Nineteen sixty-four was the year that we were first introduced to the ‘Man With No Name’ and over the course of three movies the wise cracking, fast killing; laconic stranger redefined the basic archetype of the traditional cowboy. The anti-hero was all the rage at the time in mainstream crime noir cinema and Sergio Leone bravely decided to try and transfer that imagery over into the Western genre. He succeed in his task so well that it encouraged his leading actor to try his hand, in nineteen seventy-two, at directing his own version of the character in the movie ‘High Plains Drifter’. This particular movie persona was so noteworthy that Eastwood would return to it again and again, in differing forms over the subsequent period, cumulating in his Academy Award winning masterpiece of the western celluloid form; ‘Unforgiven’. It is no coincidence, that also in the year 1972, this new vaquero paradigm reality had become so accepted into the mainstream culture that even the D.C comics company who were traditionally very conservative about new concepts, decided to roll out an adaptation of their own and the world was introduced to Mr Jonah Hex.

More After the Jump >>