Weird West

Weird West is a literary subgenre that combines elements of the Western with another literary genre, usually horror, occult, fantasy or science fiction.

DC's Weird Western Tales appeared in the early 1970s and the weird Western was further popularized by Joe R. Lansdale who "is best known for his tales of the 'weird west,' a genre mixing splatterpunk with alternate history Western almost entirely defined by the author in the early 1990s. His work reads a little like the sort of folklore in which Mark Twain dabbled (or the Gothic in which Flannery O'Connor was involved), but with zombies and gore."

Examples of these cross-genres include Deadlands (Western/horror), The Wild Wild West and its later film adaptation (Western/steampunk), Jonah Hex (Western/supernatural), BraveStarr (Western/science fiction), and many others.

Background
When supernatural menaces of horror fiction are injected into a Western setting, it creates the horror Western. Writer G. W. Thomas has described how the two combine: "Unlike many other cross-genre tales, the weird Western uses both elements but with very little loss of distinction. The Western setting is decidedly 'Western' and the horror elements are obviously 'horror.'"

Jeff Mariotte's comic book series Desperadoes has been running, off and on, for a decade now and he still remains bullish about the genre:

"As far as Mariotte is concerned, the potential for Weird West stories is limitless. “The West was a weird place. There are ghost towns and haunted mines and when you bring Native American beliefs into it, then the possibilities are even greater.”"

Comics
In comic books a number of heroes had adventures involving monsters, aliens, and costumed supervillains. Marvel Comics characters such as Kid Colt, Rawhide Kid, and Two-Gun Kid all had such adventures. Where Marvel went in for supervillains, DC Comics added more of a horror element to their stories such as Jonah Hex, pushed further in three mini-series from Vertigo written by Joe R. Lansdale. The DC character Tomahawk could also be termed a hero of the Weird West, though his adventures were set in the colonies during the time of the American Revolution.

While the origin of the Saint of Killers in the Old West is the only true western element in the comic book Preacher, the series has been described as a "Splatterpunk Western" or a mix of the Western with the Gothic.

Examples include:
 * American Gothic, by Ian Edginton and Mike Collins
 * The Big Book of the Weird Wild West: How the West Was Really Won!, anthology from Paradox Press
 * Billy the Kid's Old Timey Oddities, by Eric Powell and Kyle Hotz (Dark Horse Comics, 2006, ISBN 1-59307-448-4)
 * Cowboys & Aliens
 * El Diablo
 * Dead Irons
 * Desperadoes
 * Djustine by Enrico Teodorani
 * Doc Frankenstein
 * East of West
 * Gunplay by Jorge Vega, with art by Dominic Vivona, Platinum Studios
 * High Moon a werewolf Western webcomic by zuda / DC Comics. Created by David Gallaher and Steve Ellis
 * Iron West, by Doug TenNapel
 * Jonah Hex
 * Justice Riders (DC Comics Elseworlds) by Chuck Dixon and J.H. Williams III
 * Last Shot (Image Comics Studio XD) by Locke and Long Vo
 * Lobo Annual #2: "A Fistful of Bastiches"
 * Phantom Rider
 * Preacher Special: Saint of Killers (4-issue mini-series, Preacher spin off, by Garth Ennis)
 * Pretty Deadly
 * The Rawhide Kid
 * The Sixth Gun
 * Strangeways, solicited by Speakeasy Comics before they closed. Will appear as a graphic novel.
 * Tex Arcana by John Findley
 * Tex Willer (in some stories)
 * The Transformers: Evolutions
 * Weird Western Tales
 * The Wild Wild West: The Night of the Iron Tyrants, #1–4 by Mark Ellis and Darryl Banks, Millennium Publications.
 * The Wicked West
 * Wynonna Earp by Beau Smith. Published by Image Comics / IDW Publishing
 * Zagor (in many stories)