Writer: Brett Matthews
Artist: Sergio Cariello
Company: Dynamite Entertainment

I have to admit, Dynamite Entertainment picking up the Lone Ranger license seemed a little weird. Xena, Army of Darkness, Battlestar Galactica, sure, those are cult popular franchises. Red Sonja, makes sense, given the revival of Conan. But Lone Ranger? He’s a western hero best known for his ’50s TV show, and neither westerns nor characters from the ’50s are doing particularly well in comics these days. After reading the first issue, though, I think that Lone Ranger #1 is probably the best comic Dynamite has produced thus far, a moody and beautiful action book that reintroduces the western hero for a new generation.

While Lone Ranger is an older character, the approach taken by the creative team is modern and new. This is both good and bad. The good is that even the most casual of comics fans will be attracted to Sergio Cariello’s artwork, digitally painted by Dean White. It has the same richness and atmosphere as the Dark Horse Conan book, but with a faded color approach that makes it more suited to the old west than a long-lost world of fantasy. Cariello and White don’t just emulate the digitally painted look of Cary Nord and Dave Stewart, they use it as a model to evoke an atmosphere, and there is some terrific subtlety in White’s work, giving a real sense of the dusty old west and the open plains where most of the story takes place.

On the downside, the pacing of the book is firmly in the new school, which means our old friend decompression rears his ugly head. Decompression works for some stories, and I’m not quite ready to say it doesn’t work for this one… but it is a shame that in the first issue of The Lone Ranger, the Lone Ranger doesn’t really make an appearance. This is pure origin stuff, and it’s really only the first half, or maybe the first third, of that origin story. If you know the character’s story, as I did, you’re seeing a modernized reinterpretation of events you already know, so there aren’t many surprises.

However, while the basics of the story may be familiar, Matthews offers up some nice moments within the story. The relationship between John (the Lone Ranger to be), his brother and his father is excellent, giving an emotional resonance to the tragic moment of his origin and doing it fairly quickly, and the first appearance of the Lone Ranger’s future faithful sidekick is pretty damn cool. In addition, Matthews and Cariello don’t sell the reader short when it comes to action, and the ambush in the canyon is a terrific piece of action storytelling.

Lone Ranger #1 is a solid foundation upon which to build future stories. I’ll grumble a little bit that it might be a bit gritty for such a fanciful hero, and it’s a shame that some of the familiar trappings, like silver bullets, Silver and even the Lone Ranger’s famous garb are mostly absent in his first issue, but I can’t complain too loudly. Certainly if a character ever needed to be reintroduced from the very beginning to a wider audience, a cowboy who was born in the era of ’30s radio is probably that character.