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ou won't lose me" says Tex to his wife, who |
| later dies in an epidemic caused
by infected blankets that white merchants have handed out. Tex succeeds in avenging her and remains
faithful to her memory, never again getting involved in a relationship with any other woman. But even if the |
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Ranger doesn't have any love affairs, there are many important female characters in his adventures.
They are above all "dark ladies", disturbing and wicked. To mention just a few, there's the beautiful voodoo
priestess Loa, who is at first an ally of Mefisto and then allies herself with his son Yama in fighting
against Tex, and then there's Maschera di Ferro (real name, the gambler Lola Fuente), who's the leader
of an extortion gang in New Orleans, the fascinating Indian witch Mitla and the Chinese girl Ah-Toy,
the head of a Chinese secret sect. They are beautiful, and lethal, but they are powerless against Tex!
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But, of course, the representatives of the female sex in Tex aren’t always negative
characters: on the contrary, some of them are truly memorable in terms of their temperament
and courage as well as their alluring appearance.
This is the case, for instance, of Lena and her daughter Donna.
Lena used to be the girl-friend of Ray Clemmons, sheriff of Bannock – who was
discovered by a young Kit Carson to be the covert head of the dreaded Band of the Innocents,
a group of marauders that terrorized Montana with their raids and looting. As soon as Lena
found out about her man’s criminal activity, she didn’t hesitate to side with Carson.
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Similarly, Sergeant Torrence's Indian widow, Luna, is far from being a conventional portrayal of a woman.
On account of the inflexible severity of Major Craig, who had issued orders for Indian wives
of soldiers to be forcibly removed from anywhere near the troops, Sergeant Torrence spearheads
a mass desertion among his men. A band of man-hunters working directly for the army then set
out on their tracks. These ugly customers are veritable cut-throats, and what's more they've
been given a license to kill, a murder permit. Tex's intervention averts a massacre, but not
the death of the valiant sergeant. Later we meet Luna again in a dramatic situation, where
her intervention actually turns out to be crucial in saving the life of Tex himself.
It happens after Diablo Rojo Narvaez and his Yaquis, on a visit to the Navajo encampment,
abduct a number of Yavapai women. In the attempt to free them, Tex is taken prisoner,
but Luna shows great courage and even kills one of the captors, thereby giving the Ranger
an opportunity to make a bid for freedom and defeat the Yaqui raiders.
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Also, while we're talking about plucky women, surely a special mention should be made
of Elvira Montoya and her lady-in-waiting, the young Apache Sarita?
The Montoyas are an ancient family who can trace their name in the area back for many
generations: they cultivate a pronounced sense of honor - veritable puffed up nobled
prejudice, in fact, as they are descendants of the conquistadores and are not at all
happy about the relationship between Elvira and the matador Rafael Guerrero, a king
in the arena but a plebeian by birth. When they discover that Elvira is carrying
a child by Rafael, they resolve to kill him to get their revenge for what they see
as wicked impiety committed against their bloodline. However, Elvira pleads her case
gently and graciously, and Sarita likewise displays great dignity in bowing to
the sufferings the Montoya brothers and their father inflict on her because of
her allegiance to Doña Elvira.
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Fiore di Luna, on the other hand, is the daughter of the Ute chief Naso Piatto,
and she's also the woman who saves Kit Willer from the waters of the Little Colorado
after he'd fallen into the river, injured and having lost his memory, following a shoot-out
with a gang of smugglers. Given the name Tonkawa, meaning "brought by the river" in the
Ute language, Kit has a short but intense love affair with Fiore di Luna, although the joy is taken
out of their romance by a whole series of dramatic events: the murder of Naso Piatto at the hand
of Corvo Nero, a Ute warrior who is his bitter enemy and is also Kit's rival in love, the war
that breaks out against the Navajos because the finger is pointed at them as the ones responsible
for Naso Piatto's death - and this conflict even pits Tex against his son, so that they find themselves
"waging armed warfare against each other"; finally, the death of brave Fiore di Luna in the attempt
to save her beloved Tonkawa from a bullet that was meant to be coming his way.
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But now let us return to the genuinely bad heroines. Take Lily Dickart: faithful readers
will certainly remember her appearing on the scene beside her brother Steve,
and her role in the gun-running operations in Mexico that the pair of them managed
under cover of their artistic activity. But if Steve Dickart has risen to the top
ranks of black magic, with the name of Mefisto, beautiful and unprincipled Lily had
gone to ground and was nowhere to be found, at least until not long ago. But we meet
her again in album nr. 501, where she is in the company of a strange aristocrat, half
polished decadent gentleman and half unpredictable adventurer: Count Ivan Leonov.
In nineteenth-century Paris Lily, by now a perfect high society lady, meets an Indian
master of occult arts, capable of leading the departed from the world of shadows back
to earthly life. She asks him to bring Mefisto back to life so that he can finally
obtain his craved revenge. And then it's actually Lily herself who organizes the trap
that is to ensnare the four pards: in fact, she plays a prominent role in this return
of the sinister necromancer, a role that fully entitles her to figure as a genuine Evil
Lady together with the titanic figure of Mefisto.
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I NEMICI |
Banditi, trafficanti d’armi e d’alcol,
politici corrotti. Per non parlare del malvagio negromante Mefisto! |
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