He's Fixin' to Send You to Valhalla with his Ninjutsu, Pardner

By Glen Weldon

We are a jaded people.

Time was, one would thrill to something as simple as the judicious bending of a genre or two. Angsty high school vampires? Yes please. Cowpokes in space? Sure, why not? Slapstick demons, sci-fi mysteries, the occasional schmoopy time-travel romance? Check, check and check.

Lately, though, the mere tweaking of familiar conventions doesn't carry the same charge. Not when creators seem so eager to cram disparate genres into the narrative Cuisinart and set it to chop, puree and liquefy.

How else to explain a thing like Vampirates, the young-adult book series whose title stares up at you from the store shelf with an insolent, "Why Didn't YOU Think of This First, Smart Guy?" inevitability?

Or the increasing tendency, in comics, to insert an "and" or a "vs." between two or more genre-staple nouns, thus rendering the walls separating each from each that much more porous?

Cowboys and Aliens. Giant Robot vs. Giant Gorilla. Yeti vs. Vampire. Zombies vs. Robots vs. Amazons. Superman vs. Aliens. Superman vs. Predator. Batman vs. Predator. Batman vs. Aliens.

And, all too inevitably: Superman and Batman vs. Aliens and Predators.

Two weeks ago, a new book premiered that eschewed the lazy who'd-win-in-a-fight conceit that often passes for storytelling. This book endeavored not to set the genres against one other, but to conflate them, to synthesize their hoary conventions into something new.

Ladies and gentlemen: Cowboy Ninja Viking #1.

After the jump: The Three Faces of Eve-isceration.

Now let's not get ahead of ourselves. Only one issue of Cowboy Ninja Viking has come out, and it's far too early to tell if it'll live up to its promise.

But there are signs and portents.

Take for instance the simple, tongue-in-cheek elegance of its premise: Cowboy Ninja Viking is the tale of Duncan, a man whose Multiple-Personality Disorder has been perverted by a secret government project to turn him into a three-in-one killing machine: He's a Cowboy armed with a trusty six-shooter; he's a Ninja who wields a razor-sharp katana; and he's a Viking berserker whose hefty battle-axe drinks deep of the blood of his enemies.

Cowboy Ninja Viking is one of several such "Triplets", and as our story opens, his mysterious handlers send him to assassinate another of his kind.

(The identity of his rogue-Triplet quarry is disclosed on the issue's last page. It's a fun reveal, but I'm gonna spoil it in the next sentence, so skip to the next paragraph if there's a chance you'll pick up the book. Still here? Right, then: The guy he's sent to dispatch is one Pirate Gladiator Oceanographer. Which, objectively: Heh.)

Another promising sign: The sure-footed way writer AJ Lieberman plays with the book's point of view: While the reader can clearly see Duncan's three personalities discussing his next move, those around him see only a weird, dangerous-looking dude in a Viking helmet, fidgeting with a sword and a pistol.

The book ensures that the reader never gets lost in Duncan's interior dialogue, because each personality's word balloons incorporate the shape of his particular weapon of choice.

Finally, there's artist Riley Rossmo's scribbly, defiantly unpretty art, which lends the world of CNV a rough, unsettled feel that's perfectly suited to this tale of double-crosses and murky motivations.

There are improvements to be made: Lieberman overcomplicates the structure of his opening when he should be devoting his energies to making sure we're clear on the stakes. And two of Rossmo's characters are drawn so hastily/similarly it took a second read-through to settle on who was doing what. But there's a lot in the book's spare, witty, tough-minded tone that intrigues, here at the outset.

And as main characters go, Lieberman has created in Duncan a psychopathic Sybil -- a Triplet of Bellevue -- who promises a mix of high adventure and deep, deep weirdness.