CoronaVirusComics ROY ROGERS COMICS "Trigger and the Race of Life and Death"

Can you tell us what's weird about the first page of this tale of Roy Rogers' horse,Trigger?

Roy, though he appears in the story, isn't named!

Only referred to as "Trigger's owner" or, later, "Trigger's master"!

Writer Gaylord DuBois and artist Harry Parkhurst treated this never-reprinted short feature from Dell's Roy Rogers Comics #26 (1950) more like an illustrated prose story than a normal comic tale, heavy on narrative captions with minimal word balloons!

The bacteria Diphtheria is still a lethal threat to this day. but standardized vaccination keeps outbreaks at a minimum.

Besides a strip in Roy Rogers Comics, Trigger (like Gene Autry's Champion and the Lone Ranger's Silver) had his own comic, which ran 16 issues!

In his own title, Trigger was shown in his re-Roy Rogers days as a wild horse traveling with a herd, but the Roy Rogers Comics strip showed him in the care of "Uncle" Mike Hanford, who told stories of Roy and Trigger in the past tense.

Was Roy (the character, not the actual Western performer) retired or deceased at the time of the "Uncle Mike" atrips?

There's never a clear answer...

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Trigger

Lives and Legend of Roy Rogers' Palamino

CoronaVirus Cowboy Comics KID COLT COMICS "Black Rider in Face to Face with Death!"

Probably the only masked Western hero to be a medical doctor in his secret identity...

...a secret the mysterious Black Rider used to his advantage in this never-reprinted story from Atlas' Kid Colt Outlaw Comics #38 (1954)!

Illustrated by Joe Kubert, this tale of infection among Indians has an unknown author due to lack of credits in the pre-Marvel Atlas Comics!.

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Western Classics

Graphic Classics Volume Twenty

CoronaVirus Cowboy Comics MONTE HALE WESTERN "Curse of Typhoid Valley"

Monte Hale, like Gene Autry, Tex Ritter, and Roy Rogers...

...was a "singing cowboy" who had his own comic during the 1940s and 50s.

(Ironically, Monte ended up as a co-founder and curator for the Gene Autry Museum in Los Angeles)

Oddly, in most of these actor-named comics, the protagonists were the actors themselves (not characters they played), even if the stories were set in the Old West!

When this tale from Fawcett's Monte Hale Western #74 (1952) was reprinted in Charlton's Monte Hale Western (1956), the newly-formed Comics Code Authority insisted on a major change...

...removing the figure of the Grim Reaper from the title page!

Charlton's editor did it on the black line plate, but didn't change the color separations, which still match the figure of the Reaper!

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Western Films of Monte Hale

CoronaVirus Cowboy Comics TOMAHAWK "Village of Death!"

Lethal epidemics are not a new phenomenon!

 In fact, they used to be fairly common until the mid-20th Century!

Westerns featured a number of pandemic/epidemic tales involving both Indians and settlers, but rarely one detailing whites deliberately exposing Native Americans to things like smallpox which occurred in real life!

This never-reprinted tale from DC's Tomahawk #125 (1969) is technically not a Western!

His series was set in the period during and after the American Revolution but before the Louisiana Purchase, so Americans had no access to land west of the Mississippi.

However, it featured Indians and, what is now the MidWest was the wild frontier at that point, so series like this and ones involving real-live personalities like Davy Crocket, Daniel Boone, et al, are at least related to Westerns, if not exactly being Westerns!

(For the last year of its' existence, the book changed to Son of Tomahawk and detailed the adult adventures of his offspring in the early Old West!)

Artist Frank (Red Sonja) Thorne is known to most comics aficionados, but writer Howard Liss is another matter entirely.

During his too-brief 1966-1970 sojurn into comics, Howard worked almost-exclusively on DC's military and Western comics!

Outside of comics, he'd written several dozen books about athletics with the best-known and best-selling being Giant Book of Strange but True Sports Stories.

(Oddly, he never worked on any of the sports one-shots like Strange Sports Stories that DC did from time to time in the Silver Age!)

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Vertigo Visions

Tomahawk

STAR RANGER "Trouble Shooters in Dude Ranch Dramatics"

What do cowboys do on Valentine's Day?

Apparently, they dress in women's clothing!

From Chester's Star Ranger #2 (1937), this never-reprinted short, written by George Nagle and illustrated by an unknown artist, is the only one of the series to feature cross-dressing.

Oddly, the strip started as "Trouble Hunters" in the previous issue, and continued after this tale with the name restored!

Why this one tale was labeled "Trouble Shooters" is unknown!

Two trivia notes:

There was no character named "Star Ranger" in Star Ranger!

This book, along with Comics Magazine Company's Western Picture Stories were the first Western comic books, coming out the same month in 1937!

SPACE WESTERN "Spurs Jackson and His Space Vigilantes Battle the Red Menace Beyond the Moon"

Didn't think we could do a Western-themed blog post that related to travel to the Moon?

Then you don't know about Charlton's 1950s title, Space Western Comics, which we covered HERE!

So, in tribute to the 50th Anniversary of Apollo 11 and the first landing of men on the Moon, we're re-presenting this funky tale for your enjoyment!

And, of course, because it was the 1950s...there had to be Communists lurking about...

This seldom-reprinted (once in b/w in 1992) tale from Charlton's Space Western Comics #43 (1953) was written by Walter (The Shadow) Gibson and illustrated by Stan Campbell.

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 Space Western Comics Store

"Werewolf Goes West" in COLOR!

Six years ago, we presented this tale in b/w...

Now, it's in bloody cool color!

Written by Nicola Cuti, illustrated by Frank Brunner, and featuring a cameo by the Masked Rider of the Plains and his Faithful Indian Companion, it's our Halloween treat to you, faithful readers!

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Wicked West

Volume 1