EURIPIDEAN ASSEMBLAGES

In the final scene of Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight (2015), Daisy Domergue, the sole female character among the titled eight, hangs suspended from the ceiling of the cabin in which they all have fought an operatically violent battle to the death. From her cuffed hand a chain dangles, at the other end of which is another cuffed hand, minus the rest of the body to which it had belonged. Its owner was her bounty hunter, who spent most of his time onscreen physically abusing her, including struggling with her over the control of weapons (e.g., machete and gun). We meet her with a black eye, to which are soon added a broken nose and teeth and a face repeatedly doused in her own blood and that of others. Two equally bloody antagonists string her up, pitting their injuries against her near-dead weight, so that for a time her body is triangulated by her attachment to them as well as to the remaining bit of the bounty hunter.

For a Few Comic Strips More: Reinterpreting the Spaghetti Western through the Comic Book

In Christopher Frayling's book Spaghetti Westerns (1981), he highlights how the character of the Spaghetti Western has since become subsumed into later Western comic books, evidenced through the Lee Van Cleef-like bounty hunter featured in Morris and Goscinny's bande dessinée (French comic) Lucky Luke: The Bounty Hunter (1972). Drawing upon this relationship, this chapter will take a similar approach to Frayling, who mediates between comic book influences upon the Spaghetti Western and the later reciprocal impact of these Westerns upon the comic book. It begins by demystifying some of the tacit references to the comic-like qualities of the Italian Westerns. This provides context for the exploration of the impact of these films upon the Western comic book, primarily achieved through a case study of the bande dessinée series, Blueberry (1963–2005), by Jean-Michel Charlier and Jean Giraud. In a collection that looks to map the relocation and appropriation of the Spaghetti Western, the chapter reinterprets these Italian productions through the comic book.