himself). Nizzi arrived many years later and his references were Clint Eastwood and Sergio Leone.
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Re: Warehouse W - Bonelli Comics: Mephisto, Yama, Proteus, Black Tiger

Post by Woodclaw »

Also Nizzi wrote pretty much all the "big ones", an annual special that included a self-contained 200 pages stories, always penciled by an artist that wasn't part of the regular creative team. Over the years Sergio Bonelli managed to some pretty big names working on his father's character including, but not limited to, Joe Kubert.

The Lonesome Rider, by Nizzi and Kubert is, as far as I know, the only issue of Tex ever translated in English. It was published by Dark Horse around 2005. The English version is in full-color, opposite to the original black-and-white, and a couple of scenes were replaced with the originals from Kubert (there is a rape scene at the beginning that Sergio Bonelli censored heavily).
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Re: Warehouse W - Bonelli Comics: Mephisto, Yama, Proteus, Black Tiger

Post by Woodclaw »

Well, the buils so far cover all the recurring enemies of Tex except one: Andrew Liddell a.k.a. "the Master" (not the one of Doctor Who fame). Unfortunately I've never read any storyline with him and so I'm very hesitant to tackle the character, especially because I don't have nay good way to judge his real skill level.

Like Proteus Liddell was another creation of Bonelli Senior that was further developed by Nizzi and he is one of the main villain of the current storyline (titled Manhattan), so I'm waiting to see what comes of it.

His background is really fascinating: Liddell was scientist based in San Francisco, who started to use his knowledge of exotic diseases to blackmail the entire city, threatening to contamite the water supply with a unknown bacteria. Due to the exotic nature of this disease, which caused the infected to grow horribly malformed like leprosy, the people of San Francisco blamed the Chinese community and this resulted almost in a riot (narrowly averted thanks to the intervention of Tex, Carson and some of their friends). In the end Liddell came into contact with his own bacteria, but survived, albeit with his face completely devastated.

It's interesting that both the next appearence of Liddell involved the participation of one William Frederick Cody a.k.a. Buffalo Bill. Tex had actually met the legendary hunter and showman in a really old story (The Challenge, Tex #82, 1970) were they faced each other in a shooting competition. In later stories, Buffalo Bill appeared after creating his Wild West Show and he tried to convince Tex and Carson to participate.
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Re: Warehouse W - Bonelli Comics: Mephisto, Yama, Proteus, Black Tiger

Post by Jabroniville »

That stuff about Anti-Chinese sentiment is VERY accurate to what a lot of cities in North America had. I was watching some documentary about riots taking place in various cities. Even my own hometown has a bit on that in the local museum- smallpox was found to exist in some of the Chinese communities, and the citizenry got worked up and went out on the rampage, burning down many Chinese-owned homes and businesses. No justice ever came for them, either.

The incident in Tex seems to come directly from this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Franc ... ot_of_1877

Here, though, it was a pogrom against Chinese largely due to economic strain- much like today, there was the sentiment that these foreigners were unskilled laborers who would work for cheaper wages than would whites, leading to hard times for white workers. This created great resentment, leading to MANY incidents like this, though this is one of the more prominent ones, as it led to four men getting lynched.

Anti-Chinese sentiment grew so strong that China became the only country in the world to be excluded from emigration to the States- the Chinese Exclusion Act came about in 1882.
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Re: Warehouse W - Bonelli Comics: Mephisto, Yama, Proteus, Black Tiger

Post by Woodclaw »

Jabroniville wrote: Sun Dec 09, 2018 12:31 pm That stuff about Anti-Chinese sentiment is VERY accurate to what a lot of cities in North America had. I was watching some documentary about riots taking place in various cities. Even my own hometown has a bit on that in the local museum- smallpox was found to exist in some of the Chinese communities, and the citizenry got worked up and went out on the rampage, burning down many Chinese-owned homes and businesses. No justice ever came for them, either.

The incident in Tex seems to come directly from this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Franc ... ot_of_1877

Here, though, it was a pogrom against Chinese largely due to economic strain- much like today, there was the sentiment that these foreigners were unskilled laborers who would work for cheaper wages than would whites, leading to hard times for white workers. This created great resentment, leading to MANY incidents like this, though this is one of the more prominent ones, as it led to four men getting lynched.

Anti-Chinese sentiment grew so strong that China became the only country in the world to be excluded from emigration to the States- the Chinese Exclusion Act came about in 1882.
Thatìs a very likely inspiration. Although Bonelli Senior was never too concerned about stretching the bonduaries of real historical events to fit his characters, he often used them as inspiration.
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Re: Warehouse W - Bonelli Comics: Mephisto, Yama, Proteus, Black Tiger

Post by Woodclaw »

In 70 years of stories, Tex has explored many variations on the classic western themes. The most common is, of course, the occult, often represented by Mephisto and Yama, an honorable second place goes to the "lost worlds", the science-fiction has been very misrepresented except for a few noticeable stories. The oldest (and often most maligned of these) was "The Moon Valley", published in #55-56 in 1965. The story is one of the great rifts among the fans of the ranger. Many point out that the plot is terribly simple and followed many of the classic tropes of the character without much to it, while others praise its charm and mystery, because the main "villain", who remains still unnamed and unknown today, is absolutely unique.

Image

The Alien

:arrow: Stating "the alien" is task way above my abilities, although the character has some very defined powers and trick that lend themselves well to M&M, anything else about it would be pure guesswork. This mysterious explorer never speak nor interacts directly with any other character. We saw a bit of his thoughts through "thought bubbles" and it appears that he (assuming a gender) is paranoid, somewhat vicious, arrogant, doesn't give a damn about killing humans and he is on a scouting mission. In short, the alien is a perfect B-movie villain from the '50s, which is somewhat of a disappointment considering Bonelli confessed love for the work of Alex Raymond.

:arrow: The story starts somewhat slow, with Tex and Carson meeting an old acquitance, an unlucky prospector called Ben Rufus, in a small mining villaige near the Dragoons Mountains. Rufus is about to buy a mining grant from another prospector, Tom Fresno, that seem absolutely terrified after two of his friends died in mysterious circumstances and he himself met a strange humanoid with green scaly skin. Somewhat intrigued and smelling a scam of some kind, Tex and Carson decide to help Ben Rufus sampling his new mine. After re-opening the main tunnel the progresses of the pards got hampered by some unexplained accidents. One night a man wrecked their tools and, when they gave chase, he took takes a bullet to the leg without an hitch. As he ran into the mine he manage, somehow to destroy the tunnel vault without using any explosive.

:arrow: After this event, Tex depart to see if anyone in the area knows about this mysterious visitor, while Carson and Ben reopened the mine. Tex met with a group of Tontos Apaches camped nearby and manages to get the local medicine-man to tell him about a weird being that the natives called "the Son of the Great Spirit". Apparently the creature arrived one night on a "small silver moon" and landed in an unhospitable area called Moon Valley, not far from Ben Rufus's mine. When the Apaches investigated, he met them and, without uttering a single word, ordered them to dig the area looking for some strange green rocks. Inexchange for their help, he gave them some tabs that produced the strongest alcoholic beverage possible.

:arrow: Meanwhile Carson and Ben had reopened the mine and found a dying Apache, clutching one of those strange rocks in hand, who begged them to warn the local indian agent. Apparently the rocks were somehow poisonous to human, as the medicine-man himself confirmed. Apparently unfazed by all these relevations, Tex assembled a posse to hunt down this visitor, while asking the Apaches to stay as far away from the fight as possible. The result is a bloodbath, while the miners somehow managed to drive the creature away, many of they die, victims to his weapon. In the end the creature is cornered near his vehicle and he resorts to escape, leaving Tex and Carson somehow baffled.

:arrow: To this day, this little excursion into 50s style sci-fi remains almost unique in the story of Tex, many years later another story included a tribe of native Canadians that were somehow cross-breeded with alien that looked remarkably similar to the one from the Moon Valley, but even then we got no explanation at all.

:arrow: When I first read Moon Valley I loved it for his uniqueness and for the entire run Bonelli and Galep did their best to somehow hide the true nature of the alien until the very end. Unfortunately one of the ways they did so was by having Tex completely unfazed by the madness around him. Even more than usual, the ranger dealt with the entire situation as if his opponents was simply a very crafty bandit or murder.

:arrow: As for the alien powers, he is bulletproof -- although a direct hit can still daze him -- has some kind of sixth sense that alert him of dangers, has limited telepathic abilities (he was able to communicate with a tribe of Apaches, but never with any other character) and carries a number of devices, including a ray-gun that can kill a man o blast a boulder apart with a single shot, a portable sensor and some "pills" that produced an extremely powerful alcoholic beverage.

:arrow:
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Re: Warehouse W - Bonelli Comics: Mephisto, Yama, Proteus, Black Tiger

Post by Jabroniville »

Wow, a really strange story. I can see why it would be unpopular with some traditionalists, seeing as it’s a very different genre. The mystery seems to be interesting, though I can buy Tex’s nonchalant behaviour as being problematic- protagonists who dint react to anything seem rather boring at times (like Lara Croft in the first “Tomb Raider” movie).
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Re: Warehouse W - Bonelli Comics: Finishing the villains

Post by Woodclaw »

With the alien I pretty much stated all of the most iconic characters from Tex's rogue gallery, but there are a few more I'd like to give a shout out.

Image

Zhenda the Witch

:arrow: Introduced in issue #70 Zhenda was the main villain of the Dark Tidings storyline, which finally addressed one of the biggest elephants in Tex's stories. After the the death of his father-in-law, Red Arrow, Tex was elected chieftain of the Navajo nation and he took this duty upon himself together with the resposibilities of Indian Agent. This was all well and good, but how was it possible than no Navajo, except a few dissatisfied ones, ever resented a paleface chief?

:arrow: As the story progressed it was revealed that Zhenda was the formed lover of Red Arrow and that they had a son, Sagua, that had a legitimate claim as chief of the Navajos. The old witch planned to unite the tribes from the mountainous northen half of the reservation, often overlooked by their peers from the plains, and start a civil war to put her son in charge. The entire situation threatned to turn the reservation into a battlefield as the various tribes started to join one faction or the other, plus some of the rebels raided a ranch outside the reservation, causing a military response from Fort Defiance, only the presence of Carson prevented them from going gun blazing through the reservation.

:arrow: Meanwhile Tex and Tiger Jack got ambushed by the rebels and forced to take shelter in an old pueblo. After a last minute escape, neither of them was in fighting shape, so Tex tried to call a truce and summoned the tribal council. Unfortunately Kit decided to try a coup on his own and departed accompanied by his friend Big Elk, but they got captured. Meanwhile Zhenda received an omen from the the spirit that revealed that "it would take two lives for Sagua to hold the sign of a chieftain". After hearing of Kit's capture the witch decided to sacrifice him and Big Elk to make the prophecy come true.

:arrow: As dawn was about to break the opposing factions met near the mountains and Tex narrowly avoided a battle by tossing the ritual spear given to him by Red Cloud, the village shaman, challenging all the other chief to take it from him. As this dramatic scene unfolded Zhenda was making her way to the sacrifice, when Big Elk tried a desperate ploy and pounced her, draggin both into a bottomless chasm. Free from his mother's influence Sagua immediately recalled his rebels and Tex gave him the spear, formally recognizing Sagua as his peer and fullfiling the prophecy.

:arrow: Zhenda returned briefly in issue #347 The Return of Zhenda (which I've never read) seeking vengeance. Her new plot failed, mostly thanks to the opposition of her own son and, in the end, the old witch left to live her remaining years as a a hermit.

:arrow: Stat-wise Zhenda is often described as an equal to Mephisto. While her magical and psychic powers seem to center more on precognition and the ability to commune with the dead, her most famous ability is that she can control animals, in particular moutain lions, to do her bidding. In fact she usually have at the very least two fully grown females acting as her bodyguards and executioners.


Image

Mah-Shai

:arrow: Similar to Zhenda in everything except her look. Mah-Shai was the antagonist of the Abyss Lands storyline (#47-48). Introduced as a mysterious figure that had power over many shamans of the Navajos and Hopis nations that she supplied with a powerful drug, similar to a more extreme version of peyote.

:arrow: The interesting element of that story is that the confrontation between Tex, Kit and Tiger (who are all smitten by her beauty) and the "Witch of the Colorado River" is just the halfway point of a much bigger adventure, where the trio explore a "lost world" clearly inspired by the homonimous novel by Arthur Conan Doyle.

:arrow: Even Mah-Sahi herself has a clear literary ancestor: Ayesha, the eternal woman from H.R. Haggard's She. Just like Ayesha, Mah-Shai suffered a strange transformations in the end: when she died, bitten by a rattlesnake, she immediately aged several decades in seconds.

:arrow: The powers of Mah-Shai are apparently similar to Zhenda's (precognition, claivoyancy, animal control), but her main trick is that she is apparently eternally young thanks to the extract of a flower from the "abyss", from which she also produce the drug she supply to the shamans.
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Re: Warehouse W - Bonelli Comics: Mephisto, Yama, Proteus, Black Tiger

Post by Jabroniville »

Interesting- was Zhenda controlling her son via magic, or was it just her being an overbearing personality?
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Re: Warehouse W - Bonelli Comics: Mephisto, Yama, Proteus, Black Tiger

Post by Woodclaw »

Jabroniville wrote: Sun Jan 06, 2019 1:12 am Interesting- was Zhenda controlling her son via magic, or was it just her being an overbearing personality?
Pretty much overbearing personality. From what I remember of Dark Tidings, Sagua grew up without a father and seemed to have a bit of a Aedipus complex, he often questioned his mother's judgement and methods -- he wanted to confront Tex face to face and resented the idea of sacrificing Kit (who was in fact his nephew) -- but usually he caved in. One of the big points of the Return of Zhenda was the fact that Sagua had finally outgrew her and she had to mind control him a couple of times.
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Re: Warehouse W - Bonelli Comics: Mephisto, Yama, Proteus, Black Tiger

Post by Woodclaw »

Okay. This probabily going to be the last villain installment of this series. There are a still a few characters I would like to tackle.

Image

Ruby Scott

:arrow: For all the intent and purposes Ruby Scott should be just a footnote in the long story of Tex: he appeared in the Silver Bell storyline, an absolutely run-of-the-mill "town boss" plot that was used as a filler between issue #98 and #100 (1969). Ruby isn't even the main villain, he's just the gun-for-hire that the old Mr. Baker let loose against Tex. Overall Ruby appear in barely 30 pages of a 90 pages story and yet he hits his mark.

:arrow: What makes the character memorable is that out of a crapton of gunfighters that tried their luck against Tex over the years, Ruby was the one that came closer to killing the ranger. Thanks to a swivel holster, Ruby was able to hit Tex twice while he was still drawing the gun, hitting him in the right shoulder and grazing his head. Apparently he only missed because Tex had the sun behind him, partially blinding Ruby.

:arrow: The second and most important reason is that Ruby is the closest Tex ever come to have a palette swap opponent. Like Tex Ruby is something of a half-blood, he has a Pawnee "mate" (who calls him "Master", but seem to be truly in love with him), he lives most of the year in her village in the Pawnee Reservation and leave only when called. The main difference is in how these two characters relate to the world: Tex, despite his fame, always tries to blend in, to be just a good man among his fellows; Ruby lives in constant opposition with the entire universe, verything in him stands out, from his outfit to the way he behave, he want to world to challenge him, to remember him and to fear him.

:arrow: Stat-wise Ruby Scott is a PL7-8 gunslinger (very offensive and initiative shifted) with a sizeable Intimidation score, probably the single most dangerous opponent that Tex ever faced one-on-one.


Image

El Muerto
Francisco "Paco" Ordoñez

:arrow: If Ruby Scott is, probably, the most dangerous gunslinger Tex ever faced, the one that most people remember is Paco Ordoñez a.k.a. El Muerto. Created by Sergio Bonelli, under the pen name of Guido Nolitta, in issue #190, Ordoñez remains particularly memorable not only for his disfigured visage (a consequence of his forst encounter with Tex and Carson, when he remained trapped in a burning building), but also for being a much more cold and calculating opponent than usual. Many of the historical opponents of Tex have a certain drammetic flair to them, even Protheus (who is usually very calm) tend to occasionally brag and have these moments of when he monologue like a raving madman. El Muerto never does anything of the sort, until the final showdown he showed to be extremely practical and down to earth.

:arrow: The story of the character is interesting, albeit not incredible: the Ordoñez brothers were a gang of stagecoach robbers. During a holdup, Paco took a carrilon locket from a woman who, trying to get it back, pulled the mask off him, forcing the gang to gun down all the passangers. This brutal murder pushed Tex and Carson to find the Ordoñez and the two older brothers (Diego and Fernando) died in a gunfight, while Paco remained trapped inside a burning building. Miracolously, he survived and, many years later, returned to get his revenge. He sent his gang in the Navajo reservation, where they brutally murdered a youngster and beat Tiger Jack to a inch from the grave -- all to provoke Tex -- and left a message to meet at Boot Hill.

:arrow: After a series of ambushes, one narrowly avoided thanks to the help of a recovering Tiger Jack, Tex arrived at Boot Hill and the final showdown echoed the work of Sergio Leone more than anything Bonelli senior ever wrote. In a cemetery overlooking a ghost town, Tex and El Muerto faced each other over an open grave, right next to the burrials of Diego and Fernando Ordoñez, while the carrilon that started the entire story played.

:arrow: El Muerto is less impressive opponent than Ruby Scott, probably around PL6. He's a more well rounded opponent and has a gang of a dozen PL4 desperadoes at his disposal.



Image

Vindex
Professor Francisco Carmonas

:arrow: Another single issue opponent, but absolutely unique, Vindex was the "mon-de-plum" of Professor Francisco Carmonas a Mexican biologist and chemist that represent the first and, possibly, best dabbling of the entire series in the mad scientist trope.

:arrow: Considered a true luminary in organic chemistry, professor Carmonas was working on the idea of creating artifical strains of grain, capable of growing in the arid Sonora Desert, to help his struggling homeland. To this end he travelled to Germany and took a young half-Mexican/half-German scientist Victorio Hermann as his protége. The first experiments had stunning results and Carmonas decided to return to Mexico and start the some field test. Somehow, somewhere things went south, really south, and Carmonas started a new line of experiments, altering humans and mountain lions into giants.

:arrow: Now going by the name of Vindex, Carmonas started carving his new little kingdom near the Mexican/US border, protected by a pride of 10 courgars the size of bufalloes and a team of giant warriors called Zumas. Meanwhile, he started suffering from terrible headaches than became more and more frequent over time, implying that he was suffering from some kind of neurological disease, possibly a consequence of his old experiments.

:arrow: Tex pretty much happened on Vindex's trail by accident after meeting a group of Piutes hunted by the Zumas and saving one Carlos Hermann, the younger borther of Vindex's protége. After being captured trying to sneak in Vindex's lair, Tex escaped with the help of Victorio Hermann and they managed to stall the Zumas long enough for help (Carson, Kit, Tiger and about 50 Navajos) to arrive. During the final battle, Vindex was shot by Tiger and died.

:arrow: Vindex was never a real, direct threat. While he was incredibly intelligent (easily INT 20 or 22), in combat terms he barely scratched PL2-3 on defense and he never used a weapon. His Zumas, on the other hand were easily PL7 melee fighters a full size larger than an average human and his pumas were even more dangerous, probably ranking at full PL8 (Tex pretty much had to dispatch them using dynamite).
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Re: Warehouse W - Bonelli Comics: Mephisto, Yama, Proteus, Black Tiger

Post by Jabroniville »

Interesting guys!


So many of Tex's opponents seem to be more mental opponents than physical ones, so Ruby is interesting as a direct opponent. His look- animal-print jackets and such, combined with his name, gives me the impression he's more of a "dandy" or effeminate character, but the way he fights seems to imply the opposite.

What happened with him? Did Tex kill him?

I do like the El Muerto story- a direct "Revenge Tale", but from the point of view of the villain. Him being so calculating and focused gives him a different impression than the other bad guys.

The mad scientist guy is a unique kind of weirdo- Tex seems so down-to-earth and not fantastical that I forget sometimes that super-unrealistic things still happen. I mean, one of his opponents is a WIZARD, after all.

The giant cougars reminds me of how weird animals are in superhero stories as well- technically, a very large animal isn't more dangerous than a lot of superheroes (who are seen dispatching very powerful enemies at times)- but for some reason, writers always need to make the animals out to be REALLY DANGEROUS THREATS, so the heroes have to fight them by cheating. I mean... is a buffalo-sized cougar immune to gunfire? Buffalo sure aren't.
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