Finding peace in a violent world: Geof Darrow on Shaolin Cowboy’s eternal journey and cycle of violence

Geof Darrow has had, to say the least, a fascinating and varied career that stretches beyond the realm of comics. His genre-transforming work on The Matrix aside, he’s spent the better part of 15 years working as a writer/artist, primarily working on his opus, Shaolin Cowboy; a multi-volume series about the eponymous monk/cowboy who roams the lands while suffering the consequences of every wrong he’s righted.

Darrow is back with a new volume of Shaolin Cowboy — Cruel to Be Kin — which showcases his relationship with a young Komodo dragon as told by an older version of that same dragon many years later. It’s Mandalorian-esque, coming full circle as Darrow is now seemingly inspired by the more modern incarnations of the characters that inspired his creation in the first place, like Yojimbo and Lone Wolf and Cub.

For those familiar with Shaolin Cowboy, Cruel to Be Kin is more of what you would expect from the series at this point: it’s grimy, it’s violent, and it’s gorgeous. We spoke with Darrow about what inspired him to create this story, as well as his influences and his thoughts on the mysterious Shaolin Cowboy himself.

Popverse: Geof, Shaolin Cowboy is and always has been, at the very least, an esoteric and hard-to-describe series. How would you go about describing this new volume of the story?

Geof Darrow: [laughs] More of what you’ve seen I guess! Oddly enough… I love action films and genre stuff. I’d seen, years ago, this '70s Robert Altman film called Nashville. What always struck me about it is that there wasn’t a real story in it. There were stories, you followed these people, but it was only for a certain amount of time. And I’ve always seen Shaolin Cowboy as the same thing. You’re just kind of following him, and things happen to him.

I didn’t want to do an arc of Infinity War or Secret Wars or Crisis on Infinite Multiverse time-changes or whatever. He just kinda shows up, as he does in this one, and things happen to him. The only difference in this one is that it picks up where the last one left off, and you get introduced to this Komodo dragon father and son. The father recognised him [Shaolin Cowboy] and starts telling his son about how he met him. It follows him for a while and eventually gets back to the present where things get… not so nice. It’s more of the same.

If you didn’t like the first three then you’re not gonna like this one!

I think this story gets better and better with each issue.

This one is, I think, the best one I’ve ever done.