Gunfighter in the context of Western comic book

The Western is a genre of fiction typically set in the American frontier (commonly referred to as the "Old West" or the "Wild West") between the California Gold Rush of 1849 and the closing of the frontier in 1890. The genre is commonly associated with folk tales of the Western United States, particularly the Southwestern United States, as well as Northern Mexico and Western Canada.

The frontier is depicted in Western fiction as a sparsely populated, hostile region patrolled by cowboys, outlaws, sheriffs, and numerous other stock gunslinger characters. Western narratives often concern the gradual attempts to tame the crime-ridden American West using wider themes of justice, freedom, rugged individualism, manifest destiny, and the national history and identity of the United States. Native American populations were often portrayed as averse foes or savages.

The revisionist Western is a sub-genre of the Western fiction. Called a post-classical variation of the traditional Western, the revisionist subverts the myth and romance of the traditional by means of character development and realism to present a less simplistic view of life in the "Old West". While the traditional Western always embodies a clear boundary between good and evil, the revisionist Western does not.

Revisionist themes have existed since the early 20th century but it was not until 1968, when the Hays Code restrictions were relaxed, that revisionism finally supplanted the traditional. Although many earlier Westerns are labelled as revisionist, the distinction between them is often blurred by variable themes and plot devices. Some are labelled psychological Westerns, which is closely related to and sometimes overlaps with the psychological drama and psychological thriller genres because of their focus on character, at the expense of the action and thrills that predominate in the traditional. Other revisionist films, in which action and adventure remain prominent, are labelled Indian Westerns or outlaw/gunfighter Westerns because, instead of the traditional hero, the protagonist is a Native American, an outlaw, or a gunfighter. The term anti-Western is generally used in reference to particularly gruesome and/or nihilistic examples of the genre, such as Cormac McCarthy’s 1985 novel Blood Meridian. The spaghetti Westerns of the 1960s, not bound by the Hays Code, were strongly revisionist by presenting morally ambiguous stories featuring an anti-hero or a sympathetic villain. From 1969, revisionism has prevailed in Western film production.