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The Long Haul
The year is 1871 and a government grant of $100,000 in bonds (the last payment for the building of the Central Pacific Railroad from San Francisco to Promontory) is about to be sent from Chicago to the Western Pacific offices in San Francisco, over 2000 miles of railroad away. Several Government freights have recently succumbed to the growing plague of railroad theft and the stakes of this shipment are simply too great to leave to chance. To that end, a Pinkerton agent has been brought in to oversee security. The details for this operation are top secret. The public is not even aware that the money is being sent, let alone how. But professional thief Cody Plummer has discovered the plans... and the prize is too sweet to resist.
176 pages, Paperback
First published March 9, 2005
29 people want to read
About the author
Antony Johnston
340 books397 followers** Sign up for Antony's newsletter at http://ajwriter.substack.com **
Antony Johnston is a multi-award-winning author, a New York Times bestseller, and one of the most versatile writers of the modern era.
The Charlize Theron movie Atomic Blonde was based on his graphic novel. His murder mystery series The Dog Sitter Detective won the Barker Book Award. His crime puzzle novel Can You Solve the Murder? reinvented choose-your-own-story books for a mainstream audience and was a Waterstones Paperback of the Year. And his productivity guide The Organised Writer has helped authors all over the world take control of their workload.
Antony is a celebrated videogames writer, with genre-defining titles including Dead Space, Shadow of Mordor, and Resident Evil Village to his credit. His work on Silent Hill Ascension made him the only writer in the world to have contributed to all of gaming’s ‘big three’ horror franchises.
His immense body of work also includes Marvel superheroes such as Daredevil and Shang-Chi, the award-winning Alex Rider graphic novels, the post-apocalypse epic Wasteland, and more. He wrote and directed the film Crossover Point, made entirely in quarantine during the coronavirus pandemic.
An experienced podcaster and public speaker, he also frequently writes articles on the life of an author, and is a prolific musician.
Antony is a former vice chair of the Crime Writers’ Association, a member of International Thriller Writers and the Society of Authors, a Shore Scripts screenwriting judge, and sits on the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain’s videogames committee. He lives and works in England.
Antony Johnston is a multi-award-winning author, a New York Times bestseller, and one of the most versatile writers of the modern era.
The Charlize Theron movie Atomic Blonde was based on his graphic novel. His murder mystery series The Dog Sitter Detective won the Barker Book Award. His crime puzzle novel Can You Solve the Murder? reinvented choose-your-own-story books for a mainstream audience and was a Waterstones Paperback of the Year. And his productivity guide The Organised Writer has helped authors all over the world take control of their workload.
Antony is a celebrated videogames writer, with genre-defining titles including Dead Space, Shadow of Mordor, and Resident Evil Village to his credit. His work on Silent Hill Ascension made him the only writer in the world to have contributed to all of gaming’s ‘big three’ horror franchises.
His immense body of work also includes Marvel superheroes such as Daredevil and Shang-Chi, the award-winning Alex Rider graphic novels, the post-apocalypse epic Wasteland, and more. He wrote and directed the film Crossover Point, made entirely in quarantine during the coronavirus pandemic.
An experienced podcaster and public speaker, he also frequently writes articles on the life of an author, and is a prolific musician.
Antony is a former vice chair of the Crime Writers’ Association, a member of International Thriller Writers and the Society of Authors, a Shore Scripts screenwriting judge, and sits on the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain’s videogames committee. He lives and works in England.
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
April 9, 2025
Great GN...reminded me of all the 60's Western shows on TV. I would very much like to see GN like this turned into movies; I think that there is a ready audience for intelligent Westerns to make a comeback. This book has all the elements you would be looking for in a fast pasted story that is filled with action and suspense.
August 5, 2025
Un western entretenido en el molde clásico y centrado en un gran atraco. Aunque originalmente es un cómic estadounidense de 2005, el estilo de Barreto le da un aire "Columbero" que recuerda a las grandes épocas de la historieta argentina. Una historia amena que se lee en un suspiro.
April 1, 2017
This was a really good traditional western graphic novel. It's basically about a train heist, and you get to see the gang leader gathering his team ala Ocean's Thirteen. There's the hot female, the safecracker, the tech guy (in this case, a telegraph guy), etc.
I had never read a graphic novel quite like this that caught the essence of western and heist movies so well. I have always considered Barreto to be a very underrated artist, and his work here is great as usual.
If you like westerns with train robberies, heist movies, or just western comics in general this is one to pick up. A real sleeper hit.
I had never read a graphic novel quite like this that caught the essence of western and heist movies so well. I have always considered Barreto to be a very underrated artist, and his work here is great as usual.
If you like westerns with train robberies, heist movies, or just western comics in general this is one to pick up. A real sleeper hit.
March 10, 2018
This is a good old fashioned western based around an audacious heist to steal millions as it is transported across the country by train. The story has everything you would expect from a western including whiskey drinking and card cheats as well as plenty of gun-slinging, horse riding and of course feisty western ladies who don't shy away from danger and have no problem putting the men in their lives in their place. The illustrations are nice and simple so the story is really easy to follow and flows well.
January 8, 2017
I was perusing my shelf of graphic novels and I spied this volume, which I had forgotten that I even owned. I don't remember buying it! Likely I grabbed it at a local Comic Con or maybe on a graphic-novel binge during Free Comic Book Day (alas, I miss Don's Atomic Comics on Transit Rd!). Oh well, no matter.
THE LONG HAUL is a straight-up, non-ironic Wild West heist/train robbery story. That's it. There is no artifice here, no postmodern look at the tropes. No Tarantino-esque DJANGO UNCHAINED stuff, and no UNFORGIVEN-style comment on violence. Just a no-holds-barred yarn about a onetime bank robber who has decided to mount the train robbery of the century, and if he gets to humiliate the lawman with whom he has sparred for all of his years of a life of crime, so much the better. He puts together his team of misfit criminals for this job, each one with a specific set of skills, and then he sets in motion his scheme to rob the train. That's it.
A few aspects of this story felt a little problematic to me -- notably the Native American characters and the "prostitute with the heart of gold" -- but they didn't distract me TOO much from this story. The art is terrific (I would have liked color, though!), the dialogue is snappy, and the story is briskly-paced. Basically, if you want a Western tale that might have been fun shot in Technicolor, starred James Garner, and shown on the big screen with a thundering score by Dmitri Tiomkin or Elmer Bernstein, give this a shot.
THE LONG HAUL is a straight-up, non-ironic Wild West heist/train robbery story. That's it. There is no artifice here, no postmodern look at the tropes. No Tarantino-esque DJANGO UNCHAINED stuff, and no UNFORGIVEN-style comment on violence. Just a no-holds-barred yarn about a onetime bank robber who has decided to mount the train robbery of the century, and if he gets to humiliate the lawman with whom he has sparred for all of his years of a life of crime, so much the better. He puts together his team of misfit criminals for this job, each one with a specific set of skills, and then he sets in motion his scheme to rob the train. That's it.
A few aspects of this story felt a little problematic to me -- notably the Native American characters and the "prostitute with the heart of gold" -- but they didn't distract me TOO much from this story. The art is terrific (I would have liked color, though!), the dialogue is snappy, and the story is briskly-paced. Basically, if you want a Western tale that might have been fun shot in Technicolor, starred James Garner, and shown on the big screen with a thundering score by Dmitri Tiomkin or Elmer Bernstein, give this a shot.
May 30, 2015
I picked this up at a used book sale and decided it would be a good read to bring along for a long weekend heading west (to Colorado) and it made a nice diversion during the long drive across the prairie. The comic does not really tackle any new ideas when it comes to the spaghetti western/crime caper genre but for what it is, it’s a fine little Wild West heist. The tropes are well used, for the most part, and if not fresh, don’t seem too cliched. On the other hand, the use of the Shoshone characters come off as the most stereotypical aspect of the story and, of course, the one woman in the cast is a “soiled dove.”
In spite of this, everyone is pretty well characterized and Barreto’s realistic, gritty art is a perfect medium for the tale. Following a sauve ne’er do well planning the train job of the century and crossing the plains from Chicago to Wyoming, the comic goes through the recruitment of various experts for the team, the planning, and the successful completion of the job, not unlike Ocean’s Eleven. One refreshing thing is the comparative lack of violence- while there’s some fisticuffs and gunslinging, conflicts are mainly solved through trickery and wits and no one even dies! A good natured, light hearted romp though the West, "The Long Haul" is a good choice for younger readers.
In spite of this, everyone is pretty well characterized and Barreto’s realistic, gritty art is a perfect medium for the tale. Following a sauve ne’er do well planning the train job of the century and crossing the plains from Chicago to Wyoming, the comic goes through the recruitment of various experts for the team, the planning, and the successful completion of the job, not unlike Ocean’s Eleven. One refreshing thing is the comparative lack of violence- while there’s some fisticuffs and gunslinging, conflicts are mainly solved through trickery and wits and no one even dies! A good natured, light hearted romp though the West, "The Long Haul" is a good choice for younger readers.
March 21, 2018
This is basically a pretty good graphic novel with a story that would have made a mediocre western movie. It repeatedly fails on any sense of history, including the distances between towns, what the Shoshone looked like, when mustard gas came into use, and a host of other issues. Basically, the history is bad Hollywood, at best.
On the other hand, if you view this story as being just a caper story, sort of an Ocean's Eleven on wheels, it's kind of fun to see how an "impossible" robbery could be staged, even if some of the details wouldn't have worked as described.
So, if you enjoyed older movie and TV westerns, as well as crime caper stories, this is a fun read. Otherwise, don't waste your time, because it's far from being great graphic literature.
On the other hand, if you view this story as being just a caper story, sort of an Ocean's Eleven on wheels, it's kind of fun to see how an "impossible" robbery could be staged, even if some of the details wouldn't have worked as described.
So, if you enjoyed older movie and TV westerns, as well as crime caper stories, this is a fun read. Otherwise, don't waste your time, because it's far from being great graphic literature.
March 15, 2008
I loved this! If I hadn't read We3 just before this, The Long Haul would have been the best graphic novel I'd read in years. As it stands, it's the best graphic novel I've read since last week (I did like it a little better than We3, for the record).
Nothing overly complicated here, it's just a go-for-broke heist/revenge story. But Johnston tells it in a suspenseful, smart, fun, skillful way that kept me reading compulsively. Baretto's art is beautiful, with a very classic look.
This is an excellent western, with great characters, good action, and touches of humor.
I'm looking forward to getting into the other works of both writer and artist.
Nothing overly complicated here, it's just a go-for-broke heist/revenge story. But Johnston tells it in a suspenseful, smart, fun, skillful way that kept me reading compulsively. Baretto's art is beautiful, with a very classic look.
This is an excellent western, with great characters, good action, and touches of humor.
I'm looking forward to getting into the other works of both writer and artist.
November 2, 2021
I loved this book it was like the Magnificent Seven meets Ocean’s Eleven. I’m glad they got away with the train robbery because I was really going to be disappointed if it turned out to be some kind of twist where the federal agents got the upper hand.
This is a fun little comic book with gorgeous artwork and a really lovely story!
This is a fun little comic book with gorgeous artwork and a really lovely story!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 23, 2025
I always enjoyed Eduardo Barreto's artwork. I don't recall if I ever read anything written by Antony Johnston before, but he wrote this very enjoyable Western set Mission: Impossible type heist tale .
December 27, 2020
Fun stuff. Could easily see it as a George Clooney movie.
March 23, 2023
I think it was a great graphic novel written by the Antony Johnston and Eduardo Barreto The Long Haul. One of the better Wild West style graphic novel.
November 28, 2013
Being a big fan of the Ocean's 11 movies and a bigger western fan, I was thrilled to read this. And I was not disappointed. A great western heist story. Very well put together with great characters I'd love to read more about. It's nothing new but is very well written and drawn. The art is fantastic, very classic and fit the story very well. If you like heist stories and westerns, this should satisfy.
March 21, 2015
Ex bank robber Cody plummer has left the life of bank robbing behind him. Or so we thought. After hearing that agent Harding, the same agent who busted cody in utah was working sercurity on a train that has a safe of 10% of 1.9 million dollars cody decides to assemble a perfect safe robbing crew.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 24, 2010
A fair western. Very European. Worth reading, but not worth keeping.
April 20, 2012
The Italian Job as a western.
Had I never seen the movies, I may have rated this slightly higher, maybe.
Had I never seen the movies, I may have rated this slightly higher, maybe.
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February 7, 2018Rating: 3 1/2
The art is good. Surprisingly good for b and w.
It's a fun, entertaining read. I thought it had a chance at 4 stars, but it kind of ended weakly.
Note: It was $1.9 million, not $100,000.
The art is good. Surprisingly good for b and w.
It's a fun, entertaining read. I thought it had a chance at 4 stars, but it kind of ended weakly.
Note: It was $1.9 million, not $100,000.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews