Steampunk has always had a soft spot for the Wild West, a place where nobody minds if your horse has pistons. Netflix is leaning into that tomorrow, Tuesday 3 November, when Bass X Machina arrives: a six-episode adult animated series from LeSean Thomas (Cannon Busters, Yasuke) that drops Bass Reeves, one of the most remarkable lawmen in American history, into “a lawless Steampunk West filled with outlaws, machines, and supernatural threats.” In Netflix’s words, “a father must serve as judge, jury, and executioner to protect his family,” which is a heavy load even before you add the mechanical minotaurs.
Brian Tyree Henry voices Bass, with a supporting cast that includes Tati Gabrielle, Janelle Monáe, Cree Summer, Chaske Spencer, Currie Graham and Starletta DuPois. Animation comes from South Korea’s Studio Mir, whose credits include The Legend of Korra and Netflix’s Devil May Cry, so the gunfights, if the trailer above is any guide, will not be short of choreography. The trailer had its outing at IGN’s Fall Fan Fest, and it promises clanking automata, sun-baked frontier towns and a hero who looks permanently unimpressed by both.
The real Reeves hardly needs embellishment. Born into slavery in 1838, he escaped, later became one of the first Black deputy US marshals west of the Mississippi, and is credited with thousands of arrests in Indian Territory over a career of more than 30 years. Historians have spent decades sifting the legend from the record, and some have argued he partly inspired the Lone Ranger. Giving him steam-driven adversaries is a big swing, though the genre has done it before: the 1960s Wild Wild West was putting gadgets in gunslingers’ sleeves long before anyone thought to call it steampunk.
We have only seen the trailers, so no verdict yet. Our first look at the series, steampunk cowboys and mechanical minotaurs, covers the earlier footage, and we’ll report back once we’ve watched it. For a magazine that has been flying the brass-goggled flag for decades, a properly funded steampunk western with a real historical hero is the sort of thing we’ve been asking for. Now it just has to be good.
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