Weird Westerns is an exploration of the hybrid western genreāan
increasingly popular and visible form that mixes western themes,
iconography, settings, and conventions with elements drawn from
other genres, such as science fiction, horror, and fantasy. Despite
frequent declarations of the western's death, the genre is now
defined in part by its zombie-like ability to survive in American
popular culture in weird, reanimated, and reassembled forms. The
essays in Weird Westerns analyze a wide range of texts, including
those by Native American authors Stephen Graham Jones (Blackfeet)
and William Sanders (Cherokee); the cult television series Firefly
and The Walking Dead; the mainstream feature films Suicide Squad
and Django Unchained; the avant-garde and bizarre fiction of Joe R.
Lansdale; the tabletop roleplaying game Deadlands: The Weird West;
and the comic book series Wynonna Earp. The essays explore how
these weird westerns challenge conventional representations by
destabilizing or subverting the centrality of the heterosexual,
white, male hero but also often surprisingly reinforce existing
paradigms in their inability to imagine an existence outside of
colonial frameworks.