The True Death of Billy the Kid

February 5, 2018
Geary adds another solid volume to his reliably good A Treasury of Murder series of graphic true crime histories with this chronicle of the blood-soaked final adventure of Henry McCarty, aka William Bonney, aka Billy the Kid. After a brief biography, the story opens with the Kid, age 21, in jail. He wastes no time breaking out and goes on the lam for two months, hiding out with sympathetic friends, tracked all the while by tireless sheriff Pat Garrett. It’s the raw stuff of classic Westerns, but Geary approaches it as a detective story, filling his pages with forensic details, theories, maps, and cutaway diagrams. Geary’s unmistakable rounded, hatch-marked art evokes an antique look without coming off as stiff; instead, the characters and settings are gently softened and cartoonified. “Now folks will see what it is to be a bad man,” the Kid reportedly crowed during his escape, but Geary coaxes out the human side of the larger-than-life figure: the troubled criminal, the angry young man, the charismatic antihero loved by the locals (including local women). While the Kid has been treated to ample renderings in film, television, and prose, Geary makes his story feel fresh.

July 1, 2018

Geary's examination of this legendary figure of the Old West starts with a brief summary of Billy the Kid's early life. After providing a glimpse into his personality via a handful of details and anecdotes of Billy as a young man, the author/illustrator chronicles the escape from jail that garnered the outlaw his fame, his run from the law, and the tense encounter that resulted in his death. Unfortunately, the first few pages are comprised of loosely related still images and won't pull in readers who aren't already interested in the era. However, once Geary begins to recount the Kid's biggest exploits, the tale becomes far more compelling-this is both a story of a violent man meeting his inevitably violent end and a look at the late 19th-century American West. Fittingly, the cartoonish art has a hint of the grotesque. Clean linework and exaggerated perspectives accentuate a narrative that is both mythic and grounded. VERDICT For students with an interest in this period or educators with a mind to offer an accessible, pictorial version of this story.-Chuck Hodgin, Belmont University, Nashville

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