[Robb_K]

Women Outlaws 2
What should I expect from sensationalist, Victor Fox's special comic book about Women Outlaws?
Stories based on attention-grabbing headlines!  The artwork is below par, as was fairly common for Fox Features.  Not a very fun book to read.  I assume that most women wouldn't enjoy it much, because the women lead characters in the stories were extremely selfish, greedy, unfeeling murderers.  Kind of depressing to read about mind sick people whose main object in life is stealing from others and killing them if they get in the way of that goal.

(1)Hattie Long - Beautiful Blonde Bandit - The Cursed Cayuse
Wow!  A bank robber and Highwayman (stage Coach robber???), who never fired his gun during a robbery, teams up with a trigger happy gun Mol, who specialises in murdering robbery victims!!!  What an unlikely pair!  I'm surprised that as an amateur historian, I've actually never heard of Hattie Long.  They robbed 7 different banks in a week.  I find it difficult to believe that they could find and get to 7 different towns in The Wyoming Territory within a week, given the great distances between towns and mountain passes to ride through in The Wyoming Territory during the 1880s.  Hattie was too greedy and too bloodthirsty to last very long as a criminal.  The young readers get the message that crime doesn't pay.

(2)Belle Starr - She Sold Her Soul to Satan
I HAVE heard about the famous, Belle Starr, having seen the 1940s Randolph Scott feature film, "Belle Starr, Bandit Queen", and read about her in books, as well.  She started off as a well-to-do daughter of a Southern Gentleman, who lost everything during The US Civil War.  She was used to luxuries, and determined to have all that money can buy even if it meant a life of crime.  She teemed up with a rustler named Reed, married him and formed a gang.  When he got killed for cheating a gang member out of his full cut, she teemed up with another gang member, Sam Starr.  They got married.  They were too greedy, and cheated their partners, too.,  So, it led to their premature deaths.  Another story of sick, greedy people.

(3)A Slug For The Sheriff - Text Story
For a 2-page text story, this story had a good plot, with lots of suspense, and a perfect twist ending, while following the rules that the villain gets his/her just punishment in the end, and is not glorified.

(4)Killer At Large - True Story (Condensed 1-Pager)
A VERY sad story about a very sick person.  It shows a great danger that women may have to face, especially if they are regularly alone after dark.  I suppose this feature was added to this book as a filler.  It's definitely a downer to the spirit.  It can't be a lesson to boy readers, as almost all of them aren't likely to ever want to murder a woman just because she turns down their offer of companionship, impersonal recreational sexual activities, etc.  I really don't see the point of including it.  I suppose it could be a reminder for them to be more appreciative and considerate of the mothers, sisters, and future girlfriends and wives (which can't be a bad thing). 

(5)Shanghai Mary - Wild Gal Of The West
Shanghai Mary predicted her own death trying to Shanghai sailors off their own ship to another.  Crime doesn't pay.  Villains ALWAYS lose, in the end.

(6)Little Rick - Wild Gal Of The West (short)
Wow!!!  A late teen or young man took his little sister on robbing raids on The Chinese gold mining camps in the foothills of The Sierra Nevada Mountains east of San Francisco.  What nerve he had, and what an awful example he set for his young, 15 year old sister, not to mention his lack of care for her welfare, and upbringing (learning values and attitude on way of life), not to mention risking her life before she had a chance to learn what life is about.  What nerve she had, having the guts to take over leadership of a gang of thugs after stabbing their leader to his death!  From then on, she and her gang terrorised The Chinese Community in The Bay Area.  Eventually, they  broke into a gun store, stole an arsenals worth, and planned to murder every Chinese person in The Bay Area.  I wonder what made her hate The Chinese so much?  Maybe her parents were murdered by a Chinese gang???  She became known as  "The Butcher of The Barbary Coast".  Interesting that a group of San Francisco Vigilantes (an ordinary citizens' armed posse) fought against them, and killed them, to end their reign of terror against the Chinese Community.  I'll bet this is a part of California history that wasn't taught in California schools (although the anti-Chinese laws on the books in California cities during the 1800s, and popular prejudice against them, is well known.

(7)Poker Annie - Wild Gal Of The West (short)
Apparently she was such a good poker player, and won so much that people thought she was a cheat.  It's one thing to add short information one or 2 page fillers.  But this one is so short that it wasn't worth throwing into this book.  Better to highlight less different women of the Old West, and actually tell enough about the few that readers could even place some attention on them.

(8)Trigger Tess - Wild Gal Of The West (short)
Yet another waste of 2 pages.  Trigger Tess, big city slicker has the nerve to rob banks at gunpoint and risk being hanged for murder, and knows too little about how gunslingers use the guns, so lands in prison for a long term.  I'd rather have been able to read a 6 page longer fully-fleshed out lead story for this book, than get these 3 2-page vignettes of  3 unusual females' short and bloody criminal "careers".

[SuperScrounge]

I chose ths topic because I am a fan of westerns and wanted to highlight that the genre is currently global and not by any means confined to the land of origin.
In fact it could be argued that Westerns are more popular outside of the US than in it.

Well, part of that is probably the Western glut that popped up when Westerns were popular and TV just made it worse when studios realized they could take their old movies and sell them to TV and use their old sets and costumes to make more and more Westerns.

When I was a kid looking for something to watch on TV it was amazing how many reruns of westerns I would come across. I still wince when I come across westerns. Not that the westerns were bad, but too much of something just makes one want to see something different.

And while the pure western is rare these days western plots and themes can show up in other genres. Star Trek was sold as "Wagon Train to the stars" and episodes like Devil In The Dark takes a western premise 'the heroes must protect miners from a wild animal' gussy it up in sci-fi elements and 'Hey, look! Totally not a western!' 

[Quirky Quokka]

And while the pure western is rare these days western plots and themes can show up in other genres. Star Trek was sold as "Wagon Train to the stars" and episodes like Devil In The Dark takes a western premise 'the heroes must protect miners from a wild animal' gussy it up in sci-fi elements and 'Hey, look! Totally not a western!' 

I have one word, SuperScrounge. Firefly!  Weirdest mashup ever, but somehow worked.

Cheers

QQ

[The Australian Panther]

Firefly worked because of the quality of the scripts and because the producer, Josh Whedon , had control over the show.   
Then there is Cowboys vs Aliens [here is the movie - in Russian!]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8HZKPhStFc

Aren't I good to you!

And while the pure western is rare these days western plots and themes can show up in other genres. Star Trek was sold as "Wagon Train to the stars" and episodes like Devil In The Dark takes a western premise 'the heroes must protect miners from a wild animal' gussy it up in sci-fi elements and 'Hey, look! Totally not a western!' 

Oh, you can argue that a large porportion of Action movies and TV crime shows are basically westerns.
Mad Max? particularly the first movie. Aren't Denzel Washington's 'The Enforcer' and Keanu Reeves' 'John Wick' basically Western Heroes? Dirty Harry, anyone?
Akira Kurosawa's 'Seven Samurai' was basically a Western and then it was turned into an actuall western, 'The Magnificant Seven.'  Both masterful films.
And so it goes.   
And I just found this.
Snow White and the Seven Samurai [2024]
And of course, Eric Roberts is in it.
I didn't think my mind could still be boggled.
The director also did 'Night of the Tommyknockers' a horror western.
   

[SuperScrounge]

El Lobo the Man from Nowhere #2

The Showdown

Okay.

The art seemed stiff at points while still being good-looking art.

The writing could have been a little better. Funny how putting dialogue in caption boxes kind of distances the reader from the characters in the story. Also by having your character essentially being Superman it's tough to worry about the guy. The people one should feel worried about (the Londons) are off on the sidelines away from the actual danger, whereas the villains unintentionally earn sympathy by being emotional and directly affected.

I have one word, SuperScrounge. Firefly!  Weirdest mashup ever, but somehow worked.

I tried watching it. I think they took the term 'space western' too literally. The western clothes that looked like they had been swiped from an old TV western was just laziness. I can accept that fashion is cyclical, but in the future they should be using fabrics that you wouldn't have seen in the old west. like maybe take some of those old silver clothes that used to be common in old sci-fi and cut it into a western style vest, or a hat. Give it an old, but new look. Not that the wardrobe was the only reason I wasn't a fan, but that was the biggest blow to my suspension of disbelief.

Then there is Cowboys vs Aliens

Here's where I first encountered the story... as a webcomic https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/CowboysAndAliens/

Yep, back in 2006 (that long???) Platinum Comics bought webcomic host Drunk Duck with the idea that they could build an audience by posting pages of their comics to the web.

It wasn't a terrible idea, several webcomics had built an audience who bought print collections, but they had honestly built those readers, whereas Platinum was hoping to astroturf an audience to comics they had already decided to print without knowing if there was an audience or not.

[Robb_K]

My favourite book of the 4 is the French "Pecos Bill" book, because the artwork is superb, and a rare treat - by far the best of any of that in the 4 books; and the story about crooks illegally mining a toxic mineral using a hydraulic machine(water wheel?) and keeping the Native American tribal members away because of a legendary curse gives a good, suspenseful plot based on several good ideas.  Unfortunately, we only have this single episode(which is one of many).  I didn't like the "El Lobo" story, because he seems to be an immortal Superhero.  I didn't like Women Outlaws of The West, because the stories were mostly just robbing and killing people, wasting their own lives, and dying a violent death in retribution (too much like today's news to be "entertaining").  I did also like "Lucky Lannagan", because the artwork was second best, and the story was decent, with suspense, sand a decent ending, despite being a little abrupt. 

[Quirky Quokka]

Re El Lobo, Robb said:

I don't like the dialogues being mixed into the narrative boxes, mixed in with the narratives.  I prefer dialogue balloons with tails tapering off to a thin "arrow" pointing towards the speakers' mouths.

and SuperScrounge said:

Funny how putting dialogue in caption boxes kind of distances the reader from the characters in the story.

Yes, I agree. I'm used to having narration boxes that are just narration and then speech balloons for the dialogue. It was a bit offputting to have all the 'he said/she said' tags in the boxes rather than as balloons. I wonder if it was written as a short story first and then the story was cut up into the boxes rather than using speech balloons? Most other Aussie comics of the times used the standard method, so I wonder why Chatto did it this way? As SuperScrounge says, it does distance you a bit. It makes it more like an illustrated story than a comic book.

Robb said:

Keith Chatto's artwork is decent, with lots of detail, although there are a lot of similar standing poses, showing little movement, or variation in scene point-of-view in the staging in the first half of the story.  His use of dark and light contrast, and shading is quite good, however.  The latter half of the story's pages display better camera angles and staging, and a little more emotion in the characters' faces.  But, the artwork, in general, seems somewhat stiff to me.

I agree. I thought the artwork was a bit patchy. Some was really good (e.g., the horses), but there wasn't much expression or action. I wonder if that was done on purpose for El Lobo himself to make him appear more mysterious? And the Kid's mouth looked too wide in a lot of the frames, which made him look a bit like a ventriliguist's dummy.

Cheers

QQ

[Quirky Quokka]

El Lobo

Thanks Downunder Dan for the extra info about El Lobo and the proliferation of western comics in Australia. I still think it's odd, but they've shown their popularity. We have stores here called newsagents (I know it's different in US, not sure about elsewhere). They still sell newspapers, magazines, stationery supplies and a few selected comics (mainly Archie, Phantom and some aimed at young kids). They used to sell a lot more magazines and comics when I was growing up, but with the advent of comic book stores and online magazines, a lot of them have diversified and sell more gift items and lotto tickets these days. But the reason I mention it is that they still sell the little western novellas in A5 size with the paper covers like magazines. So they must still be popular. My local book exchange also has a stack of them and Jeremy, the owner, says he often gets men coming in and looking for them. So these kinds of stories still fill a niche.

Now to this comic book.

The colouring on the cover was interesting, with subdued reds. If that's the Kid in black, he's drawn better here than inside. I had to look twice at the pic of the dog in front of the horse. I don't think the overlapping is in the best position. For me, it would have been better if the dog's head didn't obscure the horse's head so much. But we immediately have a sense of the story. The good guy in white, with a wolf-like dog like the Phantom, and a bad guy in black. The title says it all. There'll be a showdown.

Page 2 gives us a quick synopsis. As this book is #2, I did wonder if some of the story followed on from Issue #1, which we unfortunately don't have on the site. There were a few parts in the story where they seemed to refer to something that may have happened earlier.

I thought the art was a little patchy - excellent in parts (e.g., the horses), but the faces weren't always great. And as Robb said, there wasn't as much action or interesting perspectives. I couldn't get past the way the Kid's mouth was drawn. It often looked a little too big and sometimes reminded me of a ventriliquist's dummy. It would have been good if we had a bit more background on the Kid. What made him the way he is at such a young age? Though there was a line somewhere that indicated he might not be as young as we think. In any case, it's hard to believe a character who seems to be pure evil without knowing what made him that way.

There was a nice touch with the page headers though. Did you notice that each page starts with a different header panel? (I probably wouldn't have noticed except it was mentioned in the blurb in my 'Sunbeams' book on the history of Australian comics.)

I found it a bit offputting that the dialogue was done in narration boxes with 'he said/she said' rather than in speech bubbles. I wonder why Chatto chose to do it that way?

The story was an interesting idea, but I wonder if we find out more about the man of mystery as the issues progress. Is he a ghost? Does he have superpowers? It was hard to tell if he was shot, but the bullets made no difference, or if all the bullets missed him. The dog was injured, so we know he was real. I assume the dog lives to fight another day, but it would have been good to see that.

Overall, an interesting comic, but I didn't like it as much as Lucky Lannagan.

Cheers

QQ

[SuperScrounge]

Women Outlaws #2

Cover
Open that shirt a few more inches and it would be an uncover.   
Easy to see who the intended audience was.


Hattie Long the Beautiful Blonde Bandit
What a nice girl. *rolls eyes*

Kind of feel sorry for George. Sure he probably wasn't as nice as the story implies, but couldn't he have found a nice woman blackmailer, or poisoner? 


Belle Starr
The writer seems to have compressed events of her life and increased her criminal tendencies and even got her ending wrong.

Admittedly the writer didn't have access to Wikipedia in those days, but there must have been something he could have looked up in a library.

Her Wikipedia entry has a picture of her and Blue Duck that the artist obviously didn't have access to.

Also Sam Starr in the comic looks Irish, but the real man was a Cherokee Indian.

Sam Starr was killed in a shootout with his lawman cousin in 1886 whereas Belle was mysteriously shot returning home in 1889.


A Slug For The Sheriff
Okay.

No women at all in this story.


Killer At Large
For a book called WOMEN Outlaws, the woman should have been the killer instead of the man.


Shanghai Mary
Eh. Might have been more interesting if they had been longer and showed some different ways of shanghaiing sailors.

How did that knife stay upright in an unconscious man's hand. You have to consciously hold the hand that way.


Little Rick
Could of used more fleshing out.


Poker Annie
Feels like a two-page segment they pulled out of a longer story for some quick filler. No build-up, no back story, and no real ending. Just two pages with a fight that looked good.


Trigger Tess
Despite the name the 'story' was just about a tidbit about what some gunslingers did.


Interesting to look at but could have used better writers.

[crashryan]

It's been a weird, weird couple of weeks. I'll try to squeeze in a few comments on this Western roundup.

Lucky Lannagan

This is typical for a Picture Library western. A stalwart if personality-free hero, a passel of bad hombres, a frightened widow, a daring lad--and lots of action. The story moves slowly, though, thanks mostly to the captions in every panel over-explaining everything. The scriptwriter seems not to trust the reader (or maybe the artist?) to understand the action by reading the dialogue and looking at the pictures. A random example is our page 29. In the first panel we see Worton handing Jimmy paper and a pencil as he orders the kid to draw the map. Why do we need a caption to tell us what we're seeing?

Jimmy wonders what to do. His thoughts end with an ominous, "If I do draw the map I'll not be needed anymore--and--" In the next panel the caption states the obvious: "But Jimmy dared not finish THAT thought." We could have done without the caption. In fact, without it Jimmy's unfinished thought would have carried more dramatic impact.

In the last panel, the caption blathers on about the outlaws talking, Jimmy recognizing his surroundings, the jagged rocks, etc. etc. Especially irksome is the line "Maybe he could hide in them--if he was quick!" Thank you, Captain Obvious. We could have dumped the entire caption and simply had Bracker yelling something like "The kid's making a break for it!" as he fires his gun.

This sort of thing happens repeatedly, which makes me think overbearing captions were an editorial decision, a house style if you will. Another annoying technique is using the caption to cram several events into one panel, like on page 47. A wounded Indian falls, Lucky is safe, the crooks pull the Chief up, the rope frays, the Chief gets loose. Usually an extra panel or two would have provided a smoother continuity. However  from reading a lot of Picture Libraries I know that putting more than three panels on a page was taboo.

One other Picture Library quirk. I first noticed it in the girls' stories, but here it is in a Western. For some reason the editors did not want to show the villains getting what they deserve. I can understand they might not want the bad guys to die (though after being chucked off that cliff it's a wonder they didn't). What I don't understand is why the good guys simply let them go. In the girls' libraries a parade of thieving uncles, smugglers, and fake heirs are allowed to slink away in the next-to-last panel instead of being arrested. It strikes me even more odd in a Western. The owlhoots have kidnapped, robbed, and murdered, but Lucky and company decide to nurse them back to health and then run them out of town.

Ron Embleton's art is pleasant overall. He's at his best in the action scenes.

El Lobo, the Man from Nowhere

We've heard that this character was "inspired" by The Phantom. That's too kind a word. El Lobo is one hundred percent The Phantom in Western gear. Okay, 98% maybe. El Lobo doesn't leave a wolf's head mark when he socks a bad guy and The Phantom doesn't hypnotize people into confessing. I feel guilty not liking this comic more than I do. It's a legendary character written and drawn by a legendary Australian artist.

The first problem is the text-block storytelling. There is no need at all for the pictures. Read this in prose story form and you wouldn't miss a thing. In fact, given the density of the text I found myself just reading the captions and going back later to look at the pictures. The text-block story is an established comic format with a long history, but I still don't like it.

Keith Chatto's artwork has an earnestness to it that's almost painful. He obviously poured heart and soul into his drawings. He details hardware meticulously, puts effort into character design, and experiments with dramatic lighting. Unfortunately his figures are stiff and unnatural. The many panels drawn from photos (e.g. our page 7, panel 1) call attention to the awkward poses. On the other hand Chatto's horses look pretty good.

El Lobo more than makes up for Lucky Lannagan letting the bad guys go. E.L. is a remorseless killer. That's another way he differs from The Phantom.

Aventures de Pecos Bill

As Robb said, the story is little more than a series of chases, but the art pulled me in. A beautiful job! Bedetheque credits it to Gino d'Antonio. The script suffers from some of Lucky Lannagan's unnecessary captions, but not to the same extent.

The old trope of a comic hero talking to himself has been debated endlessly. Usually the hero is alone when he thinks aloud and we don't think twice about it. But here (our page 5, last panel) when Pecos Bill describes his analysis of the situation, the bad guys are listening! It's rather funny.

For some reason it reminds me of a line in an old TV cartoon (was it Spy Dogs?). The hero has been captured by a James Bond-style villain. In classic villain fashion, the bad guy describes his plan to take over the world. "But you know too much, and so you must die!" The hero replies, "If you hadn't shot your stupid mouth off, I wouldn't know anything at all!"

Women Outlaws

Sorry, pardners, after reading a story and a half I bailed on this one. I never understood the appeal of crime comics besides the art, which was often very good. Women Outlaws was obviously intended to play to the one-hand-reader crowd by combining the violence in typical crime comics with busty women. It doesn't work. The art is lousy even by Fox standards, and poorly-drawn women don't score highly on the prurient-interest scale. The first story's art is especially bad. It gets worse as the story progresses.

Perhaps the artist followed the same plan as Wallace Wood and Harry Harrison. They'd noticed that when they turned in a job, Victor Fox would only flip through the first two or three pages of art. Therefore they put all their effort into the first three pages and slopped out the remainder.

The stories are just excuses to portray cussin' women shooting peoples' brains out. Not for me.

Forgive me. Rereading this post I feel like I come across as Grumpy Cat. I did enjoy the opportunity to read stuff I haven't read before. It was interesting to compare how British, Australian, and Italian/French creators approached Westerns. So even if the books didn't thrill me reading them was worthwhile (except for Women Outlaws).

[SuperScrounge]

The stories are just excuses to portray cussin' women shooting peoples' brains out.

That description makes Women Outlaws sound more interesting than it was. 

[The Australian Panther]

El Lobo the Man from Nowhere 2
https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=87573
Scrounge said,

Silly me, this was the English Western, not the Australian one. D'oh!
So now I have to imagine the prospector leading his burro through the streets of London, being chased by a gang of Cockneys and the treasure is in The City being guarded by a vicious gang of stock brokers. Yeah, that's better.   

What movie was that? Is it on YouTube?
We had to put up with McCloud riding a horse across the Sydney Harbour Bridge - to get to the airport - in the wrong directiion. No matter how ridiculous a premise, Hollywood will still do it.   
Re El Lobo;-

  I don't like the dialogues being mixed into the narrative boxes, mixed in with the narratives.  I prefer dialogue balloons with tails tapering off to a thin "arrow" pointing towards the speakers' mouths.

That modus operandi was common in the early days of comic strips. Hogarth's Tarzan for example. The most famous was Prince Valiant which may still be using that technique for all I know.
$64.00 question. Anybody know who initiated Word balloons? What strip and when?
Confession:-
I'm not actually a big fan of El Lobo. For reasons I'll go into. 
Keith Chatto? He happens  to be the first Australian artist to draw a Phantom Story (for Frew).
I find  El lobo hard to read because

Funny how putting dialogue in caption boxes kind of distances the reader from the characters in the story.

 
Also, an illustrated story should have visuals that keep your attention. Here we have 6 pages of just people talking. Now a good artist can do that and have visually stimulating art to keep the readers attention. Alex Toth and most of the EC artists for example. But the pictuires here are mostly static. As somebody said, you could elimate the art and just read the captions. 
Although the shoot-out in the street is very well illustrated and quite dynamic.
I don't mean to disparage Keith Chatto, he's quite talented but maybe here he would have been better off illustrating somebody else's script.
I wanted to highlight a character other than the Phantom Ranger - who is already known to many of you, so I chose EL Lobo. 
Note that this is only Issue #2, so Keith improved over time, as you do.

 

    Along the Rio Grande, the river that borders the south-west territories and Mexico, superstitious Indians have described a tall, mysterious stranger, who, accompanied by a large wolf-like dog, appears from time to time throughout the years, never seeming to grow older, as El Lobo, El Hombre a Ninguna Parte, The Wolf, The Man From Nowhere. His mysterious habit of quietly appearing in troubled areas where his amazing prowess as a gunfighter earns for him the fear and respect of the just and unjust, adds to the legend of this strange man.
Biography/History:

    "...Atkins asked Chatto to create another character which resulted in another cowboy comic, El Lobo - The Man from nowhere. Again with a full-colour half tone cover, El Lobo first appeared late in 1956 and ran through 23 issues.

https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/catalog/4609738

The book was still on the stands when I started reading comics - one of the few, and was available in used book shops. It was probably quite popular.   

[The Australian Panther]

Aventures de Pecos Bill 14 - La rivière du vent
https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=68403
Confession:- I don't read French, but I wanted to include something from another language, to highlight our Non-English content.
Also because It seems to me  that Westerns have been more consistently  popular in Europe than in the USA. 
Here are just some comtemporary westerns from just one Publisher.
Reading List: European Western
https://www.europecomics.com/reading-list-european-western/
THE EUROPEAN WESTERN: AN UNUSUAL EVOLUTION
https://www.europecomics.com/the-european-western/
Lets also mention 'Spagetti Westerns' in movies.
This just really just scratches the surface. And all of this while production of US Western fictiion in Movies, books and comics has been plateauing.
So, this book.
While I don't speak French I can recognise certain words and phrases, so in places I can get the jist.
Also, Given that comics are a visual medium, it can be interesting to try to work  out the story using only the illustrations.
Resume des episodes precedents
So this is a serial, a continued story and clearly we are in the middle of something.
It's curious that the book is mainly Black and White but some pages are in colour.
The Art is great and the action scenes are excellent. Even if we can't read french, we can see what's happening in each episode of action, but without haveing read (or seen) the provious epiosodes we have no context. The most irritating thing is the ridiculous 'chaps' Pecos wears on his trousers.

à votre santé !

[Quirky Quokka]

Pecos Bill

Not surprisingly, my year of learning French on Duolingo hasn't helped me read this comic. They tend to teach things like 'Can I please have a coffee?' rather than 'Come on, sturdy steed, let's ride down this mountain and stop those hombres and gunslingers'. But I did look through the pictures to try to get the gist of a story. From the cliffhanger ending, I gather it's a continuing story. One thing that confused me, apart from not being able to read cowboy French, is that the larger panel on p. 2 (the first page after the cover) seems to show that the bad guys have taken a girl prisoner, but we never see her again. So from that picture, I assumed Pecos Bill was going to rescue the girl. Or is that a different group of baddies altogether or something continuing from an earlier issue?

I thought the art was really good on the whole, and interesting having mainly black and white, but with subdued colours every now and then. Though I had to laugh at the length of the frills on Pecos Bill's pants. When he swings on a rope on p. 20, they're practically aerodynamic! There are also lots of interesting angles, and the action shots of the horses were really good.

So although I couldn't read the story, I did appreciate having this one in the mix to see an example from another country. And it made me focus on the art more than the story.

Cheers

QQ

[Quirky Quokka]

Women Outlaws

I actually started reading this one first because it sounded interesting. But after all the death and destruction in the Hattie Long story, I switched to the other books and never finished this one. Maybe the other stories would have been better, but from the comments of others, I gather that the rest of you weren't crazy about this book either.

Hattie Long

As it said it was a true story, I did do a brief consult with Dr Google to see if I could find out about her, but nothing came up in my initial search.

The art was quite patchy. For example, the splash page is good, but on the next page, the proportions for red-shirt-guy's face are weird in the two middle frames. The story is very text heavy and seems to just go from one crime to the next without really trying to make a story out of it. Also there seemed to be an inconsistency in George's character. It's said he'd never use a gun, but he seems happy to stab someone to death. The first frame on p.9 shows a fairly gruesome shot of a bullet going straight through someone's head. I did wonder how that would have been viewed at the time. Though I guess this was before the Comics Code. Also, there's no backstory about Hattie to give us an indication of what led to her life of crime. She just seems to be a cold murderer, and maybe she was. But it would be interesting to know how she got there.

Sorry I didn't read the rest of this one. Maybe some of the other stories would have grabbed me more.

Overall, thanks for the selections, Panther. Pecos Bill would be my favourite for the art and Lucky Lannagan was my favourite for the story.

Cheers

QQ

[The Australian Panther]

Women Outlaws 2
https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=27316

I wanted to include a Female Western in this post, heck, I would also like to have included a 'funny animal' western, but limited to PD, couldn't think of one.
This was not my first choice.
I wanted to include a Dale Evans book, but neither Dale Evans or Roy Rogers Dell books are to be found here. I assume that the Roy Rogers estate has not made the material PD which would account for our not having them on CB+.
The Dale Evans books are the polar opposite of 'Women Outlaws'
this book.
Note the cover, which tells you exactly what you are going to get inside.
She is shooting (accurately) a man on a stagecoach, which is behind her and to which she has her back turned. Talk about trick shooting!
It's obvious why the artist has drawn the cover that way!
Hattie Long the Beautiful Blonde Bandit
The dialogue in this story is excretable. Riciculour and silly.
The relationship between Hattie and George is interesting though.
No idea if Hattie Long was real, haven't found any information on her.
Belle Star
Belle star was real, but this story isn't. If they had used her real story it would have been a much better comic.

  Belle Starr (1848 – 1889) Born in 1848, Belle was a classically-educated young lady whose life turned upside down following a Union soldier attack in the early American Civil War. Soon after the attack, her family moved to Texas where Belle reunited with childhood friends none other than notorious Jesse James and the Younger brothers.

Soon, she was proficient in various forms of organized crime. She mastered the arts of fencing, rustling, bootlegging, thievery, and bribery, to name a few. Interestingly, her involvement with criminals and murderers didn’t deter her from looking like a highborn lady at all times.

Among other things, Belle was arrested for horse theft twice but convicted only once. Ultimately, her felonious lifestyle led to the loss of her husband in a gunfight. His death brought an abrupt end to her role as an outlaw queen.

Incredibly, Belle Starr’s death was just as infamous as her life. While riding home from a friend’s house, she was shot multiple times in the back, neck, shoulder, and face. According to official records, her murder remains an unsolved mystery to this day. 

That's not a story, that's a novel!
Shanghai Mary
The Barbary Coast was a notorious area on whe Waterfront of San Francisco.
'Shanghaiing' men to crew ships was a practice for years in many countries. Straightforward yarn. Haven't found her on Google.
Little Rick.
Nasty and Racist character.
The second story here about a woman taking over a male gang. They must have been pretty terrifying women.
Poker Annie.
Action paced 2 pages. Art suits the story.
Trigger Tess
Another two pager, an incident, not a story.
Something new tomorrow!
Happy Trails, Pards!   

[SuperScrounge]

What movie was that? Is it on YouTube?

Sadly it's stuck in my head at the moment. 

No matter how ridiculous a premise, Hollywood will still do it.

Sharknado!

Anybody know who initiated Word balloons? What strip and when?

Not exactly. One of multiple reasons why a Yellow Kid strip from 1896 is considered the first comic strip was because of the use of word balloons, but they possibly appeared in one-panel comics before that. IIRC Outcault did use them in his Hogan's Alley panels, but I don't know when they first appeared or who was the artist.

so Keith improved over time, as you do.

Why thank you! Oops, wrong Keith. 

I wanted to include a Female Western in this post

Cowgirl Romances https://comicbookplus.com/?cid=846
Firehair https://comicbookplus.com/?cid=1282
Pioneer West Romances https://comicbookplus.com/?cid=1568
Western Love Trails https://comicbookplus.com/?cid=1640
Romantic Western https://comicbookplus.com/?cid=2334
Real West Romances https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=57692
Western Love https://comicbookplus.com/?cid=3002

Okay so most of those fall into western romance stories, but I think Firehair tended to be more straight westerns.

I would also like to have included a 'funny animal' western, but limited to PD, couldn't think of one.

Rob could probably name one, or more.

[The Australian Panther]

No matter how ridiculous a premise, Hollywood will still do it. 

Snakes on a plane.and the one I quoted earlier, 'Snow white and the seven samurai"

I would also like to have included a 'funny animal' western, but limited to PD, couldn't think of one.

Donald Duck and Micky Mouse both strapped on guns and headed west. As did most of the Warner Bros characters. But they are not PD. I knew there would be others here but dfidn't have the time to look.
Firehair? Yeah, should have thought of her.
DC did a short revival of a western character with the same name. Didn't last long.   

[Robb_K]

Women Outlaws 2
https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=27316

I wanted to include a Female Western in this post, heck, (1) I would also like to have included a 'funny animal' western, but limited to PD, couldn't think of one.
This was not my first choice.
I wanted to include a Dale Evans book, but neither Dale Evans or Roy Rogers Dell books are to be found here. I assume that the Roy Rogers estate has not made the material PD which would account for our not having them on CB+.
The Dale Evans books are the polar opposite of 'Women Outlaws'

(1) There were many Funny Animal Cowboys, which are in The PD now, although most of them were not well-known, and didn't last long.

A.  The longest lasting one I can think of, offhand, was Chicago's Dearfield Publishing's "Red Rabbit" (patterned after "Red Ryder"), the former had 22 issues of his own book, issued between late 1946 and late 1951.



Some others were: Buffalo Bunny (drawn by "Holly" Chambers, in several old Fox Feature titles, and Hopalong Bunny also byChambers in Crown Comics, Deadeye Duck, from Ned Pines' Goofy Comics, Billy Badger from Jubilee Comics rode an ostrich, rather than a horse, Roscoe Wolf from Busy Arnold's Quality -Feature Comics, Sheriff Pop Gunn(Buzzard) from Harvey's Nutty Comics, Cuckoo Sheriff (Buzzard), Kat Karson, and Waggin' Weasel, all from Magazine Enterprises' "Cowboys 'N' Injuns".  There are several more.  But none of these were very well known, or long lasting.  The longest lasting one was "Billy The Kid" (Goat), and his sidekick, Oscar Ostrich, who were regulars in Fawcett's Funny Animals from 1943-1954, drawn by Chad Grothkopf, and moved over to Charlton for 3 more years, with all of Fawcett's Funny Animals and Animal Fair characters.  They even had their own comic book for 3 issues, while with Fawcett.

[Robb_K]

(1) Anybody know who initiated Word balloons? What strip and when?

Not exactly. One of multiple reasons why a Yellow Kid strip from 1896 is considered the first comic strip was because of the use of word balloons, but they possibly appeared in one-panel comics before that. IIRC Outcault did use them in his Hogan's Alley panels, but I don't know when they first appeared or who was the artist.

I've seen word balloons from all the way back in the 1840s and 1850s (in political one-panel cartoons) from different European countries, and USA, too.  I think it would be too difficult even for an expert to be sure about which was the very first one.  It may not even exist, physically, anymore.  Let's just realise that "The Yellow Kid" started using them MANY years after that method had started being used. 

[Downunder Dan]

Noting some comments on El Lobo and the style adopted, including the dialogue being in caption boxes rather than word balloons, you might want to have a look at this slightly earlier Western comic by the same creator, Keith Chatto. It's called Lone Wolf, and it uses more conventional stylings: word balloons and multiple panels to the page. Don't know if you'll like it better, but it's probably more comparable to the other Westerns you were looking at. https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=96857 (I just uploaded this one!)

[gregjh]

Did someone say "westerns"?  Well, Lucky Lannigan was a good story: unusual panel sizes and a bit more character development than most comics. Some of the regular tropes started to show up in the second half of the tale but still, a thoroughly fun read.