Black Feather Valley

A wagon train of pioneers heading west finds themselves trapped in a Rocky Mountain “Bermuda Triangle.”

Steven Weissman’s long-awaited graphic novel Black Feather Valley, his first in over a decade, feels like the culmination of a lifetime of experience as a father and son, and as one of the most fiercely independent and singular cartoonists of his generation. From youthful themes of coming-of-age and falling in love, to midlife concerns of being a parent and letting go as the child enters adulthood, Black Feather Valley mines a treasure of feeling and emotion in this somewhat fantastical adventure of settlers in the old west who find themselves lost in a mysterious valley filled with wolves the size of horses, crows the size of buffalo, a clan of molepeople, and much more.

Weissman channels inspiration like Max Fleischer’s Popeye the Sailor Meets Sindbad the Sailor, Turok comic books and other Dell western and animal comics, Steinbeck’s The Red Pony and East of Eden, as well as the paintings of Charles M. Russell, to create this curiously affecting and utterly unique work of graphic brilliance. Always a singular stylist in comics, Black Feather Valley is a showcase for Weissman’s distinctive cartooning language, his innate storytelling skills, and an acute sense of comic timing. Weaving a lovable cast of characters both human and animal (no one in comics does horses better than Weissman) through a series of vignettes that tell the individual stories of the cast while also propelling the wagon train’s desperate need to escape the valley, Black Feather Valley is pure comic book fun, with a heart of gold.