Last night I caught some of Dusk ’til Dawn 3 on the Scifi channel. It featured gone-missing-in-Mexico Ambrose Bierce as a character:
Bierce is known to have accompanied Villa’s army as far as Chihuahua, Chihuahua. After a last letter to a close friend, sent from there December 26, 1913, he vanished without a trace, becoming one of the most famous disappearances in American literary history. Investigations into his fate proved fruitless, and despite an abundance of theories his end remains shrouded in mystery. The date of his death is generally cited as “1914?”. Gringo viejo, a novel by Carlos Fuentes on which the film “Old Gringo” was based, re-imagines the last months and the death of Ambrose Bierce.
which helped me place the story in history. It also featured a Broomhandle Mauser-toting Mexican bandit. I’d first seen the Mauser depicted in Grell’s Jon Sable comic as a lad, back in the 80s, and thought it was pretty cool. I couldn’t remember when it was made, though, so did a little research to find out whether its use in D’tD3 was accurate (it was, and apparently it’s not the first time it’s been depicted in a western).
In my searching, I was surprised to learn that the very handsome Mauser was what Star Wars production artists used to create those very ugly blasters:
Apparently, you can buy replicas, or, if you’re more of a DIY-type, buy a kit with which to vandalize your own gun:
…I’m hard-pressed to think of anything more horrible at the moment.