There are easier ways to get rich than digging a grave in the desert.
Jonas Crow knows this better than most. When mining baron Joe Cusco summons him to his bedside, the town expects a spectacle. Cusco is feared, despised, and obscenely wealthy. He has squeezed the land dry and worked men to the bone. Now death has come to collect its debt.
But Cusco has one final act of cruelty planned.
On the night of his passing, he orders his gold brought to him. Nugget by nugget, he swallows his fortune, turning his own body into a vault. By morning, the richest man in town is a corpse with a gold-toothed grin and a belly full of treasure.
And Jonas Crow is the only man willing to cart him out.
Ralph Meyer renders the scene in stark contrasts: lamplight flickers against Cusco’s sweat-slick face, the gold glinting as it disappears between clenched teeth. Crow stands in silhouette, tall and unreadable, his vulture perched nearby as if already anticipating the long ride ahead.
The journey that follows is less funeral procession and more slow-burn siege.
Word spreads fast. A hearse carrying a dead man stuffed with gold does not travel quietly across open country. Desperate miners, bandits, and former employees gather like dust clouds on the horizon. Each claims they deserve a piece. Each is willing to spill blood to carve it out.
Inside the carriage rides Crow, steady hands on the reins, his expression as dry as the land around him. Across from him sits a prim English governess whose composure frays with every gunshot in the distance. Somewhere behind them trails Rose, a woman with secrets of her own and an interest in Crow that runs deeper than curiosity.
Dorison’s script balances gallows humor with tightening dread. Conversations snap with wit even as rifles cock in the background. Every stop along the trail reveals another layer of Crow’s past and another reason to doubt the easy categories of hero and villain.
The desert becomes a character in its own right. Sun-bleached bones litter the sand. Saloon doors creak open to rooms thick with suspicion. Vultures circle high above, patient and impartial.
By the time the hearse reaches its destination, the question is no longer who will claim the gold. It is who will survive the journey.
The Undertaker, Volume One: The Gold Eater and The Dance of the Vultures arrives in bookstores March 31 and in comic shops April 1, 2026.
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