For years Johnny Pearl tried to escape his demons by being a gunslinger. With his killer’s cool and famous pearl-handled pistol, he made a name for himself in the years following the Civil War as an outlaw. But fame has proved hollow, and Johnny finds himself on the outskirts of the Wyoming Territory, on the verge of taking his own life after one gunfight too many, until he finds redemption in the smile of Katie Small Dove.
Katie understands Johnny Pearl’s pain and helps heal his broken soul, giving him the strength to turn his back on his old life of death and destruction, and build a new future. Within a year he has a wife, a homestead, and a baby on the way, and for the first time in his life Johnny knows true happiness. Of course it can not last.
Johnny Pearl’s idyllic new world is suddenly and irrevocably shattered by the arrival of Captain Antioch Drake, a psychotic cavalry officer determined to avenge the recent massacre at Little Big Horn. Within minutes of Drake and his men arriving, the homestead is ablaze, his wife and unborn child cruelly slain, and Johnny left to hang from a cottonwood.
Normally, this would be the end of Johnny Pearl’s story—if not for the unexpected appearance of a medicine show wagon, driven by a strange old man called Doc Mirablis, who claims to have once been a friend and colleague of a certain Viktor Von Frankenstein.
The life and times of outlaw Johnny Pearl are over. But the adventures of the undead gunslinger called Lynch have just begun…
Cover illustration by SWAMP THING artist Stephen R. Bissette.
The Tortuga Hill Gang, lead by "Black Hat" Johnson, was one of the Old West's more colorful, and mysterious, outlaw groups. Rumored to be able to float safes like toy balloons and walk though bank walls, the six desperadoes--Johnson, the twin Chandler Brothers, Horseflesh Donnegan, Coyote Pete and the giant known as "Little Red"--disappeared without a trace in the 1890s. What really happened to the notorious Tortuga Hill Gang? Some say they met their fate at the hands of the Federalis. Others say the Devil came and dragged them to Hell. The only person who claims to know for sure is an old man who says he's the sole surviving member of the gang. But is he crazy or a liar--or perhaps both?
It's the Old West, and a group of hired killers lead by Big Luther has sent into Mexico to finish off the Wolf Pack, a band of outlaws lead by the notorious Dixie Jim. But when the bounty hunters arrive during the Dia de los Muertos festival, things only get weirder, and deadlier, from there.
Contains scenes not included when originally published in A Skull Full Of Spurs (Dark Highway Press, 2000)
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