5 out of 5

‘Cow Boy’… is… flawless.  It’s nigh effortlessly perfect.  From the choice of presentation – sizing, packaging – to the coloring and lettering, and then those core matters of art and writing – the book is everything it could be and more.  I went in with high expectations just based off of a two-page sample in an Archaia FCBD and my hopes were exceeded.  High praise?  The highest.  I love kid lit, but I love even more kid lit that isn’t afraid to not be kid lit.

Let’s touch on the packaging: using thick, light-weight cardboard for their hardcover and making it slightly undersized give the book a mature presentation but make it tote-able enough to be carried about easily or, for them kids, tossed in a bookbag without any extra heft.  The brown base color has been appropriately ‘aged’ and bordered for the Old West presentation, with bright a legible gold-embossed lettering for the title and back blurbs, again opting for a font style that plays up the period.  Archaia has been in the biz of making impressive collections since their resurgence, but this is an example of the packaging just acting as a massive compliment to the contents and not just as a literal cover.

Chris Eliopoulos drew, colored, and lettered.  I’ve found Chris’ artwork on the Franklin Richards books entertaining, but like Tiny Titans, there’s a simplicity to it that’s appealing but wears off quickly – same could be said of a lot of the BOOM! cartoon adaptations, where it’s just too slick, so it looks great but then you get used to it ’cause it’s stuck to its format.  For ‘Cow Boy,’ though, with the flexibility of the tone, Chris is allowed so much more experimentation with emotion, dramatic paneling, and action.  He goes sketchy with his inks, which is the perfect juxtaposition to the cartoonish penciling.  Along with the black, seemingly hand-drawn gutters and the overall dusty color palette – which nonetheless finds select moments to toss in amazing fading gradients and bright splashes, all without distracting the eye from the foreground or allowing things to get static or boring… all the more difficult when your focus are ‘simple’ figures – you are so easily edged into accepting the blend of adult writing and childish setting.

Nate Cosby.  Like Joe Keatinge on Hell Yeah!, Nate has now written a book that’s taken me for a ride and made me want to check out more, more more.  But there’s something especially amazing accomplished here, no matter how the rest of his oeuvre turns out – that this is a kid’s book, undoubtedly, and will be fun for any kid who can get into the Old West, but offers levels and levels of feeling and connection for an older age range…  And not Harry Potter b.s. where, yeah, stuff develops and it’s ‘deeper and darker’ than we expect from a kid’s book, but actual subtext that requires this mixing of styles to make it effective.  And it’s all done without a wink – our lead Cow Boy talks the talk and walks the walk, but his customized gun with little horsey on the end is a popgun, he’s trained his horse to kneel in order for him to get on, and he struggles to sit on chairs.  It’s a a real story.  It’s funny at times, and touchingly brutal, as our lil’ bounty hunter tracks down his pa and brother to right wrongs they done did when raisin’ him.

And there’s more to say, and there’s more to say, but I can’t say enough.  Except that I can’t wait for volume 2.