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ex
transcends the boundaries of the western genre.
Although as a character Tex belongs to the world of the Wild |
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West, he very
often finds himself caught up in adventures that take him almost beyond the
boundaries of reality, into "Twilight Zone" (or, in a more modern perspective,
into the "X-Files") adventures. It is no coincidence that his Enemy par excellence is a
magician, Mefisto. Tex has more than once become embroiled in a struggle against
the supernatural. He has fought against adherents of Voodoo, who unleashed
hordes of zombie against him, and he has faced witches and werewolves. He has
clashed with immortal beings such as the Egyptian Rakos and with descendants
of the Mayas and the Aztecs, and has wrestled with their magic arts. In many
stories verging on the fantastic, he has been helped by the
scholar-witch-doctor El Morisco, an expert in occult sciences. Tex has the
greatest respect for the magic practices of Indian medicine men, who have
saved his life on numerous occasions. And he is fearless even in the most
terrifying circumstances: several times he has come face to face with alien
invaders (of a humanoid or vegetal type, rather like "The thing from another
world") in stories that are a tribute to the B-movies of the 1950s. He has
seen the ghosts of the "Queen of Spades" and of an old monk persecuting
and killing their own murderers, he has discovered the secret of the
mythical "philosopher's stone" (which changed lead into gold). |
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For many years,
the Text stories were not set in any specific historical period
(but their historical precision has now increased and one may hazard a guess
that they are set around the 1870s or 1880s).
Tex was able to fight in the Civil War, he decimated the Dalton Gang, he defeated
Butch Cassidy's "Wild Bunch", met Geronimo and fought on the side of the
revolutionaries in Mexico. He thwarted an attack on President Grant and discovered |
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who really
assassinated Abraham Lincoln. Some of these events are hard to reconcile
with one another, but
they are accepted because Tex is a legend and legends live
beyond the bounds of time. Tex challenged the famous figure Buffalo Bill (real
name, William Cody)
in a target shooting competition, when he was a buffalo hunter and was considered
the sharpest shot in the West. And Tex also witnessed his Wild West Show, the
traveling circus founded by Cody at the end of the nineteenth century. And he
met one of the stars of the show, the target shooter Annie Oakley.
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MY NAME IS TEX |
For whites he is an infallible Texas Ranger.
For the Navajos he is the wise chief Eagle-of-the-Night.
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