West". It ran for eight years and 59 issues. The main character was Jonah Hex, whose popularity secured his own eponymous series. In the mid-to-late 1990s, Desperadoes by Jeff Mariotte, from Image Comics/WildStorm Productions, returned Weird Western comics to the stands at a time when none of the major publishers had Western comics in their line-ups. Preacher Special: Saint of Killers, a 4-issue mini-series, was a spin-off from Preacher by Garth Ennis. 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. Films In film, The Phantom Empire (1935) is sometimes considered the first fantasy Western. Gene Autry, in his first starring role as a singing cowboy, ventures down a mineshaft and discovers a futuristic lost kingdom of the type depicted in Flash Gordon. Horror Westerns began in the 1950s with the vampire western Curse of the Undead, and continued in the 1960s with films like Billy the Kid Versus Dracula (1966), which depicted the real-life outlaw fighting against the fictional vampire, and The Valley of Gwangi (1969), in which Ray Harryhausen's special effects were used to pit cowboys against dinosaurs. Other Westerns with elements of fantasy, horror or science fiction are 7 Faces of Dr. Lao (1964), Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter (1966), High Plains Drifter (1973), The White Buffalo (1977), Pale Rider (1985), Ghost Town (1988),Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat (1989), Wild Wild West (1999), Purgatory (1999), Jonah Hex (2010), and Bone Tomahawk (2015). Television series In the 1960s, the television series The Wild Wild West brought elements of pulp espionage and science fiction to its Old West setting. The animated adventures of The Lone Ranger followed suit, with the famous Western hero encountering mad scientists and other villains not often found in the Western genre. Additionally, Rod Serling's supernatural anthology series The Twilight Zone featured a handful of Western episodes, such as "Showdown with Rance McGrew". Later series include The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. (1993–1994), which featured steampunk elements; Wynonna Earp (2016), a horror Western about a present-day woman with a magic Colt Buntline revolver who fights reincarnations of outlaws killed by her ancestor, Wyatt Earp; and Preacher (2016), based on the comic book series of the same name. Games Deadlands, first published by Pinnacle