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| Customer Reviews: | | Average Customer Review: ( 8 customer reviews )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 found the following review helpful:
 Brilliant Dec 22, 2006
By pinlighter
I read "Tex Arcana" in the old HEAVY METAL magazine in the 80's. Even there it stood out as one of the funniest, wittiest, best-drawn (by far) and best-plotted graphic novels ever produced.
This republication gives fans the chance to read again the adventures of Tex (a sort of Old Western occult detective), his loving and far more competent wife/anima the mysterious Woman in White, Doc, Sadie the whore with a heart of gold, The (undead) Old Claim Jumper ("his dyin' was hard and he deserved it") and a host of other brilliantly imagined and drawn characters. The stories are predominantly humorous but some have tragic and ironic elements which prevent the whole thing being too sickly sweet. It's brilliant, I repeat, and I don't know why it remains almost unknown here.
4 of 4 found the following review helpful:
Yippee Ti-Yi-Yo! May 25, 2007
By Art
I'm sure all old-time (ha) fans of Tex Arcana were as overjoyed as I was to discover that the comic has been reprinted in a paperback edition. This strip was one of the high points (when it appeared) in Heavy Metal magazine's "post-movie" period in the early-to-mid 80s. I was surprised to discover that there were actually 250+ pages of Tex Arcana available for purchase and that the initial serialized story I remembered only constituted the first 58 pages of this volume.
The good news is that this book includes all the Tex Arcana you'd ever want, including the intros and outros by "the old Claim-Jumper" (which were removed from a previous collection) and the 25-part "The Toast of Europe", which has apparently never been collected before.
The book loses a star for me because the printing quality is good but not great. The paper isn't as rough as the newsprint in DC's Showcase series or Marvel's Essentials, but overall, the printing looks darker, and lacks the subtle greytones that characterized the strip when it was first published in Heavy Metal. The "color" palette in this book is much more limited, and a lot of detail has been obscured, as long-time fans will probably notice as early as the first page. It's a minor complaint, but still a shame, as the originally-published version of Tex Arcana was remains one of the most detailed, subtle, and beautiful uses of greyscale I've ever seen in comics
In any case, though, please don't let my fanboy nitpicking keep you from getting a copy if you're a fan! I've never even read 4/5 of the material in this book, so it was a no-brainer blind buy just to get everything in one volume. Here's hoping that the sales of this book will justify a future "Absolute Tex Arcana" edition!
2 of 2 found the following review helpful:
Tex Arcana Feb 14, 2007
By Bruce Booker
This is simply one of the best graphic novels ever, in my opinion. The quirky characters, the offbeat humor, and the amazing artwork are incomparable. I remembered this series from the Heavy Metal magazine in the 1980s and was very pleased to find the series collected into one book. I look forward to seeing more books in this series!
 Comprehensive anthology, lousy reproduction Oct 16, 2011
By Johnny J
The good news is, this is the most complete anthology of Tex Arcana ever published. If you grew up with Heavy Metal magazine in the 80's as I did, and you want to read it again for entertainment and nostalgia, I recommend buying this.
However, that's ALL it's good for. IMO, John Findley is one of the finest pen-and-ink artists ever, and the reproduction quality is so poor, all the detail of his work is lost. I do pen-and-ink myself, and I wanted this book partly as a reference and tutorial. Unfortunately, this edition is worthless for that purpose. The resolution is so low that the cross-hatching is not discernible, and mushes into indistinguishable grey. The ink used to print is not really black, either; it too is muddy grey, which further narrows the range of tones. The reproduction quality of this book is actually worse than the digital version that is available gratis on Findley's web site.
I will probably keep this book so I can read it in bed, not staring at a screen, and if people are buying it, I suppose the publisher has no incentive to do a better job, but it's still disappointing. I mean really, would it have cost all that much more to have printed it in a larger size, at higher resolution, with blacker ink? If so, I would have happily paid the difference.
For anyone looking to learn something about hatching techniques, I recommend "The Rembrandt House; A Catalogue of Rembrandt Etchings." I bought it in Amsterdam, but it is available here on Amazon. The book shows detail enlargements so you can see what's going on, and Rembrandt was unquestionably one of the masters of cross hatching. Here is the link: [...]
Excellent Artwork Sep 21, 2010
By Manga Madness
I would have given the book a 5 star if the story lines and plot development were on par with The Ballad of the Witch's Daughter which is what drew me to Texarcana.
Pros- excellent artwork- by far, surpasses most graphic novels and other media I have seen, wonderful sense of humor, mostly dark
Cons- Mediocre storyline, plot development, and characters
The Witch's Daughter, however, which is the last story told in the ook, has all elements presented perfectly.
See all 8 customer reviews on Amazon.com
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