The state of Texas has always had a unique place in American culture. Well before Edison had The Great Train Robbery filmed in 1903 (with the wilds of Orange, New Jersey substituting for the Wild West), tales of the Texas cowboy sparked the imagination of millions of fascinated readers of newspaper articles and dime novels. It took a special kind of person to live in Texas in the nineteenth century, and Jack ("Jaxon") Jackson's meticulously researched comic paints a thorough picture of these genuinely wild and wooly inhabitants of the Old West.

Centering on the so-called Taylor-Sutton feud, Lost Cause examines the stories of men who shaped Texas from two generations' perspectives, both the pioneers who fought in the revolution and their descendants, the cowboys. The Taylor family provides the tale's point of view, and Jackson takes a leisurely amount of space to furnish background on Creed Taylor and his kinfolk before settling in on the main action. While comic books are often judged by the same storytelling standards of movies, Lost Cause offers a depth level of setting and characterization that is more akin to regular novels than film. Certainly, the first half of the book is devoted much more to setting than to plot development. The term "Graphic Novel" is bandied about too much these days, often being applied to anything with consecutive panels and more than 32 pages. But here we have an example of a genuine novel utilizing comic book conventions, and the book succeeds admirably when judged by that standard.

Creed Taylor represents a significant faction of what Jackson calls the "gentry" of Texas. A veteran of the War of Independence against Mexico, Creed settled in as a rancher, literally taming the land, rounding up unclaimed cattle roaming in the wild. This is part and parcel what the Texas revolutionaries were after: the right to grab whatever they could from what they perceived to be a vast, free-for-all country. While not outwardly mentioned in the comic, the breed of men that Jackson writes about didn't have noble motives to create a democracy in Texas, but were empire builders (of course, this did not stop the Texans from adopting the outward pretentions of democracy, and Jaxon often depicts citizens dressed in formal clothing and making public speeches). Much is made in the beginning of the book about ranchers and cowboys fighting and killing each other for the right to take unbranded (and sometimes branded) cattle roaming freely on the range. The cowboys joked about rounding up "Mr. Maverick's" cattle (a reference to the businessman who claimed all the millions of free cows in the state from an office somewhere), providing a popular nickname for the animals. While not mentioned in Lost Cause, actually, Mr. Maverick hiniself was a hero of the Texas revolution, trying to claim what he could as well as the others.

Jackson's depiction of this atmosphere of naked grabbing for anything that Texas had to offer reveals a series of events that led to massive splits and creation of hostile factions. Businessmen in the cities, desperate to have their goods shipped out from within the state hired cowboys and ranchers to protect the low paid Mexican caravan drivers from attacks by angry Anglos. Awash with the power of vigilantism, these "protectors" took it on theirselves to fight "lawlessness" by lynching and attacking competitors on the range who they find rounding up unbranded steers. Jaxon often depicts these vicious competing groups as being on first name familiarity with each other. The drawing of one of the first dividing lines between the Taylor led ranchers and the Littleton vigilants is shown at a sunamit meeting held at a Masonic Lodge. The participants are dressed in their Sunday best clothing wearing their Masonic sashes, evenwhile threatening each other with primitive brutality.

At its best, fiction emulates genuine history, for real events are often the most fascinating of stories. The tale of the Texas empire struggling with the winds of seccession in the days leading up to the Civil War is fascinating, because, while on one hand, it made Texans outwardly put aside their squabbles, on the other, it eventually drove divisions within the state ever deeper. Jaxon makes the point that many of the early Texans such as Sam Houston and Creed Taylor tried to keep the state in the Union, but once Texas joined the Confederacy, everyone was expected to pitch in to the war effort in some way. Some Texans volunteered for frontier duty, keeping Indian tribes at bay, while some of the cowboys continued rounding up wild steers, only now for the Confederacy. Taylor's enemy, John Littleton became a captain of the "home guard."

Jackson uses the Civil War as a pivoting point for his story, delving deeply into the effects of defeat on the pioneers and the cowboys. He tears apart the layers of indignities suffered by the proud Texans, as the conquerors of an empire became conquered themselves. Much has been written elsewhere about Jackson's characterization of the race issue, which some people wish he had avoided altogether, or shown in a more politically correct fashion. Here though, he takes the difficult path of pictorially representing the difficulties of reconstruction from the point of view of the white Texans, who had been responsible for taking the state from Mexico in the first place and now were at the mercy of their former slaves. Very few people involved had innocent motives. To the former slaves who had now been put in charge of Texas as members of an occupying army, there was very little reason to respect white Texans, and all too many reasons for them to take whatever they could. Once again, Jackson's theme of the Lone Star state being regarded by its inhabitants as "up for grabs" comes to the forefront here. He offers no apologies, and little sympathy for anyone.

This theme is explored again and again. Texas is an unimaginably large state, and it is quite easy to see how each succeeding wave of inhabitants came to consider it as ripe for picking. The Indians and Mexicans must have regarded the first American ranchers in much the same way as the ranchers regarded the carpetbaggers and occupying soldiers after the Civil War. According to Jackson, many of the same prewar factions that split the state up now drifted over to the occupation forces' side (mostly in attempts to take what spoils could be found), or else maintained shaky alliances based mostly on family affiliation. It is the splitting ofone of those family alliances that causes the feud which is the rationale of the entire book.

Jackson uses a party as a literary device to introduce a large number of characters, establish their relationships with each other, and layout the political situation. The party is at Joe Tumlinson's ranch, and many relatives show up. Tumlinson himself is related by marriage to Creed Taylor, whom he fought side by side with during the revolution (Jackson manages to work in a distant relation of his into this scene). Well known personalities make their appearance here, including Thornton Chisholm, describing the humorous circumstances leading up to his discovery of the trail bearing his name, and a very young Wes Hardin, showing off his soon to be legendary skill in a shooting contest. The party is eventually broken up by soldiers hunting for Buck Taylor, who escapes by killing one of them. After he rest of the party is taken to San Antonio in chains and then released, Joe Tumlinson returns home griping about Buck Taylor. Later, his brother Hays becomes a wanted man after a killing, and Creed Taylor brings his other son Doboy down to Mexico along with Joe Tumlinson. In Mexico, Doboy becomes involved with a shooting, and Tumlinson loses his temper, threatening Creed and his family. Thus began the feud between Tumlinson and the Taylors which led to much more bloodshed.

Throughout the remainder of Lost Cause, the factions become even more complicated and the string of shootings, hangings, and vengeance killings runs rampant. Eventually, a young Billy Sutton kills one of the Taylors and becomes a leader in the faction. His name has become attached to the feud of the years, as his side became known as the Sutton Party, but even after his death, the feud lingered on. The Taylor side included Wes Hardin, the infamous outlaw who may have killed more men than anyone else in the west, although Jackson's comic tries to put at least a slight justification on many of his killings. Throughout the second half of the book, much of the action is centered on Hardin, and in contrast to the talky events of the early chapters, Jackson includes plenty of action and bloody encounters.

After old Joe Tumlinson dies in his sleep, some of the remaining Taylor boys are killed, and Hardin eventually winds up in jail for sixteen years. When he was released, he dictated his autobiography, one of the few first person accounts ever written by a famous gunslinger. After the feud wound down, old Creed Taylor remarried and raised a second set of children. Eventually, the feud became a part of the past as Texans settled in for the long haul.

Jackson's work is a testimony to the power of the comic book to graphically depict a truly long and complex story with a depth that is unavailable to filmmakers and a visual flair that is utterly impossible for the written word to achieve. The plot of Lost Cause is so complicated that numerous rereadings are truly necessary to understand it. I not only got a lot of history out of this book, but I also found myself frequently examining the events of the party at Joe Tumlinson's for entertainment. This particular chapter stands as one of the best examples of the comic artist's skill, and could stand on its own.