Western strips in UK comics

Raven · Post by **Raven** » 19 Aug 2007, 17:49

I've found myself getting quite fond of westerns lately, and the interest naturally extends to comics. Of the American DC Showcase reprint books I certainly thought '70s Weird Western Tales star Jonah Hex's set had aged better by far than the other titles.

Moving on to UK titles ...

I bought a few 1972 Hornets recently and though, unfortunately, I found most of the contents as unappetising as I had as a boy, there was one nice little western strip tucked away in there called Buffalo Boy, about a Sioux boy whose mission in life was to protect the last small herd of buffalo not to have been killed by hide-hunters. Each week features a solid, 3 page, self-contained adventure, quite nicely written and drawn. I'd love to know the start and end dates for the strip and who drew it.

I also recently discovered another solid little western strip running in Buster and Jet in 1973 - The Duke of Dry Gulch, about an Ex-Bengal Lancer and his valet who've brought prosperity back to an Arizona ghost town.

Though I feel most of Valiant's best, most iconic strips were gone by mid to late '74, there's a nice little western serial in it, Trail to Nowhere, about a boy and a trapper heading for the 'Nowhere Mountains' through the wilderness of Arizona. It started on 25th May 1974 with the first combined issue of Valiant and Lion - it'd be good to know when it ended as it'd be nice to collect the whole story sometime.

I suppose these are all 'lost strips' you'd never normally read about on the internet, so I was wondering if anyone else had ever come across any really good western strips in the UK weeklies which might be worth hunting down - especially anything a little out of the ordinary - as we were clearly pretty good at them.

Was there really a strip somewhere about a town with a gorilla for a sheriff? (Can't remember where I heard this mentioned.)

I'm aware of Leo Baxendale's Pest of the West and the Beano's Baby Face Finlayson, by the way!

colcool007 · Post by **colcool007** » 19 Aug 2007, 18:29

Raven wrote:Was there really a strip somewhere about a town with a gorilla for a sheriff? (Can't remember where I heard this mentioned.)

There was indeed such a strip called 'The Sheriff's An Ape'. It was a D C Thomson strip and featured in the Beezer in the early 70's. Kashgar will be along in a while and give full strip details!

Not to mention the sock size of the artist.

Hotspur and Victor are also good places to find quite a few westerns. I've grown quite fond of the Slade of The Pony Express stories where he and the other main character (name escapes me for the moment) have promised to kill each other once they leave the Pony Express. Very much a Best Of Enemies storyline, but nicely structured episodes.

BTW welcome to the board. Easy to see where you got your handle from!

Raven · Post by **Raven** » 19 Aug 2007, 18:35

Thanks for the welcome and the info.

'The Sheriff's An Ape' sounds unmissable - why hasn't the movie of it been made yet?

I'd be interested to hear which title and era Slade of The Pony Express ran in at its best. Google suggests both Rover and Hornet featured it.

ROY ROGERS · Post by **ROY ROGERS** » 19 Aug 2007, 18:41

hi what about the many western pocket library comics some of the early ones are very good [ 1950 to 1960s ] you can get some sharp artwork and well written stories. the prices on ebay etc are not too bad

colcool007 · Post by **colcool007** » 19 Aug 2007, 18:46

Raven wrote:Thanks for the welcome and the info.

'The Sheriff's An Ape' sounds unmissable - why hasn't the movie of it been made yet?

I'd be interested to hear which title and era Slade of The Pony Express ran in at its best. Google suggests both Rover and Hornet featured it.

Slade was originally a text story in the Rover and the early strips in the Hornet were the stories taken from the Rover and story boarded for illustrating. There is a D C Leng book out there that is a reprint of some of the Rover stories, but it's not one that I have seen on Ebay yet or gone actively hunting for. I find that the Hornet in the 60's was far superior to the 70's Hornet.

As to the movie, where do you think inspiration for Clyde in 'Any Which Way Was Loose" came from!

Those bikers are still scared of that ape!

Peter Gray · Post by **Peter Gray** » 19 Aug 2007, 18:47

The Beano funnies
2 gun tony late 70's
Billy the kid drawn by the same artist of Billy Whizz this is before early 60's
Little Plum
Three Bears
Ding Dong Belle a women sheriff early 50's
Dandy funnies
Desperate Dan
Desperate Dawg
Bing Bang Benny by Ken Reid....love to see more in Classics...Boom! in every strip...

Dandy comic picture strip
Rip Snorter the ugliest pig in the world...what a title..a wild boar in the wild west

Beezer
Showboat circus
Buffalo boy found in the 2nd Beezer annual a boy rides a buffalo

funnies
Hillys and the Billys

Adventure stories in Dandy
Crackaway Jack very handy with an axe great fun...worth checking out 1959 late 50's early 60's

Adventure stories in the Beano
The Stage coach mystrey looks like a one off in the Beano book 1960
Hawk eye bravest of the braves
another one off in the Beano book 1960?

Lion 1966
Wildfire a wild horse in Texas

Raven · Post by **Raven** » 19 Aug 2007, 18:49

ROY ROGERS wrote:hi what about the many western pocket library comics some of the early ones are very good [ 1950 to 1960s ] you can get some sharp artwork and well written stories. the prices on ebay etc are not too bad :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

I had noticed some of those on Ebay from time to time, thanks, and they certainly have some striking covers - though I'd wondered whether the stories were any good or just churned out generic hack-type stuff! There must have been lots in the '50s when westerns were huge and filling up the Tv and cinema schedules.

Raven · Post by **Raven** » 19 Aug 2007, 18:54

colcool007 wrote:
As to the movie, where do you think inspiration for Clyde in 'Any Which Way Was Loose" came from! :lol: Those bikers are still scared of that ape!

It just sounds to me like 'Snakes on a Plane' where you could tell the Hollywood moguls the title: 'The Sheriff's an Ape' and they'd instantly give you the money to make it!

Maybe the Beezer strip influenced BJ and the Bear, too ... (Don't worry if you don't remember that one - though it did have its own UK annual, apparently with some kind of contribution from Alan Moore!)

Raven · Post by **Raven** » 19 Aug 2007, 19:01

Peter Gray wrote: ...

Lion 1966
Wildfire a wild horse in Texas

Thanks for that interesting selection, Peter. I was thinking mostly of adventure strips, but it's really interesting to know Ken Reid did a western strip - that one seemed to have passed me by! From the '50s Dandy, a little research reveals.

Actually, I think one of the best ever western strips would be Kung Fu from mid-70s Look-In; the martial arts genre, but set in the old American West - usually well plotted and written and with glorious colour sets by Martin Asbury.

philcom55 · Post by **philcom55** » 20 Aug 2007, 16:35

Raven wrote:There must have been lots in the '50s when westerns were huge and filling up the Tv and cinema schedules.

Gosh yes! - Western strips were absolutely everywhere in the 1950s and early 1960s. Some examples (leaving aside the numerous picture libraries):

Kit Carson, Strongbow and Buffalo Bill in Comet (the latter reprinted in Lion as Texas Jack)

Billy the Kid in Sun

Charles ('Oh What a Lovely War') Chilton's Riders of the Range in Eagle (also appearing in its own annuals and radio serial)

Denis McLoughlin's series of Buffalo Bill Wild West Annuals.

Steve Larrabee in Lone Star (a comic that was actually published by Die Cast Metal Tools Ltd. to promote their own toy guns!)

Rex Keene, Gun Law and the Lone Ranger in Express Weekly ("The comic with Three Western Stories!")

Four Feather Falls and the Milky Bar Kid (not to mention 'Hank') in TV Comic

Wells Fargo and Blackbow the Cheyenne in Swift

Jean Giraud's Lt. Blueberry reprinted in Valiant

Lucky Luke in Film Fun

Even some girls' comics featured western strips from time to time (eg. Pocahontas in Bunty and Westward the Wagons in Tina)

...And that barely scratches the surface! (It's also worth remembering that popular characters such as Dick Turpin and Dick Daring of the RCMP were pretty much generic Western heroes too, albeit set in other countries).

In just the same way that every actor had to include horse riding in his CV during the 1950s I reckon it must have been virtually impossible to get work as an adventure strip artist if you couldn't actually draw the things...!

- Phil Rushton

Cap Haggis · Post by **Cap Haggis** » 20 Aug 2007, 17:46

The great thing about a lot of the UK Western strips was the quality of most of the art - Don Lawrence, Frank Bellamy (anyone remember the lovely "Swade" art from Ally Sloper? - no real story just great art) and Ron Embleton amongst other brilliant artists all churning out amazing work week in week out - then there were the Marvel DC etc reprints in TV21 et al- As previosuly noted there are probably more Western strips than most folk could name a lot based on well known names from Kit Carson and Billy the Kid to to General Custard (as I called him as a kid so I'll keep that going

) - there were also brilliant newspaper strips I remember one called Matt Marriot by the totally underated Tony Weaves that appeared in the Express newspaper (also as a strip in Knockout comic in the early 60s) plus the Western Library , Cowboy Picture Library, Wild West Library and even some western strip appearing in Thriller Library (Pony Express etc) sayoing htat I was never a fan of cowboy comics they just seemed to be everywhere and had great art - although I loved Leo Baxendale's brilliant BIG CHIEF POW WOW from the Buster. I even remember a Western strip set in space in the Buster or Lion (from around 1968- 1969 ish) anyone else remember the name?????

Shaqui · Post by **Shaqui** » 20 Aug 2007, 17:59

On the subject of sci-fi westerns, short-lived 1967 City Publications comic 'Solo' ran 'Tomorrow West', about a man from the future stranded in the old west. Ran about a dozen parts, until the merger with 'TV Tornado'.

The 1980s 'Eagle' also ran an ambitious western photo-story called (I think) 'Saddle Tramp', a man who walked the old west with a saddle but no horse (no doubt cutting down the bills on hiring horses!).

philcom55 · Post by **philcom55** » 20 Aug 2007, 18:51

Cap Haggis wrote:Frank Bellamy (anyone remember the lovely "Swade" art art from Ally Sloper?)

Yup!

He also did a marvelous cowboy spoof for the Monty Python Spinoff Bert Fegg's Book for Boys & Girls - not to mention his very first Garth storyline in which General Custard finally met his just dessert!

- Phil Rushton

colcool007 · Post by **colcool007** » 20 Aug 2007, 19:37

philcom55 wrote:
Raven wrote:There must have been lots in the '50s when westerns were huge and filling up the Tv and cinema schedules.
....Denis McLoughlin's series of Buffalo Bill Wild West Annuals...

Thanks for reminding me that I have two of those. Denis' art is first rate in them and once I get back to the UK, I will happily sell them to a good home.

Brendan McGuire · Post by **Brendan McGuire** » 20 Aug 2007, 22:37

General Custer also featured in Jag.

Comics UK