By Stan Lynde (Tempo Books)
ISBN: 0-448-12522-6
Once upon a time westerns were the most popular genre in American mass entertainment, with novels, magazines, films, radio shows, TV series, comicbooks and of course newspaper strips all devoted to “Men Doin’ What They Gotta Doâ€: Riding Ranges, Rounding up stuff, Gun-fighting and all the other timeless iconic cultural activities we all think we know…
Over the decades hundreds of western strips have graced the pages and increased the circulation of newspapers; from singing cowboy film-star Roy Rogers to Red Ryder, Casey Ruggles, the Lone Ranger, Lance and so many more. Even staid Britain got into the act with such lost masterpieces as Buffalo Bill, Matt Marriot and Wes Slade ranking highest amongst fans around the world…
With such a plethora of material concentrated in one genre it’s no surprise that different takes would inevitably develop. Thus alongside Stagecoach, The Ox-Bow Incident, High Noon, How the West Was Won, Soldier Blue or Unforgiven there blossomed less traditional fare such as Destry Rides Again, Cat Ballou, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Evil Roy Slade or Blazing Saddles.
Falling straight into the same comedy western territory as The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw and Support Your Local Sheriff – but predating both – came one of the earliest and most successful modern gag-a-day continuity strips, blending iconic scenarios with memorable characters, playing out their daily antics against a spectacular backdrop of lavishly illustrated natural beauty.
Stan Lynde was born in Montana on 23rd September 1931, the son of a sheep farmer who grew up with a passion for comic strips. His first efforts appeared in the High School paper and after studying journalism at Montana State he served in the Navy from 1951-1955, where he created the strip Ty Foon for a Services magazine. After the Navy Lynde tried a succession of jobs and ended up in New York working for the Wall Street Journal.
Whilst there Lynde created Rick O’Shay which eventually found a home with the mighty Chicago Tribune Syndicate (home of Gasoline Alley, Terry and the Pirates and many others) launching as a Sunday page on April 27th 1958 and adding a daily black and white strip from 19th May that year.
Lynde produced the strip until 1977 when he left the Syndicate to produce another wonderful western Latigo (1979-1983). Tribune-News Syndicate owned Rick O’Shay outright and continued the feature with substitutes Marian Dern, Alfredo Alcala and Mel Keefer, but it just wasn’t the same and the strip was allowed to die in 1981.
Rick O’Shay took western conventions to sly and whimsical extremes as it followed the life of Rick, Deputy Marshal of the little town of Conniption. The series was set in the rugged Montana countryside where Lynde grew up and to which he returned as soon as the strip proved successful enough to support him.
Conniption was too small for a full Marshal and whatever order needs to be kept was easily handled by the easy-going Deputy Rick and his friend, grizzled veteran gunslinger Hipshot Percussion. Apart from drinking, fighting and gambling, the township’s most serious problem was criminally bad puns, personified in the likes of saloon owner Gaye Abandon, newspaper editor Clarion McCall, hotelier Auntie Climax, town drunk Mooch McHooch, gunsmith Cap’n Ball, banker Mort Gage, gambler Deuces Wilde and a feisty kid named Quyat Burp. The town’s spiritual needs were catered to by Reverend Jubal Lee and the local Indian tribe is led by Chief Horse’s Neck…
Eventually the dailies began spoofing contemporary events like the James Bond craze, pop music and TV shows but the Sunday episodes (such as the grand selection from 1972-1976 reprinted in this paperback sized, regrettably monochrome collection) retained their integrity and continued to spoof the Old West.
Bright and breezy slapstick rib-ticklers and laconic, tongue-in-cheek jokes involving drunks, card-games, guys joshing with each other, the malicious recalcitrance of horses and other inanimate objects plus the perennial duels of Hipshot as a succession of goofy young wannabes regularly called the old gun-hawk out to steal his rep played and replayed continuously; all set against the breathtaking geography of Montana’s “Big Sky Countryâ€â€¦
Lynde is still working in the western genre, producing the strip Grass Roots, new material for Swedish magazine Fantomen, assorted graphic novels and, since regaining the rights to Rick O’Shay for his own Cottonwood Publishing company, new works and chronological collections of this classic strip.
This nifty and delightful book from 1976 actually belonged to my wife until I took greedy full-possession of it: part of that glorious 1970s era of easily concealable paperback collections featuring classic strips like Peanuts, the Perishers, Mad, Broom Hilda, B.C., Wizard of Id and so many other magical ways to lose yourself whilst teachers droned on around you in interminable obliviousness.
Most of the books were even returned at the end of term, although some unscrupulous educators operated a “confiscation is forever†policy…
Fun and fulsome entertainment, this little gem won’t be easy to track down, but if giggles, guffaws and gunfights are your thing you’ll definitely want to round up the latest Rick O’Shay Cottonwood releases…
© 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1976 The Chicago Tribune. All Rights Reserved.
Thief!
it’s only borrowed till I’m dead and anyway what’s mine is yours, innit?