690 WESTERNS (COMICS)
adventures without any “White Men,” as the stories take place long before the European
colonization. In addition, the concluded series Les Peaux-Rouges (1974–82) by Dutch
artist Hans Kresse, focused on the world of the American tribes and tried to show their
culture in an objective manner, free of mystifi cations and epic narration, and set apart
from modern culture.
Because of its central emphasis on good guy/bad guy oppositions, the Western
comic requires a strong antagonist to the Western hero. Th e antagonist, as the incarna-
tion of evil, serves to enhance the image and powers of the hero. Among other things,
the villain gives the hero a reason to fi ght, thus initiating the plot; meanwhile, violent
and even criminal acts by the hero are often legitimated by the necessity of defeating the
evil villain.
While the Indians were long depicted as evil, crazed savages, the most vilifi ed ethnic
group in the Western comics of the 1930s may be Mexicans, characterized by their
Spanish surnames and stereotypical Latin American mannerisms (mustached, in tight
pants and wide sombreros). Only a few Western comics, such as Th e Cisco Kid or
Jerry Spring , used a Mexican as the hero’s sidekick, but then the Cisco Kid is himself a
Mexican caballero.
Women characters were also often important to the genre, especially as a motivating
factor for masculine action. Such characters generally served either as the reason for
vengeance and the hero’s helping hand, or the object of desire, as represented by the
Indian princess, the saloon girl, or the schoolmarm. Historical fi gures like Calamity
Jane even got their own comic books. Annie Oakley became a popular female hero in
comics, while a vogue for romance Westerns in the late 1940s and early 1950s off ered
opportunity to feature women as key characters.
The History of the Western Comic Book
Th e Western genre of comics is as old as the medium itself. Th e fi rst Western comic
book stories were reprints of newspaper strips. As early as in 1889 the French series La
Famille Fenouillard by Georges Colomb confronted their characters with Native Ameri-
cans and cowboys. A growth-spurt in the development of the genre started in the 1930s
with Harry O’Neill’s Broncho Bill (1930–52); the “adventurous decade” increased the
interest of the part of syndicates for Western stories.
Th e 1940s signifi ed the peak of the Western newspaper strip, as World War II
helped to develop superhero and war comics , but the overall success of the Western
fi lm (epitomized by the movies of John Ford) prompted comics artists to change to
the genre. Among them, Burne Hogarth , known for his work with Ta r z a n , shifted to
the Western with the Tarzan-like Drago (1945–46), a bare-breasted hero who rides
virtuously through Hogarth’s landscapes and fi ghts postwar Nazis in Argentina. Th e
years 1948–52 are often considered the Golden Age of the Western, when American
Western comics reached the pinnacle of their popularity.
American Western comics maintained a reasonable success through the 1950s,
but many Western titles were discontinued in the 1960s and 1970s, as the popularity
