Few genres were as popular and as enduring in twentieth-century Mexico as the Western. Christopher Conway’s lavishly illustrated Heroes of the Borderlands tells the surprising story of the Mexican Western for the first time, exploring how Mexican authors and artists reimagined US film and comic book Westerns to address Mexican politics and culture. Broad in scope, accessible in style, and multidisciplinary in approach, this study examines a variety of Western films and comics, defines their political messaging, and shows how popular Mexican music reinforced their themes. Conway shows how the Mexican Western responds to historical and cultural topics like the trauma of the Conquest, mestizaje, misogyny, the Cult of Santa Muerte, and anti-Americanism. Full of memorable movie stills, posters, lobby cards, comic book covers, and period advertising, Heroes of the Borderlands redefines our understanding of Mexican popular culture by uncovering a vibrant genre that has been hiding in plain sight.

Presents portraits of unconventional figures in the Borderlands region who gained iconic status in folklore.

Explains how Roland got on the bus with Mordecai, Lilith, and Brick. It also looks at the soldiers of Crimson Lance and what made him leave their ranks and search for the Vault.

The epic story of Borderlands continues in this new series! Find out what happens after Roland, Mordecai, Lilith, and Brick step out of Marcus's bus. As soon as they arrive in the once-prosperous town of Fyrestone, they realize that Pandora is a far more dangerous planet than they first imagined.

“A beautifully written evocation of Ukraine's brutal past and its shaky efforts to construct a better future.”—Financial Times Borderland tells the story of Ukraine. A thousand years ago it was the center of the first great Slav civilization, Kievan Rus. In 1240, the Mongols invaded from the east, and for the next seven centuries, Ukraine was split between warring neighbors: Lithuanians, Poles, Russians, Austrians, and Tatars. Again and again, borderland turned into battlefield: during the Cossack risings of the seventeenth century, Russia's wars with Sweden in the eighteenth, the Civil War of 1918-1920, and under Nazi occupation. Ukraine finally won independence in 1991, with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Bigger than France and a populous as Britain, it has the potential to become one of the most powerful states in Europe. In this finely written and penetrating book, Anna Reid combines research and her own experiences to chart Ukraine's tragic past. Talking to peasants and politicians, rabbis and racketeers, dissidents and paramilitaries, survivors of Stalin's famine and of Nazi labor camps, she reveals the layers of myth and propaganda that wrap this divided land. From the Polish churches of Lviv to the coal mines of the Russian-speaking Donbass, from the Galician shtetlech to the Tatar shantytowns of Crimea, the book explores Ukraine's struggle to build itself a national identity, and identity that faces up to a bloody past, and embraces all the peoples within its borders.

Hidden deep in the borderland forest, bandits lurk in the ruined castle of a long-dead border lord. Their incessant raids draw a band of neophyte heroes to the derelict keep. There they discover fouler, more odious dangers lurk below the ruins. Dare you brave the terrors of the Shadowed Keep to crush that which lurks within or will darkness shroud the surrounding lands Shadowed Keep on the Borderlands is an adventure for 1st-level characters compatible with the 5th edition of the world's most popular roleplaying game. Designed for the Duchy of Ashlar campaign setting the adventure can be easily inserted into a GM's home campaign.

"An award-winning videogame writer offers a rare behind-the-scenes look inside the gaming industry, and expands on how games are transformed from mere toys into meaningful, artistic experiences"--

As ruthless raiders, murderous hordes of goblins and orcs, and mysterious priests threaten the keep and the surrounding countryside, an inexperienced band of adventures journeys to the Caves of Chaos to stop the evil once and for all. Original.

One of the greatest untold stories about the globalization of the Western is the key role of comics. Few American cultural exports have been as successful globally as the Western, a phenomenon commonly attributed to the widespread circulation of fiction, film, and television. The Comic Book Western centers comics in the Western’s international success. Even as readers consumed translations of American comic book Westerns, they fell in love with local ones that became national or international sensations. These essays reveal the unexpected cross-pollinations that allowed the Western to emerge from and speak to a wide range of historical and cultural contexts, including Spanish and Italian fascism, Polish historical memory, the ideology of shōjo manga from Japan, British post-apocalypticism and the gothic, race and identity in Canada, Mexican gender politics, French critiques of manifest destiny, and gaucho nationalism in Argentina. The vibrant themes uncovered in The Comic Book Western teach us that international comic book Westerns are not hollow imitations but complex and aesthetically powerful statements about identity, culture, and politics.

American comics from the start have reflected the white supremacist culture out of which they arose. Superheroes and comic books in general are products of whiteness, and both signal and hide its presence. Even when comics creators and publishers sought to advance an antiracist agenda, their attempts were often undermined by a lack of awareness of their own whiteness and the ideological baggage that goes along with it. Even the most celebrated figures of the industry, such as Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, Jack Jackson, William Gaines, Stan Lee, Robert Crumb, Will Eisner, and Frank Miller, have not been able to distance themselves from the problematic racism embedded in their narratives despite their intentions or explanations. Bandits, Misfits, and Superheroes: Whiteness and Its Borderlands in American Comics and Graphic Novels provides a sober assessment of these creators and their role in perpetuating racism throughout the history of comics. Josef Benson and Doug Singsen identify how whiteness has been defined, transformed, and occasionally undermined over the course of eighty years in comics and in many genres, including westerns, horror, crime, funny animal, underground comix, autobiography, literary fiction, and historical fiction. This exciting and groundbreaking book assesses industry giants, highlights some of the most important episodes in American comic book history, and demonstrates how they relate to one another and form a larger pattern, in unexpected and surprising ways.