Western strips in UK comics

Lime Street Leopard · Post by **Lime Street Leopard** » 20 Aug 2007, 23:15

Hi folks I,m new here,please be gentle.
With regard to UK Western strips I could never warm to EL MESTIZO in BATTLE back in 77 I think.Superbly drawn by Carlos Ezquerra if I remember correctly.This American Civil War strip just seemed out of place to me.I must dig them out for a reassessment.
I was about 14 at the time and regularly skirted this strip every week for the sanctuary of the World War 1 and 2 strips.
Then again,slighly off topic,I always thought SPINBALL should've went to 2000 ad.Despite ACTION joining BATTLE being the reason SPINBALL ended up here.I always thought that it would have been a great addition to THARG's Thrill based Progs.

Raven · Post by **Raven** » 21 Aug 2007, 01:25

Yee-haw! What a range of western strips. Love the sound of the science fiction westerns.

I was hoping a few suggestions might turn up from the late Sixties to mid-Seventies as it'd be cheaper to buy a few issues sometime - for example, Express Weekly looks like a lovely, classy comic to me but usually going at over a fiver per issue, it'd probably end up costing a fortune to build up a whole serial.

Interesting to hear there was a western serial in Battle in 77, Leopard. Hopefully you'll let us know what you think if you do reassess.

Also, '70s-wise, Valiant Annual 1979 features a sharpshooter on the cover so there may well be something in there, too.

I read - and enjoyed - reprints of Baxendale's Big Chief Pow Wow, often printed back to back to make double pagers, in my weekly Buster as a boy - it seemed obsessed with chips. I'm not sure how historically accurate that was.

Oh, and I don't think anyone's mentioned The Topper's Figaro yet! (I've always especially liked his horse.)

karl · Post by **karl** » 21 Aug 2007, 17:38

i have collected the 'texas jack' strip from Lion of the late 60's if you are interested. I think they were reprints of 'buffalo bill' from Comet but i can't be sure

philcom55 · Post by **philcom55** » 21 Aug 2007, 20:47

karl wrote:i have collected the 'texas jack' strip from Lion of the late 60's if you are interested. I think they were reprints of 'buffalo bill' from Comet but i can't be sure

I'm pretty sure they were. (nice, long, self-contained stories with often excellent artwork by the likes of DC Eyles, Geoff Campion, Jesus Blasco, etc.) The odd thing is I looked at a 1952 Knockout Annual on a local market stall only this afternoon and was astonished to find that it too featured a Texas Jack story; what's more Buffalo Bill himself actually appeared in the same tale!

Does anyone out there know the real origin of this intriguing character...?

- Phil Rushton

Kashgar · Post by **Kashgar** » 23 Aug 2007, 11:30

Raven wrote: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!

Hi Raven, Sorry I haven't been online of late or else I'd have come up with a few details/suggestions for you sooner.
First off the exact publication details of the Fleetway stuff you mention was as follows-
The Ghostly Guardian - Valiant 23/5/70-25/9/71
Raven on the Wing - Valiant 2/3/68-18/1/75. The only other comic title he featured in as far as I can remember was Vulcan in the issue dated 13/12/75 which was actually a reprinting of a strip that had originally appeared in the Valiant Summer Special in 1969.
Trail to Nowhere - Valiant & Lion 25/5/74-21/12/74
The Duke of Dry Gulch Buster 28/10/72-21/4/73 although this was actually a reprint from Valiant 28/9/63-21/3/64.
Now to 'Our Sheriffs an Ape'. This was an unusual strip in that it only ever featured in either Beezer annuals or Summer Specials, never in the weekly comic. The scripts however came from a much earlier text story in the Thomson boy's paper Skipper in 1940, a story I might add that was illustrated throughout by the great Dudley Watkins and gave rise to some great Watkins' covers for the paper in its last full year of publication.
Between 1969 and 1988 the character featured in 16 Beezer books as well as turning up in the 1973 and 1975 Summer Specials.Artwork by both Bill Holroyd and latterly Bill Hill.
I'll check out the exact details of Hornet's Buffalo Boy for you in due course but in my mind's eye I'm sure it was drawn by Felix Carrion.
Killer Slade of the Pony Express is a wonderful character forever the bane of his arch nemesis Wal Loader's life. These two were the star characters of seven text series in Rover in the 1950's and several of these were converted into picture strips in the Hornet in the next decade.
Other western highlights in the Thomson boys picture papers in the 1960's would certainly include the J T Edson scripted The Town Tamers in the Victor, and The Fighting Barber of Six-Trails in Hotspur, a title which also devoted its covers to 'true' western adventures for eight years from 1962.
Hornet in turn also featured a fair amount of western related material including, unusually for Thomsons, a strip based on a T V series in this instance the popular western Laramie.

Raven · Post by **Raven** » 24 Aug 2007, 00:33

Thanks for alerting me to Texas Jack, Karl - I think the earliest Lions I have are circa 1971 so I haven't come across that one.

Kashgar, many thanks indeeed for all that wonderful information! Very grateful for the Valiant strip dates - especially for Raven and The Ghostly Guardian (are you at all fond of these two strips yourself?) and all the others - invaluable information for locating the right issues on Ebay and elsewhere. I do have that Vulcan with the colour Raven strip and had presumed it was from a special as it certainly wasn't in the style of the weekly episodes, or particularly good.

If you ever do get time to check out Buffalo Boy I'll be grateful - wouldn't mind checking out more of those; do you recall it being a worthwhile, consistent strip yourself? - but that's a wealth of information already.

The Hotspur serials sound interesting, too.

I appreciate you taking the time and trouble to share all that.

Incidentally, I also recall a colour two page Lone Ranger strip in early issues of Whoopee but it always seemed like it had been bought in - it never quite seemed to fit properly in the comic.

Kremmen · Post by **Kremmen** » 24 Aug 2007, 12:03

I, too, remember the Lone Ranger strip in Whoopee. Wasn't it full-colour in the middle pages? At least at first. The free gift in issue 2 was a Lone Ranger mask, if I remember. What struck me about it was that if someone was shown thinking, instead of a cloud-shaped speech balloon, what we saw was a spiky thing with the thought dialogue inside. Perhaps indicating that the strip was an import, as you guess.

Post by **AndyB** » 24 Aug 2007, 23:20

in fairness, nearly all of Whoopee's strips had square speech balloons and angular thought balloons - like pinking shears - was this the case from the earliest days as well as later?

Kashgar · Post by **Kashgar** » 25 Aug 2007, 11:31

Hi Raven, The Buffalo Boy strip appeared in Hornet in issues 436 (15/1/72)
-450 (22/4/72).
For some reason nearly all of my favourite western stories are exactly that and appeared in Thomsons later boy's story papers, so aren't actually picture strips at all. 'The Equaliser' was great in Rover & Wizard as was the fabulous 'Warriors of the Spotted Horse' in the same paper. Thomson's boys story papers and picture papers had a proud tradition of printing great western material but if I had to plump for one character above all who was Thomson's greatest Western hero it would actually be the anti-hero J A Slade, the epitome of the bad guy made good and the series 'The Last Days of a Gunman' is certainly one of the best stories I have ever read.

Raven · Post by **Raven** » 25 Aug 2007, 18:10

Thanks for that, Kashgar. A short run for Buffalo Boy then with a mere fifteen strips.

Incidentally, though you say Raven on the Wing ran till 18th Jan 75, he's not in any of the 1974 Valiants I have from the Valiant/Lion merger issue of 25th May 74 onwards - no sign of him in June, August, September or November 74 - so unless he briefly reappeared in December 74/January 75, was I not correct in suggesting that the strip finished on 18th May 74?

philcom55 · Post by **philcom55** » 25 Aug 2007, 18:52

Raven wrote:was I not correct in suggesting that the strip finished on 18th May 74?

Nope! Your namesake came out of retirement for one last season from 14th Dec 74 - 18th Jan 75 when he helped his team to win the Champions' Cup!

- Phil Rushton

Raven · Post by **Raven** » 25 Aug 2007, 19:07

Ooh - an extra six strips!

Captain Storm · Post by **Captain Storm** » 26 Aug 2007, 11:30

Oh, and I don't think anyone's mentioned The Topper's Figaro yet! (I've always especially liked his horse.)

Wasn't Figaro in the Victor

Raven · Post by **Raven** » 26 Aug 2007, 11:50

Captain Storm wrote:
Oh, and I don't think anyone's mentioned The Topper's Figaro yet! (I've always especially liked his horse.)
Wasn't Figaro in the Victor :?:

I knew the strip from Topper. Did he appear in both? I wonder if one was reprints from the other.

colcool007 · Post by **colcool007** » 26 Aug 2007, 15:40

Raven wrote:
Captain Storm wrote:
Oh, and I don't think anyone's mentioned The Topper's Figaro yet! (I've always especially liked his horse.)
Wasn't Figaro in the Victor
I knew the strip from Topper. Did he appear in both? I wonder if one was reprints from the other.

The Victor Figaros (Doesn't that sound like a great name for an indie band?) are reprints. As were the Ruffies and the Tuffies.

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