David Colton, organizer of the Rondo Hatton Awards and frequent B Monster contributor, authored the following rapturous review: Even the undead must have their own "good old days." You know, back in the day -- er, night -- when just a menacing look was enough to send a chill through dinner and a vampire's fangs never came out in public. But that was before splatterfests on screen, and lately in comic books, replaced such Old Ghoul sensibilities. With Buffy impaling classmates, Blade slicing heads, and red ink spurting across the pages in Steve Niles' groundbreaking '30 Days of Night,' a certain bit of gentleman-dread has been lost.

Enter "The Wicked West,' a subversive bit of western horror from the Unholy Three of monster noir -- writers Todd Livingston and Robert Tinnell and illustrator Neil Vokes. From the Dark Knight homage of its lightning bolt opening to its satisfying conclusion of wistful memory, TWW delivers a neck-ripping tale of cowboys and innocents battling a mean-as-a-snake vampire nest in 1870 Texas.

As in the trio's first graphic horror, "The Black Forest," there's plenty of horror and blood-letting in this gruesome take on the Old West, but there's also an elegant storyline of doom and redemption that makes each bite matter. When's the last time you actually rooted for someone to get away from a monster in a comic book? You will here. No one is anonymous in "The Wicked West," not even the victims. "I think I'll stay pretty a real long time,'' says a sweet-faced vampire girl in one perfect moment of sagebrush terror, her face framed by shadow and light from a campfire we've seen in a thousand less-dangerous westerns. Vokes' artwork is evocative, and the spare dialogue by Livingston and Tinnell carries the reader to each new page.

What makes this more than a Zane Grey gone batty is a delightful time travel trick -- we won't give it away -- that straddles past and future in a comprehensible way. Too many graphic novels indulge themselves in layered narratives and complex edits that leave the reader baffled. In "The Wicked West," you always know where you are, and more importantly, when you are. It is no small feat, and more comic books should be this accessible.

Tinnell's movie background -- as both writer and director -- gave the trio's acclaimed first effort, "The Black Forest,'' something of a breathless, storyboard feel. Not so here, where the story takes all the time it needs to come to its inevitable conclusion. It's a bargain, too. Just $9.95 for 96 pages, including a four-page text extra and seven pages of pinups. In lesser hands, "TWW" might have been just another "Wild, Wild West" sendup, or a "Jonah Hex" gone wild. Instead, we visit a place and a time we think we've seen before, but through more somber eyes. We expect we'll be shuddering through these ghost towns again. And if a Texas Ranger does come to the rescue, even a masked one, he better bring a silver bullet.