Boom! This is Books & Biceps #320!

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BOOKS

Billy the Kid: The War for Lincoln County by Ryan C. Coleman

I’ve been fascinated with Billy the Kid since I watched Young Guns II as an eleven-year-old. Despite the fact that I was growing up near modern day Boston, the movie somehow made me want to live in the 1870s to be part of Billy’s crew and hang with dudes like Arkansas Dave Rudabaugh and Doc. And even though these were dangerous guys, when I was a kid, the idea of racing in and out towns on horses and doing whatever the hell I wanted whenever I wanted was as appealing as it gets. Also, I really wanted a classic old west nickname at the time.

Nothing was going to sound cool or rhyme with Finkel, I assure you. So maybe Billy would’ve called me something like Johnny Boston. I would’ve loved that, haha.

After the movie came out in the pre-internet days, there was very little research I could do to learn more about Kid. There was one book in the school library about outlaws and a few encyclopedia entries, but that was it. At the peak of my curiosity, I couldn’t find much about the bad ass who allegedly shot one man for every year of his life.

Since then, I’ve gone down a few internet wormholes over the years whenever I’d think of the old West or a story or book would mention Billy, but I’d never really gotten my Billy the Kid fix.

This is why I was so pumped to hear about Ryan Coleman’s new novel, Billy the Kid, because it does what few other resources on Billy have done: it fleshes out his childhood and his early years and explores how small, young, anonymous Henry Antrim step-by-step became the most famous outlaw of his era.

I was lucky enough to get ahold of an early copy of the book and I instantly reached out to Ryan for an exclusive Books & Biceps interview. You’re gonna love this one. We talk Kiefer Sutherland, real vs. fiction shootouts, Billy’s size and more. Read it and then buy the book here.

FINKEL: You and I have messaged about this, but I want to share it with the B&B crew. You were originally inspired by Billy the Kid because of Young Guns and Young Guns II - both classic 80s/90s movies. What was your favorite scene or line from Emilio Estevez that you couldn't wait to research to find out of it was true for the book? 

Coleman: It's definitely from Young Guns II and is a mostly-fabricated scene that didn’t happen in real life. Doc Scurlock, played by Kiefer Sutherland, was always my favorite character in the two movies. Cool, level-headed, but still has his friends’ backs. So my favorite scene in the film is Doc’s death. He’s shot up to hell, not going to survive and he looks at Billy and repeats the Kid’s own words back to him: “Finish the game.” Doc sacrifices himself allowing most of the group to escape.

My favorite line is also from II. Bob Olinger and Deputy Bell have Billy the Kid in the town’s jail. Billy thinks he’s cut a deal with the new territorial Governor Lew Wallace and is going to testify against the Murphy/Dolan men who participated in the Lincoln County War (which is the crux of my book!). But it’s really just a ploy to imprison and hang Billy. And Olinger, who is part of the Santa Fe Ring, is taunting and taunting and taunting the Kid, telling Billy how he puts “18 dimes in each barrel” of his shotgun. Long story short, Billy gets the drop on Olinger and kills him with his own shotgun. Then Billy says, “Best dollar-eighty I ever spent,” and cackles. I just felt, for a Hollywood movie, it really captured the impishness of the film’s portrayal of the character. And Olinger is such a bastard, you want Billy to get over on him. 

Despite all the hardship of Henry Antrim's childhood, from losing his mom to getting separated from his brother to having a deadbeat stepdad, the one person who set the tone for the boy who would become Billy the Kid was a guy named Sombrero Jack Schaffer in Silver City, New Mexico. Aside from having a tremendous nickname, why did young Henry find Sombrero Jack, who was fourteen years older, so compelling? 

To my knowledge, in all my research, not that much is known about Sombrero Jack Schaefer. Schaefer was a petty thief, drunk, and gambler…  that’s about it. Billy’s mom had died, his stepfather left for Arizona, and Billy was essentially orphaned. By all accounts, Billy was a little mischievous, but within the bounds of any normal teenager. No one looked at Billy and thought That kid is going to become an outlaw and killer.

And I think the one thing Sombrero Jack had going for him was he actually paid attention to Billy. And at this point, Billy is just looking for anything he can call “family.” So when your big brother-type figure says, “Hold on to these stolen blankets and guns for me,” Billy did it. And after Billy’s arrest, even the local newspaper wrote that Billy was just a tool for Sombrero Jack and that Sombrero Jack had been the actual thief. But Sombrero Jack skipped out of town and was never heard from again. If it weren’t for Billy going on to become the legend he was, no one would have ever heard of Sombrero Jack.

One of the themes that runs through the book was how small and weak Billy's appearance was. He's called a pip squeak, runt and other things. Even when he's trying to get labor work with George Coe, the guy says, "It's hard labor, requires strength." To which Billy says, "I ain't big, but I got a lot of fight in me." It seems like every friend and foe underestimated him. What role did his small size play in his overall legend? If he was 6'2" 200 pounds would Billy the Kid have been more dangerous and more famous? Or would he never have had to go into the life he did with size and confidence?

That’s an excellent question I’ve never thought about before! I’m going to think it through as I answer. His size and wiriness certainly played a part in his picking up a gun, which led to his fame. You can be 5’7” and 120 pounds if you’re working behind a desk, but at that size, out in that territory on your own, there is no option but to have a gun for protection. And once you do, you better be ready to use it because in a basically-lawless territory like 1870s New Mexico, someone else surely is. 

He had so many other attributes that endeared him to people—he was smart, charming, multi-lingual, affable—he may not have ever picked up a gun if he had other options in life. And without that, no one would ever have known Billy the Kid. On the one hand it’s easy to say that if he was larger, he never picks ups gun, and 150 years later no one knows who he is. On the other hand, his mom still dies, his stepfather still abandons him, he probably still hides those blankets for Sombrero Jack. But one thing he would not have been able to do is sneak out through the jail chimney and begin his life of crime. And that was the defining turning point in his life.

So final answer, if he was 6’2", 200 pounds, he couldn’t have escaped jail that first time and doesn’t become the legend he is today. 

You do a great job of showing how Billy never got nervous. This is one of my favorite passages in the book. When Billy is holding his gun at Buck Morton, wanting to shoot his longtime nemesis, you write, "Billy focused on his hand. Wasn't shaking. On his breathing. Steady and even. His palms. Dry as a bone.... He could kill Buck and still have a full appetite come dinner time." How much fun do you have writing stand-off scenes like that? Are you picturing the scene as if it's in an action movie in your head? Any other writers who do these well that you admire?

Thank you for that wonderfully kind compliment. Truly. I started out in television, writing an episode of The Walking Dead and on a short-lived series called Damien. So I guess I do think visually while writing. Staging. Who is where in the scene? Who is the perceived danger or conflict of the scene? Who is the real danger or conflict of the scene?

If you care at all about not boring people to death, then standoff scenes are actually some of the hardest to write, only because there have been so, so many excellent ones over the years in books, movies, and TV. How do you just not do some carbon copy of all the things that we’ve consumed and been influenced by? What can you do or reveal about a character that is either surprising and new or gives real insight into them as a fully fleshed out person? It’s fun to think of how Billy’s antagonist is going to meet his end but it has to be about more than just Billy kills Buck.

When it comes to other writers who do it well, I always kneel, metaphorically, at the altar of Don Winslow. His two trilogies (The Border series and City on Fire series) are so wonderfully rich and complex that when he has a standoff scene, it’s always about so much more than just what is taking place on the surface. In film, it’s Michael Mann (especially in Heat and in the Miami Vice film, when Crockett and Tubbs meet Jose Yero for the first time: “They gonna look around and go 'Ola Hijo. That's some crazy motherf*cking wallpaper, what is that? Jackson Pollock?” “No, viero. That was José Yero. Got splattered all over his own wall.”). And then Quentin Tarantino, who has done stand-offs in most of his films. There’s obviously Reservoir Dogs but I think the most intense, gripping stand-off he’s ever done is in the basement bar scene in Inglorious Basterds.

You can read the full interview HERE.

And here is my blurb for the book:

"Billy the Kid is an action-packed, fascinating look at the famous outlaw that is a more compelling and exciting prequel to Young Guns II than the actual first Young Guns film. Regulator readers: Mount up."

GET. YOUR. COPY. HERE.

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BICEPS

Last week we had an awesome debate about how much Captain America could bench, based on a comic book frame that showed him doing reps with 1100 pounds. You can read that issue here.

A vast majority of you thought he could max one ton easy:

However, someone pointed out that maybe the weight on the bench wasn’t 1100 pounds total, but 1100 pounds per set of plates on each side… Which means if Cap was doing reps with one ton, he may have had a 3,000 pound max!

Yes, this is exactly why the Books & Biceps crew exists haha. To get to the bottom of these things.

The conversation about Cap’s max brought up all kinds of strength feats people questioned from movies…

And this one that a reader brought up was my favorite because it’s from an all-time great Arnold movie: Commando.

(MEATHEAD FACT: Commando debuted in theaters TODAY in 1985)

In an early sequence in the film, we’re shown this scene: Arnold ripping down giant trees with chain saws and then hauling them out of the woods on his shoulders.

These logs are more than logs, they’re almost full grown trees, and in the scene they look like they’d be nearly impossible to haul out on foot.

Then again, this is Arnold playing the one and only John Matrix.

My original guess was that a real log that size would be 500 pounds easy.

But I found an online conversation with Arnold where he says the log weighed about 250 pounds. Still impressive for one shoulder!

QUICK FLEXES

Congrats to my old buddy Dave Bautista on his new movie Killer’s Game. Looks awesome and can’t wait to see it.

And even though he’s slimmed down, never forget that his key workout to gain massive biceps was to flex them as a vice on my head haha.

I have no comment here. This is simply one of the most insane vertical leaps from a flat foot position I’ve ever seen. Dude leaps over his own head:

STRONG LINKS:

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