EXTRACTS: The Fleetway Picture Library Index Volume 2: The Thriller Libraries © The Book Palace (284 PAGES in Full edition)

FLEETWAY PICTURE LIBRARY INDEX VOLUME 2 9 strip). His style was extremely vigorous and ‘cartoony’— worlds away from the work of Eyles or Campion but nevertheless most likable, effective and extremely powerful. Part of the attraction of Cowboy Comics was the diversity of the artistic talent. Hugh McNeill, Cyril Holloway, John Woods, E. C. Julian, Roland Davies, Robert Macgillivray and Tom Thursby, all appeared drawing strips within the first six months of the library’s debut. One artist with a remarkably individual style was Adam Horne, who had been providing illustrations for the classic boys’ paper Chums as early as the 1920s. Horne’s Kit Carson strips have the same dash and élan that is to be found in the early Western films of the silent era. The comparison with the cinema is apt for another reason: both relied heavily on melodrama for their effects. William S. Hart, the first of the great Western stars, was, to put it kindly, not one for underplaying a role, particularly in the action sequences. Likewise, Adam Horne’s Kit Carson has a tendency to ‘ham up’ the action. Nevertheless, few people would argue that this old-fashioned style is very effective. It is often imbued with humour, particularly in the scenes featuring roguish patent medicine tricksters or itinerant actors and magicians. Horne was as much at home drawing Buck Jones as he was with Kit Carson and he showed a particular penchant for the light-hearted comedy adventures in which Buck got himself involved in the early issues of the library. Artists apt to drawing this kind of humour included Tom Laidler and Robert Rodger, although as the library progressed, the quality of the artwork began to diminish as more new artists were introduced. Some were quickly to find their way into the weekly papers, contributing to Cowboy Comics only briefly – Patrick Nicolle, Robert Forrest, Graham Coton, to name a few examples – whilst some became regulars. Peter Sutherland was one of only a handful of artists to contribute over 50 stories to Cowboy Comics . Other stylish artists such as H. C. Milburn and D. Gale were able to continue the high standards of the early issues but too many of the stories were drawn by styleless copyists such as R. Charles Roylance. Although later to make his name as the main artist on Captain Hurricane in Valiant , Roylance’s contributions – and there were many – to Cowboy Comics were filled with swipes. One of his first strips, ‘Buck Jones and the Buckboard Bandits’ (no. 93) lifted panels from earlier stories by D. C. Eyles, Colin Merrett and Bill Lacey. Roylance’s work was to continue in the same vein with barely a strip published that did not contain swipes from the works of superior artists. Another frustration was when strips were drawn by more than one artist, as with the story ‘Buck Jones and the Vengeance of Fire-Eye!’ (no.109). The first four pages of the strip were by Philip Mendoza, as is the bottom panel of page 7; the rest, however, is an unhappy mix of Mendoza and Roylance, with the latter regrettably taking the lion’s share. Other oddities included episodes where a second artist was drafted in to redraw faces of the main characters, as happened with ‘Kit Carson’s Rustler Trouble’ (no. 40) where Comics was a roaring success – although only after a shaky start. “They weren’t accompanied by any publicity or any gifts of any kind and, for about four months, six months, they were really in the doldrums,” recalled Leonard Matthews. “Then, suddenly, they started to gain in popularity and the circulation commenced to go up by leaps and bounds.” One reason for this may be that stories being prepared for the Australian Buck Jones and Kit Carson titles were now being drawn with Cowboy Comics in mind. A large opening panel which could be used as a splash page in the UK began appearing from issue 10 of the Australian titles and the artwork was obviously being drawn with resizing in mind. These newly designed stories began to appear in Cowboy Comics from the titles fourth month on the stands and earlier stories from the Australian comics that needed more work to fit the UK format were only used infrequently. The Australian titles would continue to appear until 1952. Quite why they came to an end is open to speculation. Both series continued to appear, individually numbered until issue 36 after which changes could be seen. Issue 37 of Kit Carson was accompanied on the newsstands by a new title, Billy the Kid , numbered 38 in what the cover described as a “New Series”. 12 Buck Jones returned with issue 39, accompanied by Kit Carson no. 40. This new sequence of numbering lasted only another couple of months and the two titles folded with issues 43 and 44, which offered readers the “Great News!” that, from the following month, both titles would be appearing “in a new pocket-size!”, 64-page format. In March 1952 the Australian government announced that, in an effort to reduce its adverse overseas trade balance, it was to drastically cut imports. Whether this affected the publication of the Australian cowboy comics is not known but it may have been a factor. The simpler solution may be that the comics were steadily declining in sales. Soaring newsprint costs forced prices of all Australian comics to increase in March 1951, including the A.P. comics which jumped from 6d to 8d. Increasingly, the Australian market was being dominated by American reprints such as K. G. Murray’s Superman titles which, from 1950, were also being exported to the UK where they were distributed by Atlas Publishing & Distributing Co. It is also a possibility that exports of the new Thriller Comics Library to Australia had showed that the oversized format was not necessary and costs could be reduced by simply exporting the pocket-library size issues. The demise of the Australian cowboy comics had little effect on the title in the UK. Westerns were still hugely popular at the Saturday morning cinema and the BBC, before the days of Independent Television, screened the movies of Hopalong Cassidy (played by William Boyd) and Tex Ritter. In fact, the Singing Cowboys, Roy Rogers and Tex Ritter, could also be seen live in the UK in the early 1950s along with other cowboys in touring rodeos. For most of the 1950s, the Western was the most