Western strips in girls' comics

[Phoenix]

How long did 'Pocahontas' and the 'Scarlet wagon' run for Phoenix?

Where Pocahontas - Red Indian Princess is concerned, I can't answer the question because I don't have the issue containing the final instalment. All I can say is that she is in 10 (Mar. 22 1958) but not in 18, the next issue in my collection. However, the serial Maid Marian starts in 18, so I will stick my neck out and suggest the strong possibility that Pocahontas ended in 17 (May 10 1958) and was replaced by a similar tale steeped in what I'll call historical folklore. I'm quite ready to be proved wrong though.

I can be more certain about The Scarlet Wagon though, matrix. It finished in issue 27 (Jul. 16 1960). I don't have that issue either but I do have 26, in which the story is very close to its conclusion, and 28, by which point it has finished. It had been running as just a single-page instalment for a couple of weeks prior to its conclusion. Perhaps by that time the editor was more focused on Dixie At Dude Ranch, although as that was set in a kind of holiday camp, it wasn't at all a like-for-like replacement.

[Phoenix]

Mighty Mo appeared in Bunty, but I have no information as to when she appeared.

Thank you for that, Tammyfan. I have now found your scans in the second Bunty For Girls annual called A Girl's Best Friend. Mo's adventures, like those of Toots, or Judy's Teaser Twins, are not really of great interest to me because they are not serial stories. In my view, their natural milieu would be The Beano. I just can't take them seriously, which presumably is why I haven't catalogued Mighty Mo.

[matrix]

Thankyou for the reply Phoenix. It looks like 'Westward the wagons' was the longest running western strip in a girls comic, running for just under two and a half years, I think a case of... in the right comic, at the right time!

I have found another western strip that ran for a about six weeks in 'Tina' comic, at the end of 1972 and finshing in January 1973. This one is a tomboy-cowgirl strip as well called 'Candy's no lady!' With Candy taking on bank robbers and anyone else that crossed her!

I am probably way off Phil, but could the artist of 'Four Winds Ranch' be Dudley Pout?

[Tammyfan]

Mighty Mo appeared in Bunty, but I have no information as to when she appeared.

Thank you for that, Tammyfan. I have now found your scans in the second Bunty For Girls annual called A Girl's Best Friend. Mo's adventures, like those of Toots, or Judy's Teaser Twins, are not really of great interest to me because they are not serial stories. In my view, their natural milieu would be The Beano. I just can't take them seriously, which presumably is why I haven't catalogued Mighty Mo.

Yes, Mighty Mo was a cartoon strip, not a serial. But she was still a Western that appeared in a girls comic, so I feel she should be mentioned on this thread.

[Phoenix]

Yes, Mighty Mo was a cartoon strip, not a serial. But she was still a Western that appeared in a girls comic, so I feel she should be mentioned on this thread.

Of course she should, and I am still interested in finding out when she did appear.

[matrix]

Tammyfan previously mentioned that 'Tammy' comic did not have any western strips in it.
Although not a comic strip, I thought I would include this story of the "Oatman family massacre", that appeared in the 1977 'Tammy' annual.

The story itself brings home the reality of life in the wild west. If anyone would like to read more here is a wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olive_Oatman

[philcom55]

Dudley Pout is an interesting thought Matrix, though I'm not aware of him working in black and white - or for any comics but Eagle and Girl (his Princess Tina strips were, of course, all reprinted from the latter title). Personally I was wondering if 'Four Winds Ranch' could have been drawn by the Argentinean D'Adderio whose brushwork had a similarly luxuriant quality - though I admit it's an equally 'off the wall' suggestion.

That's a nice illustration for 'Slaves of the Apaches'. I'm guessing the feature might have been reprinted from Look & Learn, but while the style seems hauntingly familiar I can't put a name to the artist. Oliver Frey perhaps...?

Here are a couple more 'Ranch' stories that appeared in School Friend during the 1950s, followed by an early series in which the 'community' aspect was supplied by a school:







(I wonder if 'Katy of Cedar Creek' could have also been drawn by the 'Four Winds' artist?)

Incidentally, it's worth remembering that the Amalgamated Press operated a virtual Western factory in order to supply material for their popular Cowboy Picture Library during the 1950s. As a result it's hardly surprising that their girls' titles featured the genre more frequently than those produced by DC Thomson. As far as the 'gender divide' goes it's interesting to note that the grizzled old owlhoot 'Barry Ford' - one of their best and most prolific Western writers, who also supplied a regular 'scrapbook' of informative articles about the old West for titles such as Sun, Top Spot and Lion - was in reality a pretty young divorcee called Joan Whitford!

- Phil Rushton

[Tammyfan]

You would think that Little House on the Prairie would prompt some Western stories in the 1970s, but no. Other tv series such as The Man from U.N.C.L.E., The Good Life and Grange Hill did make their influence felt in girls' titles. Maybe British-made shows were more likely to influence girls' comics than overseas ones?

[felneymike]

Love Story Picture Library no 690 from (probably) 1968 is a western, called "Her Kind of Man"

[Tammyfan]

The Button Box from Tammy held a collection of buttons, each one with a story to tell. Each week we receive a story from the button box. Anyway, some of the stories did have Western settings. One, the barrel button, tells how a water barrel saved the day when rustlers strike a ranch. The snake button tells how a man was shunned because he worked with snakes until he applied his snake skills to saving a woman's life. A placard of buttons in an exhibition that read 'My Johnnies No Coward' tells how a town branded a man a coward and an outcast because he was discharged from the army for cowardice, but he was finally given a chance to prove different when he dies saving a child from stampeding cattle.

I don't have the collection out right now to provide scans. But The Button Box was one rare outlet for Tammy to produce some Western stories.

[philcom55]

Unless you count the Beverly Hillbillies Lady Penelope didn't include any Western shows among its TV strips. However it did devote several pages of one issue to the fascinating(?) subject of Western Fashion!



...And if that wasn't enough the Men from UNCLE encountered more than their fair share of American Indians!



(I don't know about anyone else but I could never quite understand what The Man From UNCLE was doing in a girls' comic anyway. Surely it would have been more at home in a boys' comic like TV21? )

- Phil Rushton

[Phoenix]

I could never quite understand what The Man From UNCLE was doing in a girls' comic anyway. Surely it would have been more at home in a boys' comic like TV21

That's no doubt because you are not female, Phil. Surely it was because girls found David McCallum and Robert Vaughn eminently fanciable.

[philcom55]

Presumably that's why Ben-Hur got four pages in Diana no.1 (in spite of Mort Sahl's memorable four-word review of the film: “Loved him, hated Hur"). The fact that such 'beefcake' strips died out after the first year or so indicates that the female readership didn't swoon over them quite as much as the (predominantly male) publishers hoped!

- Phil R.

[Phoenix]

Presumably that's why Ben-Hur got four pages in Diana no.1

I don't think so, Phil. It is made quite clear at the head of the first page that the strip is based on Lew Wallace's novel, and there is also a boxed disclaimer stating This presentation is adapted from the novel and does not follow the popular film version. I do, of course, realise that the film was also based on the novel, but it is the film that has the beefcake. Ben Hur in the Diana strip looks nothing like Charlton Heston.

Yes, it is a four-page strip, but Ben Hur doesn't appear at all before the third page, so as far as he's concerned, it's a two-page strip. Furthermore, it did not continue as a four-pager. By issue 3 it had become two, which became the norm for all future story strips in the Getting To Know section. To be fair, I can't speak for issue 2 as I haven't got it. It is also worth remembering that Thomsons would have had a bank of at least five more issues ready for distribution when issue 1 reached the newsagents and bookstalls, so the move to two pages was not influenced by any reaction to issue 1.

On the other hand, the artist drawing the The Man From U.N.C.L.E strip has clearly been instructed to portray David McCallum and Robert Vaughn as accurately as possible. I notice that Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's copyright is acknowledged below your posted panel so maybe they were laying down the rules.

I'll have to leave it to others to tell me to what extent the age of the girls is a factor in fancying Heston, McCallum and Vaughn, and indeed where choosing to buy Diana and/or Lady Penelope is concerned.

[philcom55]

It was only the very first episode of Diana's adaptation of 'Ben-Hur' that stretched to four pages. As you say it's clear this was based on the original novel rather than the film, but it wouldn't be the first time that a comic attempted to 'piggyback' on the success of a recent film or TV series by concentrating on a version of the same story that didn't require any copyright payments (just look at all the 'unofficial' Robin Hood and Davy Crockett strips that popped up during the late 1950s!). The fact that they followed 'Ben' up with 'El Cid' a few months later certainly suggests that DC Thomson had Charlton Heston in mind - even if they weren't able to use his likeness.

- Phil R.