HIGH NOON - PART TWO

CONTINUED FROM PREVIOUS ENTRY

Before the fifth story, Buck Jones and the Apache Manhunt there is a three page feature called Wild West Scrapbook which is a collection of facts - one entry says that John Chisum, the cattle king of New Mexico always slept on a blanket on the floor. His expensive bed was just for show and much too soft for the outdoors man. Another tells us of the danger gopher holes would present to the cowboys on the range and were responsible for a lot of horse's breaking their legs.

These little snippets were originally intended as filler material but they often offer quite priceless snippets of trivia.


Which takes us into the fifth story - Buck Jones, Sheriff of Alkali City is dismayed to discover that a band of rustlers have been stealing cattle from the local Apache group. Worried that this will upset the fragile peace between the whites and the indians, Buck goes out to capture the rustlers before the indians start another war. The plot thickens though when the army sends out an assassin in the shape of old timer Virgil Salt to kill Black Knife who is leading Apache war parties in retaliation for the rustling.

This story is a thrilling adventure featuring outlaws and indians there is a sub-plot running through the narrative about growing old and becoming useless in a hostile land. This is another of the longer stories, split into chapters, and provides a great read.

There also indian trouble in the next story Kit Carson and the Cheyenne War. This one's sees a new commander come into the fort and Carson is dismayed to find that the man is an indian hater and wants to stir up a war so he can claim more indian scalps.


The strip unfolds in the usual pacey fashion and there is much action as Kit Carson goes between both sides in order to prevent a full scale Cheyenne war. As in evident from the images here the artwork is all incredibly detailed and yet the guy's drawing these pictures were jobbing artists who had to turn work out at supersonic rates in order to make ends meet. Quite often an artist would be working for two or three publications at the same time.


The writing is also top knotch and the fact that the Wild West Picture library were the one story each issue spread over the entire digest sized book meant that there was room to tell a good story.

This story is surprisingly violent in sections. The scene where the army commander starts off a war by whipping an indian chief is a case in point.

In his introduction to the book editor, Steve Holland, talks about the days when Buck Jones, Tim Holt and Gene Autry were the western stars of the silver screen. And these tales are all of the ilk that could have fitted into the confines of those old B-westerns. There are never any shades of grey. The good guys wear the white hats and the bad guys the black. And a redskin could never win against a white and were made to do what the white man told them because he knew better. It may be simplistic by the standards of today but if the reader can get in the correct mind set then this book provides some thrilling western reading.

Next up the Kansas Kid returns for the Brand of the Double D.


Unlike Buck Jones (played by Charles Gebhart in scores of movies) and Kit Carson and Davy Crockett, the Kansas Kid was a wholly fictional character created in the pages of Cowboy Comics which, for many years, was the most successful western comic in the UK.

Buck Jones returns in the next story The Man from Montana. Another all action story starring the silver screen's tough cow hand. I noticed from this story that the artwork is darker than the tone used in the rest of the book and on the art stakes it is one of the stand out storys.

This is followed by another of the Wild West scrapbook features. This time a four page section with some good, I didn't know that, snippets.

And then we are straight into the return of Davy Crockett and the Duel with Danger.

This is very much the Davy Crockett from the Walt Disney action movie, King of the Wild Frontier. A tall heroic man wearing a coonskin hat and carrying a musket and not the complicated and often cruel loner and patriot that he was in reality.

Thankfully the setting for this story is much more traditional than the Crockett story that opened the book and, to my mind, works all the better for it.

If I want to read Crockett I want him out on the wild frontier - befriending good indians and taking on hostile ones, battling the dangers of nature, exposing crooked soldiers, prospectors etc and basically making sure all is right with the world. Thankfully this tale is of that ilk and provides a rollicking, boy's own adventure in the early days of the West.

The next story Kit Carson Indian Tamer gets my vote for the best art of the entire collection. Click on the image from this story to see the frames in full size and marvel at the incredible detail in the shading of the black and white images. Carson himself, in this story, looks like a world weary man and the entire tale has a very sombre tone.

The story sees the Tonto Apaches in a state of transition. The great chief, Yellow Shirt has died leaving the tribe leaderless. There are braves who want to take his place including Burning Lance, Yellow Shirt's son, who has a hatred of the whites and wants to see his people become warriors again. Most of the tribe think they need to make peace with the whites now that the great chief is dead but his son is furious and says that his father's war against the white invaders must continue.

506 pages in and there are still three more stories to go - at £14.99 this book really does offer value for money.

I had intended to feature the remaining stories in this review but the piece is getting longer than I expected to come back for High Noon Part Three in which I will look at the last three stories and then sum up the book as a whole.