The Enfield Gang Massacre mini-series by writer Chris Condon and Jacob Phillips concluded recently, with a finale that was nothing short of stunning. The series grew out of the excellent work the team has done on That Texas Blood, giving readers a glimpse of the history of the place where the main book is set.
If you somehow missed Enfield Gang, you have a chance now to right that wrong…you can currently pre-order The Enfield Gang Massacre trade collection (which has newsprint, a very exciting thing for physical media sickos like me), ahead of the book’s April 10 release. As the day approaches, we recently caught up with the creators of the book to ask each of them about three things we might have missed in the story.
Check out their answers below, after the jump!
3 Things You Don’t Know About THE ENFIELD GANG MASSACRE
Chris Condon – No. 1: The Enfield Gang Massacre was born out of a “blink and you’ll miss it” reference in the back matter of That Texas Blood issue seven. Here it is: “And that’s not to mention the ghosts that haunt the county from the distant past. Notably, the Enfield Gang’s reign of terror in the 1870s which ended in 1875’s violent three-day-long shootout on the grounds of what would eventually become the Belasco (it was formerly a cheap inn called ‘The Grady’ that was burned to the ground soon after in January of 1880).” I, of course, wanted to change the details a bit and in the first issue’s back matter, I made sure to say that the details of the massacre were misrepresented since the 1870s. That gave us some leeway with the story. But the truth is that the Enfield Gang Massacre’s origin predates even that. There was a pilot script I had written in about 2013 that included a flashback to the massacre. Elements of that pilot have carried over to That Texas Blood and The Enfield Gang Massacre, but the massacre itself was quite different from what we ended up doing. In that pilot, the massacre followed a particularly violent stagecoach robbery outside of the Hotel Belasco and Enfield himself was a rather unsavory character. Interesting to see how much things change in ten years!
Condon – No. 2: The back matter references don’t end there. The fictional Texas Record is the periodical in which both the back matter for issue seven of That Texas Blood and Enfield appear. Different authors, but the same magazine. The fictional article for issue seven was written by a man named W.H. Walton in 1979, which the author of the Enfield back matter, Gary B. Johnston, specifically references in his fictional 1996 article. He even refers to him as a friend, apologizing to “Willy” for his takedown of his recollection of events.
Condon – No. 3: My favorite panel (see below) in The Enfield Gang Massacre is likely this one from the first issue featuring a solitary Enfield atop a small hill in West Texas, lighting his cigarillo with a match. For a book that is filled with loud, violent shootouts and executions, this quiet moment speaks to the heart of this particular character and the heart of the book itself. I think that Jacob captured this moment perfectly, from pencils to colors. Really a phenomenal piece of work.
Jacob Phillips – No. 1: The looks of characters come from all over and can often be based on real people, sometimes actors, sometimes my friends and family, sometimes our Patreon members (hint hint) and sometimes historic figures. This was the case for our judge. He was based on a real life judge called Roy Bean. You may know him from the 1972 movie The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean but despite what the casting would have you believe he didn’t look like Paul Newman. He actually looked an awful lot like our judge!
Phillips – No. 2: And speaking of resemblances there’s one character who bears a slight resemblance to somebody else you may know, That Texas Blood’s very own Sheriff Joe Bob Coates. We wanted to include a side character in Enfield that was a relative of Joe even if it’s not explicitly stated in the book. That character is our trusty barber. And it turns out the use of “well…” runs in the family! Building this world has been so much fun and being able to include little easter eggs and hints throughout the books has been half the fun.
Phillips – No. 3: The third thing you may not know is that although the covers are one continuous image, I actually painted each one at a time every month. Although I originally wanted to do them all together as one wide image I inevitably ran out of time and had to turn in the first cover too quickly to plan out and paint the other five images. Plus at that point I hadn’t designed any of the other characters. I didn’t know when I first drew Enfield on that first cover who he would be backed up against on the second or who he would be pointing his guns at on the other side. Such is the way of comic creation.
The Enfield Gang Massacre TP is available for pre-order now, ahead of an April 10 release.
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