The Steampunk Symposium 2020 (27th-29th March) is going “Weird West” as its theme in spring 2020. As in ‘the old west’ or ‘the wild west’ of America meets the weird, via steampunk. The event plans “…over 200 hours of programming with a grand schedule of presentations, exhibitors, vendors, entertainers”.

I’m unfamiliar with the sub-genre, but interested to learn that there’s obviously enough of it to hang a symposium on. I assume that the sub-genre must have stepped beyond a simple transplanting of mundane zombies and stock vampires into the Old West, with a few airships thrown in alongside the steam-trains? Do any readers know of really imaginative works in this sub-genre, which also work within an R.E. Howard / Lovecraft framework e.g. “Valley of the Lost”, “The Horror from the Mound”, “Transition of Juan Romero”, “The Mound”, etc.

Meanwhile, over in comics-land, this week Por Por takes a look at the 1977 survey book Comics of the American West. Never reprinted and now collectable, it seems. It’s not yet on Archive.org.