"Rebranding the Western: A History of Comics and the Mythic West" by William Grady

How did you learn about the American West? Books came first. Reading material included notorious dime novels that made legends of Buffalo Bill and Jesse James. Newspapers and magazines, meanwhile, focused on the American West in the 19th century as railways turned the frontier into an attraction for tourists who watched herds of buffalo disappearing while Native Americans were being herded onto reservations.

Western history was recorded in so many movies—from silent films like On the War Path (1911) and The Indian Massacre (1912) to John Ford epics like Stagecoach (1939) and My Darling Clementine (1946) along with High Noon (1952), A Fistful of Dollars (1964), Blazing Saddles (1974) and hundreds more. Between 1947 and 1950 Westerns made up 30 percent of major Hollywood releases.

Maybe you got your first taste from television on shows like Bonanza, Maverick, Cheyenne, or Gunsmoke? On radio, you might have followed the exploits of the Lone Ranger or the Six Shooter with Jimmy Stewart.

William Grady’s Rebranding the Western (University of Texas Press) surveys another medium that explored Western history: the comic. From the start of the 20th century, newspaper comic strips exploded in popularity. 

Western strips like Red Ryder and Lone Ranger blossomed in the 1930s along with Little Joe, a strip that ran from 1933 to 1972, following Joe Oak, a child who lives with his widowed mother on the family ranch managed by a former gunslinger.  

Grady notes that Westerns were part of the comic book craze that evolved in the 1940s and 1950s. That was a period when comic books were sold everywhere: in grocery stores, on newsstands, and at the corner drugstore. “Calculations on the monthly sale of comic books averaged anywhere from 60 million to 100 million across the postwar decade (1945-1954),” he said.

More than 3,400 different Western comic book titles had been printed by 1959, said Grady. “Every comic book publisher, from Ace Magazines to Ziff-Davis Publications, offered a slew of Western titles that featured thrilling adventure tales about cowboys, gunfighters, outlaws, and historical frontier figures,” he said.

Along with Kit Carson, Indian Scout, and Two-Gun Kid, you had Western romance titles like Western Love Trails and Cowgirl Romances. But the comic-book trail wasn’t limited to 19th-century frontier days. Roy Rogers and Gene Autry, for example, worked on the Cold War frontier of the 50s, searching out missing atomic scientists or combatting Russian saboteurs, noted Grady.

Western comics reflected the times, said the author. Lobo, an African American hero, arrived in the 1960s while Jonah Hex, a disfigured antihero burst onto the scene in the 1970s. Also in the 70s, Marvel Comics launched Red Wolf, a series where Johnny Wakely, a Cheyenne Indian sought justice for all people on the frontier.

The Western continues to evolve, Grady stated, citing The Walking Dead ( a TV show based on a graphic novel) and Yellowstone (a neo-Western) as contemporary examples of Western-type storytelling. “On one hand, the image of the Western has remained unchanged for over a century. On the other, the genre has regularly experienced transformations that permit it to maintain its compelling hold on audiences,” he said.