Prince LaCroix and the Sheriff

Blueberry

The Quick and the Dead

Undertaker: French Westerns

Examon: The Dragon and the Holy Knights

The Quick and the Dead

A Sam Raimi made film, from 1995, stars Sharon Stone, Gene Hackman, Russel Crowe, and a young Leonardo DiCaprio. The story focuses on “The Lady” (Stone), a gunfighter who rides into the frontier town of Redemption, controlled by John Herod (Hackman). The Lady joins a deadly dueling competition in an attempt to exact revenge for her father’s death.

During the sign-up, Herod’s henchmen arrive with Cort, a former member of their gang with exceptional gunfighting skill. Cort has given up violence to become a preacher and refuses to participate in the tournament. Herod and his men attempt to lynch him, but The Lady shoots through the rope, saving his life.

The Lady meets “The Kid”, a brash young gun dealer who believes Herod is his father and hopes to earn his respect by winning the tournament. She wakes up in the Kid’s bed, and notices barrels of dynamite under it. In the first round, Herod, The Kid, and The Lady easily defeat their opponents. Herod gives Cort a cheap gun and declares that he can only have one bullet at a time, to prevent him from shooting his way out of town. Despite previously swearing not to draw, Cort reflexively does so when threatened and wins his first-round duel.

Before the second round, Herod meets with Clay Cantrell, a professional gunfighter hired by the townspeople to kill him. Herod declares that all duels are now to the death and proceeds to kill Cantrell with three precise shots. The Kid goes next, and also wins. That evening, The Lady faces off with Herod’s associate Eugene Dred after he rapes the saloon owner’s young daughter but refuses to kill him until forced to defend herself. Horrified by having taken a life, she rides out of town.

Herod urges The Kid to withdraw, but he refuses. He wounds Herod but ultimately loses the duel. Herod coldly refuses to take his hand while he dies, only saying that it was never proven that he was the Kid’s real father.

At the moment Herod draws, several buildings explode, including Herod’s house and the clock tower. Ellen emerges from the smoke and flames, having faked her death and planted The Kid’s dynamite with help from Cort, Doc, and the blind sundries boy. Cort kills Herod’s remaining henchmen while Ellen faces off against Herod, revealing her identity by throwing her father’s badge at his feet. Herod wounds Ellen but she shoots him through the chest and finishes him off with a bullet to the eye. Tossing the badge to Cort, she says, “The law’s come back to town”, then saddles up and rides away.

Sam Raimi was hired to direct because Stone was impressed with his work on ‘Army of Darkness’ (1992). The actress told the producers that if Raimi did not direct the film, she would not star in it. Although she had mixed emotions on Raimi’s previous work, she believed that the director still had yet to showcase his talents, feeling that The Quick and the Dead would be a perfect opportunity to “stretch the limits of his technical and creative ability.”

Russel Crowe originally auditioned for a different role in the film before Sharon Stone asked that the actor try for the lead male role. “When I saw ‘Romper Stomper’ (1992), I thought Russell was not only charismatic, attractive and talented but also fearless,” Stone reasoned. “And I find fearlessness very attractive. I was convinced I wouldn’t scare him.”

Raimi found Crowe to be “bold and challenging. He reminds me of what we imagine the American cowboy to have been like.” On working with Raimi, Crowe later described the director as “sort of like the fourth Stooge.”

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Blueberry (French Comic)

Is a Western comic series created in the French ‘bandes dessinées’ (BD) tradition. Comic artist Jean Moebius Giraud chronicles the adventures of Mike Steve Donovan alias Blueberry on his travels through the American Old West. Blueberry is an atypical western hero; he is not a wandering lawman who brings evil-doers to justice, nor a handsome cowboy who “rides into town, saves the ranch, becomes the new sheriff and marries the schoolmarm”. In any situation, he sees what he thinks needs doing, and he does it.

It has been remarked that during the 1960s, Blueberry “was as much a staple in French comics as, say, ‘The Avengers’ or ‘The Flash’ here [in the USA]”.

On the brink of the American Civil War, Donovan is forced to flee north after being framed for the murder of his fiancée Harriet Tucker’s father, a plantation owner. On his flight toward the Kentucky border, he is saved by Long Sam, a fugitive African-American slave from his father’s estate, who paid with his life for his act of altruism. Inspired when he sees a blueberry bush, Donovan chooses the surname “Blueberry” as an alias when rescued from his Southern pursuers by a Union Cavalry patrol (during his flight war had broken out between the States).

On his many travels in the West, Blueberry is frequently accompanied by his trusted companions, the hard-drinking deputy Jimmy McClure, and later also by “Red Neck” Wooley, a rugged pioneer and army scout.

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The Undertaker (French Comic)

Quoted from Europecomics.com:

“Undertaker Jonas Crow is the most sought-after criminal in the West, despised for the massacre he was responsible for during the Civil War. As his associate, he takes on the young and puritanical English girl, Rose Prairie, who is accompanied by Lin, her housemaid. Together the trio sets off on a journey across the country, running into plenty of gruesome adventures along the way.”

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Tombstone (American Film)

Released in 1993, and starring Kurt Russell and Val Kilmer, ‘Tombstone’ is loosely based on real events from the 1880’s, occurring in Tombstone, Arizona. The gunfight at the OK Corral and the Earp Brother’s Vendetta Ride. Critical reception was generally positive, with the acting, directing, and story receiving praise. Particular praise went towards Val Kilmer’s memorable performance as the hard-drinking Doc Holliday, who received various awards and nominations despite not getting an Oscar nomination. The film has become a cult classic since its release.

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Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (American Novel)

Released in 2012 by New York-based publishing company ‘Grand Central Publishing,’ which ‘20th Century Fox’ adapted into a film which Tim Burton helped produce.

Written as a partial secret-diary of President Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President’s manuscripts are found in a five-and-dime store in the town of Rhinebeck, New York. When Abraham Lincoln is only eleven years old, he learns from his father Thomas that vampires are, in fact, real. Thomas explains to his son that a vampire killed Abraham’s grandfather (also named Abraham Lincoln) in 1786. Due to Thomas’s failure to repay a debt, the boy lost his mother too, who was given a fatal dose of Vampire’s blood. Lincoln vows in his diary to kill as many vampires as he can. A year later, he lures the vampire responsible for his mother’s death to the family farm and manages to kill it with a homemade stake.

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Digimon: Digital Monsters (Japanese/American Series)

Examon is a mega level Holy Knight Digimon and is also known as ‘Examon X.’ It possesses an extraordinary data size, so it was nearly impossible for any reality before to render it into existence.

Dragon Impact: Dives from the exosphere and performs a ramming attack shrouded in heat from friction with the atmosphere, mopping up swaths of enemies with the accompanying shock wave.

Pendragon’s Glory: Rockets up to the exosphere and conducts a high-powered laser firing.

His name is based off “exabyte” which is an enormous amount of data storage. The enormous swirling cloud had gone solid black in the center, and like the portal with Gozer, the Gozerian, above New York City, this was the same thing, but in Tokyo, and the Royal Knights era of Digimon reflects the culmination of the artist’s mind of what’s beyond ultimate power. Something Mega. Something Tera, or Exa, like an enormous data-stream.

Another of his attacks, like Pendragon, are references to historical figures such as King Arthur’s Court, and one of the names of its attacks is derived from Ambrosius, a fifth Century Roman leader in Britain, who was featured prominently in the early Arthurian legends. Examon attacks from afar, high up in the atmosphere, firing down with his massive weapon which looks like a sniper rifle.

Omegamon is derived from the fusing of Wargreymon and Metal Garurumon, both mega level Digimon. He arrives from the strong conjurings of the will that desires goodness.

UlforceVeedramon is a Holy Knight warrior type Digimon, a legendary knight mega-level who possesses the swiftest speed of the “Royal Knights.” Also, its body is wrapped in holy armor made of the lightest-weight rare metal “Blue Digizoid,” so it can cleave the sky and split the earth. It can extend weapons and a shield from the “V Bracelets” equipped to both of its arms.