THE WILD BUNCH WESTERN WEDNESDAY STORY CHALLENGE

This story was started off by Ian Parnham and each Wednesday a different author takes over and gives us around 500 words before leaving the story open for some other poor soul to continue. This is part five and the previous sections can be found.

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Whoever wants to continue the tale, becoming part of the Wednesday Wild Bunch, then please say so in the comment section and take up the thread, posting it next Wednesday and remember to link to the previous posts - It won't make much sense if you don't.


And so without further preamble here's part five.....

Arnside, back against the wall, looked out of the smashed window, hoping to spot Zack Rodin among the riders but a slug tore into the window frame, splintering wood and sending him once again ducking for cover.

‘We’re sitting ducks.’ Arnside yelled and turned to look at Bartlett but his old friend had succumbed to the gut wound. He lay there, a curious, contented look upon his face. Arnside crawled across the floor and made his way to the rear of the private car.

He groaned as he stood upright and opened the door. The train was still chugging alone, a few miles per hour at the most, the engine yet to build up pressure and get the wheels turning. He jumped down onto the ground and hugging the wall of the private car he made his way behind the train. He suddenly felt his age. He was in the autumn of his life and as he cautiously made his way to the rear of the train he felt November with each step.

The train started to pick up speed and Arnside cursed. The damn thing was providing his only cover and he fell to the ground, laying flat, trying to make himself invisible.

Luck was with him and he grinned as he saw the riders chasing after the train, which was now picking up considerable speed and easily outdistancing them. He lay there until both train and riders had vanished into the distance and then and only then did he get to his feet. He scanned the desert landscape, knowing that he had gotten at least one of the riders. At first he didn’t see anything but then perhaps three hundred yards away he spotted the crumpled figure of what could only be a man.

There was no sign of the riders returning even though they must have given up their pursuit of the train by now and Arnside withdrew his .45 and he made his way towards the fallen man, all the while his eyes scanned the horizon for the return on the riders.

He reached the man and after a final look around, spotting the the fallen man’s horse in the far distance, he knelt and examined the dead man. It had been a good shot that had brought him down – without aim, slung in his general direction, the slug had struck home right between the eyes and exited from the rear his of head, taking a sizeable chunk of skull with. A sponge of gore clung to a nearby rock.

Won’t take long for the flies to get at him, Arnside thought and wiped his brow. He removed the man’s rig and slung it one side and then went into each of the man’s pockets. There was nothing to identify the man but he did find three bucks and a tobacco pouch.

Arnside sat back with the makings and quickly put together a quirly. He sucked it to life and allowed the smoke to escape between his teeth while he regained some breath.

God he felt old.

‘Who the hell are you?’ Arnside asked the dead man and then raised a hand as if fending off any reply.

He thought about Bartlett. What was it the man had wanted to tell him? What was it he had discovered behind the painting he spoke of? He had mentioned a treasure ship so Arnside figured a map would come into it somewhere. Was that what the armed riders had been after? A map? A map leading to a ship filled with treasure?

He got to his feet and looked across the desert to the dead man’s horse. There was nothing for it; he would have to trail the riders if he was to find out what all this was about. Suddenly he didn’t feel so old and he started out across the desert to the waiting horse….

So whoever wants to continue this rambling piece then claim your place in the comments section of this blog - first comes...first served.

WESTERN BOOK COMPETITION

Fancy a Free western book?

Thought so - Here's how.


WHAT'S YOUR FAVORITE WESTERN MOVIE?

Five winners will be chosen October 1, 2009, to receive autographed copy of Creede of Old Montana**, Stephen Bly’s newest hardback western release. In print large enough for anyone to read.

Here’s the guidelines….

1.) List a favorite western movie.

2.) Give 3 reasons why this is a good western.

3.) Enter as often as you like, but with different movie selection.

4.) Send your entry to janet@blybooks.com .

5.) Winners picked according to best persuasive reasons.

6.) Minimum of 5 winners announced Thursday, October 1, 2009.*

7.) Prizes will be autographed copy of Creede of Old Montana, plus “When The Cowboys Come To Town” cowboy poetry CD (retail value 15.00).

Warlord issue 94 1976

Warlord was another comic from my youth - it ran from 1974 until 1986 and was hugely popular - indeed it was the success of Warlord that spurred rival publisher, IPC to produce Battle Picture Weekly.


I didn't get Warlord regularly when I was a kid - hey I already had a comic on order and we couldn't afford too many comics. But a friend of mine, a fellow comic nut took the title and so I would borrow his copy every week to read.

This issue comes from 1976 and is priced 6p - the first story is Killer Kane which is about a air ace known as Killer Kane. The character had some mystery in his past and details of which were drip fed to the reader each week.





The stories would usually run for awhile before being rested while other strips were brought in.










The most popular strips would always return - one of the most popular characters in the comics history was Union Jack Jackson, about a heroic Brit fighting with a group of GI's but he's not in this particular issue.













Following Kane is Old Calamity and it's not a strip I remember. It's not mentioned among the notable strips on the comic's WIKI entry.













It seems to be about about a squadron who operate out of a tank called Old Calamity.













The comic then published the winner of the 1975/1976 Army Photographic Competition. The pic shows a crew of Royal Dragoon Guards at training.














This is then followed on the facing page by a strip called,Crane of the Cutlass. It is a strip set in 1940 and the Normandy Invasion.














Ghost Fighter comes next - set in the second world war it tells of a pilot whose father was a hero in the first world war and now his spirit protects his son from all manner of enemy nasty.












It was an unusual concept for a comic strip and again is not listed as a notable strip in the WIKI entry so I imagine it only ran for the one series. It seems to be fun, though. Any Warlord fans out there who can let us know how long the strip ran for?















The centre pages, of course, belonged to Warlord himself - Lord Peter Flint Code name Warlord, was a sort of World War II James Bond.














"Lord Peter Flint is the James Bond-like secret agent whose missions take him to various areas of conflict, including Germany itself.














The storyline borrowed "The Scarlet Pimpernel" idea of a seemingly upper class fop actually being a daring wartime agent. Stories would generally start off in Britain with Lord Peter Flint, who hadn't signed up to fight, being accused of cowardice before secretly going off on a mission then returning home. There was a recurring cast of enemies representing various aspects of the Third Reich such as the Gestapo and the SS."















In the episode in this issue Peter Flint comes up against Hitler himself.

















After Warlord we had the letters page which doubled up as the page for Warlord Agents - readers could join the Warlord club for 20p - for that they got a wallet, badge, membership card and code breaking device. There would be codes to decipher in each issue.
















All of the letters are addressed to Lord Peter himself - check out how seriously the readers take the Warlord Club.















Then there is a complete story, A Right Villain which tells of a burglar who has no intention of changing his ways just because he's in the army.



















Then comes the final strip, Tommy Atkins War. Note the Charles Atlas AD and the stamp collecting offers - both regulars in boys comics of the period.

















This strip is set in Crete in 1941.

















The back cover is taken over by photo feature on the firepower of the modern RAF.

coming up - on Western Wednesday

Tomorrow on The Archive we will have part five of the short story challenge - this week it's yours truly, Yep I'm in Jack Martin mode for the continuation of the story started by Ian Parnham. Check out parts one to four - ONE TWO THREE FOUR and then come back tomorrow for part Five.

Also tomorrow I'll be the guest blogger over on Howard Hopkins' Dark bits blog. Yep I've seized control in my bid for domination of the Wild West Web.


There's also an interview with myself in Jack Martin mode coming up over on....well, I'll point you to this one when it goes live.

And of course there's the small matter of having to write a book.

Magazine watch - ALFRED HITCHCOCK October 2009

The cover story in the latest issue is Mike Wiecek's Colorblind, a story that is topical given the current swing flue epidemic. Other stories in this issue are:
Constable Smith and The Bone Pointer by Rex Burns
A Good Cuppa Joe by Joanne Dobson and Beverle Myers
The Mound Builders by Janice Law
Death at Syracusa by Marianne Wilski Strong
A Closer walk with Thee by Tom Chapman

The rest of the magazine is made up of the usual features, book reviews and genre based quizzes. It's on sale now and a UK import price of £4.99

THE BEANO SEPT 30TH 1967

Like most British kids The Beano was a part of my childhood - it was first published in 1938 and is still running, making it the world's longest running weekly comic.

I came across the issue photographed here in a jumble sale a few years back - it's from 1967, I was two years old at the time, so it's a little before my time but most of the characters in this issue were still in the comic when I started reading it, probably in the early 70's. The only stories here I hadn't heard off was The Q-Bikes and Punch and Jimmy. This particular issue is numbered issue 1315 and is priced at 3D - that's, three old pennies.

You've got to admire the cheek of these guys - the cover story, Biffo the Bear, is basically an advertisement for that year's Beano Annual.



Open the pages and there's another familiar character - Roger the Dodger. It's great to read these old strips - Roger seems to be having pretty much the same problems he's always having. Finding himself without any money to visit the travelling circus he has to come up with a dodge to get himself in but, surprise surprise, things go wrong and he ends up having to do some hard graft in order to achieve his ends.

Billy the Cat follows - Billy was a sort of British superhero -



"William Grange, later joined by his cousin Kathleen, alias Billy the Cat and Katie, were acrobatic crime fighters who helped the police to solve crime and catch "crooks" in the town of Burnham. They both wore "cat-suits" in order to conceal their true identities."


The next two strips, a page each, are Little Plum and Billy Whizz. I loved both these strips as a kid - especially Billy the Whizz and I can clearly remember trying to whizz around the village just like him when I had a tracksuit (one of those dreadful tight ones with the two stripes that we thought we so cool back in the day. Mind you I suppose they were in relation to the flared trousers, chuncky heeled boots and striped tank tops.) for Christmas one year.



Good days indeed - open your stocking and there's an apple and orange, a plastic torch, some bubbles and a striped tracksuit. No computer games in our day - which is just as well since...well, there was no SCART connections on our Black and White televisions for one thing.



"Arguably, the best known British comic of all time. The Beano started life a year before WW2. Issue #1 was dated July 30th 1938. It was called, "The Beano Comic", and had Big Eggo the ostrich on the front cover. It was the companion paper to The Dandy Comic which had started 8 months earlier, and proved extremely successful. "


Note although both The Beano and Dandy are still running, The Dandy is now a fortnightly comic so The Beano has the record for being the longest running weekly comic in the world.


In this particular issue the centre pages are claimed by The Bash Street Kids - and in full colour too. Course back in the day it was common for the only colour in UK comics to be the front and back covers and the centre pages. In fact the centre pages were usually kept for one of the more popular stories - thus the distinction of being in colour.


There's a great website HERE which holds tons of information on not only The Beano but other comic books too. And the official website is stationed HERE.




12.000 RECORD COMIC SALE

A rare first edition of the Beano has been sold at auction for £12,100, setting what is thought to be a new UK record for a comic. To the surprise of the cognoscenti of the comic world, it sold for over 25% more than what it was expected to reach, with the last known auction of a Beano No 1 fetching £7500 in 2002.

The comic was collected by a tea-boy working at the Beano’s publisher’s, DC Thomson of Dundee, in 1938 and had been kept carefully by his family ever since before being offered for auction late last year. The canny youth had even written “KEEP FIRST ISSUE” on the top of the front cover in light pencil.

Now when I was a kid there were two kind of UK boys comics - the action orientated such as Battle and the funnies such as, The Beano. Certain comics were a mixture of action and funnies but for this post I have drawn a distinction between the two. As far as I can remember there were several rivals to The Beano during the Seventies - Whizzer, Chips and Cor but The Beano was, I believe, outselling them all.

There were two major comic publishers - D C Thompson who published The Beano and IPC Magazines who were responsible for Whizzer, Chips and The Eagle. I can't really recall many others at the time - I think the Walt Disney characters were licensed to another UK company - perhaps someone can clarify this.

Neither Marvel nor DC had really made much input into the UK markets during the early to mid seventies. Marvel characters were published under licence by a UK publisher - we had titles like Mighty World of Marvel and The Defenders. And I remember the Planet of the Apes, Star Wars and Dracula Lives comics were done by Marvel. But I'm not sure which British company produced them for the UK market.

However for the most part in the UK it was D C Thomson and IPC Magazines that dominated.

The back cover is taken up by, perhaps The Beano's best know

character - Dennis The Menace. These days the character is on the front cover of the comic but back in the day it was very much a case of keeping the best till last. The character would eventually get his own fan club, a spin off comic, several TV shows and would even be the star attraction at the Beanoland theme park. Yep the comic is so popular that it even has its ow theme park - Beanoland . The park closed in August 2009 for revamping but it will reopen in 2010.

The way things are at the moment it is remarkable that The Beano is still out there. Sales of comic books have dropped severely since the highs of the Sixties and Seventies but for the moment The Beano is still out there and children are reading the same comics their great grandfathers read.

That's pretty cool!!!

AMAZON UK -Bestselling Westerns 1 Sept 09

1. The Frontiersmen by Elliot Conway (Oct 2004)

2. Ruben's Ruse by Ben Coady (Jul 2001)

3. Trail Scum by Corba Sunman (Jan 2001)

4. Iron Eyes Makes War by Rory Black (Oct 2009)

5. Bowie of the Alamo by John Glasby (Dec 2002)

6. The Tarnished Star by Jack Martin (Jun 2009)

7. Trail of the Burned Man by Thomas McNulty (Nov 2009)

8. Bad Men Die Hard by Dave Hooker (Mar 1994)

9. Gun Law by Lee Walker (Dec 2009)

10. Lobo and Hawk by Jake Douglas (Feb 2004)