It's very obvious that this Charlton Western series was based on the American TV series "The Adventures of Wild Bill Hickock", which ran through most of The 1950s (1951-58), starring guy Madison as Hickock, and Andy Devine as his pudgy sidekick, Jingles. Before that, Devine was a Western lawman's or cowboy hero's comedic sidekick in several Western film series during the 1940s, mainly as Roy Rogers' sidekick, "Cookie" in 10 films. Maneely drew Devine in a recognisable manner, but Madison was so "generic" that it is hard to distinguish him from any other generically-drawn young lawman in 1950s American Western comic book series. That may have been because Maneely was forced to draw very quickly, to make his Charlton pay worth working for them, because the rate was so low. Apparently, he took those jobs because there was nothing else around for him during that period.
The uncluttered look of the pages (lack of background detail and characters' physical features, and the "fresh "spontaneous" (sketchy) look of the artwork reveals that he drew it as quickly as possible.
But the major, overlying trait of the stories is their short length, which makes them feel more like scenario summaries or vignettes, rather than complete stories, as there are not enough pages, panels dialogue balloons and narrative boxes, to include enough text, or show enough action to establish an adequate setting, develop enough characterisation of the characters, develop a plot, and show a full climax scene, and even add epilogues to their "story" endings. To me, reading them is not a very enjoyable experience, because it feels like only seeing a couple still photos from a film or TV show, quickly flashing across a screen, and having to quickly try to figure out what the scenario is all about, and fill in the missing data in your mind to make some sense of the "story" behind it. It is more like a quiz, in which the contestant must discern the plot, and character history and motives, in a matter of seconds, and consolidate it into an assessment of the "story". For me, it would be much more enjoyable to have the entire book dedicated to a single story, with a decent-sized setting established, and using ample room to establish enough character history, and character motives, establish and develop the plot (or plot and counter-plot) with proper pacing to reveal enough of what is happening, but also preserve enough suspense to keep the reader interest, but not reveal too much too quickly, to avoid weakening the effect of the climax scenes and impact of the story ending.
There were several good plot ideas for stories. But there was, in none of the cases, enough page room to develop them even remotely adequately. The scenario of the shipping company owner hiring criminal thugs to rob his chief competitors' shipments, to discredit them, so he could not only benefit from selling the "booty" from the robberies, but also put the rival out of business, and pick up all the latter's customers as well, comes to mind. But, even given several good plot ideas, I'd have hated being assigned any of the writing, storyboarding or penciling jobs for these Western "stories" for these 36-page books. And, as far as reading these so-called "stories", I'd much rather read longer Western stories from the 1940s, drawn in much more detail by the better artists that appeared in 52, 60 or 68-page books, where they had a bit more "room to breathe". I even prefer to read ongoing, serialised stories, that, at least, had room to establish settings, character motivation, and have decent pacing of their plot lines. Even the waiting for the next short episode of a Sunday newspaper strip is preferable to reading only a vignette or getting only a scenario summary of an undeveloped story.
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Topic: Reading Group #308 - Maneely at Charlton (Read 1213 times)
