Billy the Kid Western Annual [1956]

[1955] Annual. Original price 5/.
96 pages. Colour & tone art contents.
World Distributors (Manchester) Ltd.

Painted cover by Walt Howarth (uncredited)

Contents:

 2 UNTITLED endpaper; illustrated by UNKNOWN (uncredited).

 4 Indicia

 5 Billy the Kid Western Annual title page; illustrated by UNKNOWN (uncredited).

 6 Contents illustrated by UNKNOWN (uncredited).

 7 The Streets of Laredo text story by Jesse Allard; illustrated by UNKNOWN (uncredited).

17 Billy the Kid Outlaw's Code w: UNKNOWN (uncredited); a: Jack Sparling (uncredited).

r: Billy the Kid Adventure Magazine (Toby Press) #02 (Dec 1950).

25 Billy the Kid The Last Bullet w: UNKNOWN (uncredited); UNKNOWN (uncredited).

r: Billy the Kid Adventure Magazine (Toby Press) #03 (Feb 1951).

33 Sundown! text story by Cal Gundon; illustrated by UNKNOWN (uncredited).

49 The Durango Kid Under the Skull and Crossbones w: UNKNOWN (uncredited); a: Joe Certa (uncredited).

r: Charles Starrett as the Durango Kid (Magazine Enterprises) #10 (Apr 1951 - May 1951).

58 The Durango Kid Blackmail Terror! w: UNKNOWN (uncredited); a: Joe Certa (uncredited).

r: Charles Starrett as the Durango Kid (Magazine Enterprises) #10 (Apr 1951 - May 1951).

65 Outlaws at the Rodeo text story by Zed Montana; illustrated by UNKNOWN (uncredited).

75 Fancy-Pants Takes a Ride text story by Clinton Stewart; illustrated by UNKNOWN (uncredited).

82 Two-Gun Promise! w: UNKNOWN (uncredited); a: Tom Gill, lettering by Ed Hamilton.

r: Billy the Kid Adventure Magazine (Toby Press) #01 (Oct 1950).

94 UNTITLED endpaper; illustrated by UNKNOWN (uncredited).

Despite another wonderful cover, there's an awkwardness to the endpaper and title page's art, with Billy the Kid appearing to be slightly double-jointed. As the rest of the illustrations are better, it seems to indicate a rush for the annual to be completed in time for publication - not, one has to admit, the most encouraging sign. A very strong illustration of a dreamcatcher encircling the contents is, although only barely embellished in red tone, displays what can be done with very simple graphical adornments. While not as brave or adventurous as the Buffalo Bill Wild West Annual illustrations, it is extremely effective.

As I was riding through the streets of Laredo,
   As I rode down to Laredo one day;
I saw a young cowboy all dressed in white linen,
   All dressed in white linen and cold as the clay ....

Jesse Allard knows well to use the perennially-popular traditional ballad to open his story, and it is mirrored in the plot - not especially dramatically, despite being long enough to develop events in a suitably complex way, though strongly enough to avoid accusations of being overly simplistic. There aren't enough details provided to really get a sense of the people involved. This is another story which uses sound effects in prose to create tension, and it works as well here as elsewhere - which is to say it doesn't work.

And really, the Circle-O ranch? Puh-lease. It's brand would be two circles, one inside the other, and utterly useless at preventing rustling. A little more care and attention could have made this so much better.

Terror was hanging over like a threatening cloud over Red Mesa Valley, when Billy the Kid drifted into the valley! Bullets whistled through the air when he came, and bullets splattered around him when he left! But in-between, the Kid found a use for his head and his blazing guns and showed the strange workings of his "Outlaw Code"!!

Splattering bullets? Are they made of Plasticine? Toby Press are usually better than this, and the use of such an incongruous word in an otherwise fine little strip really stand out as being misplaced.

Racing after bushwhackers, who are attempting to murder a man named Russ Clayton under orders from another man, but stops to take Clayton to someone who can provide medical assistance. When Clayton is brought to his men, Billy is informed that Beef Brent is behind the attempt on Clayton's life. A rustler, Brent has been raiding the ranch nearly to breaking point, and the ranchers aren't strong enough to drive their cattle to market while protecting their stock.

Riding into town, Billy wounds the two hired killers when they draw on him, though the sheriff is reluctant to arrest them. Preferring to stay out of trouble, the elderly lawman doesn't want to tangle with Brent's toxic influence on the area. Billy makes a deal with Brent to tae the cattle to market, and finds himself facing death from every corner.

The plates used for Outlaw's Code had seen better days, and the rough appearance of the strip, despite being in full colour, detracts slightly from the tale's appeal. There's a fine twist, and some energetic artwork, which mitigates the poor reproduction, yet there isn't enough depth to the tale - it is, for all the narrative strengths, a rather easy adventure. The Last Bullet fares slightly better in print quality, but is also lacking in crispness.

Wanted for murder! Wanted for robbery! Wanted for practically every crime in the book! That was Billy the Kid, king of the outlaws! Promotion and reward awaited the law officer who could bring him in dead or alive! An ambitious young deputy-sheriff, named Al Mooney was determined to use any method to get the Kid and get him - dead!

When Billy rides into Rock Ridge, Mooney and the Sheriff go after him. The sheriff is wounded when he attempts to arrest Billy, and Mooney races out after the fleeing outlaw. Billy's horse dies in his race from the town, and he is forced to take shelter at a farmstead.

There's something to be admired in the storytelling risks taken with the conclusion, but how Mooney is able to so rapidly come to the correct conclusion is left to the reader to work out. Much better than a precis could get across, the story's charm lies in the ultimate act of humanity Billy performs, saving a child's life at the potential cost of his own.

A minor note of concern has to be raised at the description of Billy being "wanted for practically every crime in the book," although this can be squared with historical documents as being the adventures of the fictional Billy the Kid. The real Billy was hardly the compulsive breaker of laws he is presented as, and it would have been nice to have a clear distinction between the two.

He was merely friends with the horse. Honest. Any allegations are spurious.

Sundown! - a Cal Gundon Frontier special - which stars Sal Sundown, is unfortunate that it opens with a character named Clarence Aloysius Jones, which makes me think of parody westerns published a decade or so after the release of this annual. It is refreshing that Sundown can smoke and shoot without the text making criticism of such behaviour, and the realism which manages to creep into the telling makes other elements less irritating.

It's something different when The Durango Kid, scourging nemesis of the plains, takes to the high seas in pursuit of a band of cutthroat buccaneers! Six-gun justice takes a new and perilous turn Under the Skull and Crossbones

Western and pirate adventures in one strip - while this might sound as if it holds potential, wrangling the Durango Kid into such a tale is a complete disappointment. The pirate, imaginatively called "One-Eye" by his men, wears standard pirate regalia, which is difficult to square with the time period of the western hero Durango Kid, and there is further problems with the ship depicted - horribly out of place, the clash of genres simply does not work here.

You have to admire a story titled Fancy-Pants Takes a Hike, and the plot - a kitchen equipment salesman, travelling with an extensive wardrobe, is different enough to stand out among gun-slinging adventures. Of course, there is more to the telling than that, and a suitably painful punishment to conclude the tale. It raises a major problem for me, as far as suitability is concerned - this is meant to be a Billy the Kid Western Annual, not a random selection of vaguely western material brought together under a generic banner. As entertaining as such a diverting tale is, it doesn't advance anything about Billy the Kid.

Another problem with the stories is that they are so disconnected. As with all of World's prose, there is no attempt to build something greater - had the stories they commissioned taken the opportunity to mesh original characters into a shared world, showing the development of the ranches and small towns through the years, then there might have been more of an emotional connection when a random character is gunned down. As it is, whenever the stories feature a death there is no attachment, and thus no sense of loss associated with the act.

Not, by any means, a classic, though there is enough reading within its pages to make it a worthwhile purchase. If only it was slightly more polished...

[1955]

Billy the Kid
Western Annual

[1957]

Billy the Kid Western Annual [1955]

[1954] Annual. Original price 5/.
96 pages. Tone art contents.
World Distributors (Manchester) Ltd.

Painted cover by Walt Howarth (uncredited)

Contents:

 2 UNTITLED endpaper (items found in the West); illustrated by UNKNOWN (uncredited).

 4 Indicia

 5 Billy the Kid Western Annual title page; illustrated by UNKNOWN (uncredited).

 6 Contents illustrated by UNKNOWN (uncredited).

 7 The Battle of Coyote Pass text story by Jeff Delmar; illustrated by UNKNOWN (uncredited).

16 Death Travels Northward! w: UNKNOWN (uncredited); a: UNKNOWN (uncredited).

r: Billy the Kid Adventure Magazine (Toby Press) #19 (Nov 1953).

27 Ghost Town Gold text story by Zachary Farland; illustrated by UNKNOWN (uncredited).

38 Stagecoach Blow-Up! w: UNKNOWN (uncredited); a: UNKNOWN (uncredited).

r: Billy the Kid Adventure Magazine (Toby Press) #19 (Nov 1953).

46 The Cactus Kid text story by Alton Boyd; illustrated by UNKNOWN (uncredited).

53 Dry-Gulch Terror! w: UNKNOWN (uncredited); a: UNKNOWN (uncredited).

r: Billy the Kid Adventure Magazine (Toby Press) #19 (Nov 1953).

60 The Phantom Ranger text story by Jesse Allard; illustrated by UNKNOWN (uncredited).

76 "Billy the Kid - Avenger!" w: UNKNOWN (uncredited); a: Howard Larsen (uncredited).

r: Badmen of the West (Magazine Enterprises) #02 (1954).

83 Walk of the Tribes text story by Cal Gundon; illustrated by UNKNOWN (uncredited).

94 UNTITLED endpaper (items found in the West); illustrated by UNKNOWN (uncredited).

While it isn't clear what the purpose of such an elaborate endpaper is (to locate the items throughout the annual, perhaps), it is nevertheless a treat to see such care taken with the presentation. There seem to be a few shortcuts taken, especially with the Derringer, and the Texas Longhorn appears rather stiff, though these small concessions to style are appreciated.

Ted Barlow and Pete Maxton, scouts for a wagon team, spot signs of Sioux in the hills. Riding back to the wagons, they relay their sighting to Dan Danvers, the train boss, though the threat is discounted - a lone hunter rather than an advance for a war party. When two of the other scouts, Bull Carson and Jud Bentham, dismiss any possible threat from the Sioux, Ted decides to uncover why the men are lying to Dan, and what they have to gain from doing so.

Told in a very simple style, The Battle of Coyote Pass isn't the type of tale which immediately comes to mind when Billy the Kid is concerned, but gets across an adequate sense of the era. It is, however, a story which has serious problems, not least of which is the inclusion of sound effects - what is fine for a Bugs Bunny story is, here, completely off-putting and intrusive. The theme of treachery and betrayal somehow work for in annual's favour, and as it is a brief excursion there isn't much to gripe about.

North or South... there's never been a faster drawing sidewinder than Death! When folks heard that that bony owlhoot was coming, they'd take to the hills! Everybody agreed there was no stopping him... But Death's path crossed Billy 'the Kid'

Forget Billy the Kid Versus Dracula, this comic strip has him facing the grim reaper himself - Death. And thirteen years prior to that film, no less. Okay, so it is merely a bandit with a skull mask, but acknowledging this fact so early in the narrative (on the second page, for shame) robs the story of some of the horror potential inherent in the strip. What's the deal with explaining away everything that touches on the macabre?

Death shoots Tom, a youngster who wished to ride with Billy, and with his dying breath Tom reveals the identity of his murderer to the gunman. Billy digs a shallow grave for the boy, and a passing Federal Marshal, Jim Maxwell, tells Billy that Death has been operating just north of the Rio Grande, working his way northwards, killing and robbing all the way. Maxwell has managed to narrow the suspect pool for the killings to three men:

First one's Art Diamond... Mebbe yuh've heard of him. He's a big gambling man. Diamond's as fast with a six-shooter as he is with a poker deck, whenever thuh need 'rises.

Second one's Luke Gant. Luke's a wolf-poisoner. Travels from ranch to ranch hirin' hisself out to ranchers troubled by wolves. Gant has special poisons.

Third one's Doc Cockrell... He sells patent medicine. Doc's a walkin' dictionary... Keep cloudin' thuh sky with high-falutin' yappin' till folks buy what he's sellin', just to clear thuh air...

Why a Federal Marshal would tell all this to a perfect stranger, who has just buried a body in the desert, is a whole other question. Billy vows to track down Tom's killer, though refuses to ride with the Marshal as he hasn't always seen eye to eye with the law.

A week later, one hundred and twenty miles north of Tom's grave, Billy finds Art Diamond, taking him with him to talk about the murder. Riding through the desert, Art sees the glint of a barrel, pushing Billy out of the way of a sniper's round - and takes the bullet himself.

Three weeks later, and one hundred and twenty-five miles north of Art Diamond's grave, Billy watches Gant as he works. Noting that Gant rides a black horse, just like Death, he believes he has found the killer - only to discover Gant dead when he gets near. Riding on to Yellowstone Country, Billy closes in on Doc Cockrell, his final suspect. As he walks to Doc's wagon, a shot rings out, and Billy falls to the ground with a flesh wound. Death approaches, and reveals his identity... Joe Laredo. Having killed the real Maxwell, Laredo has been posing as both a lawman and Death.

There are multiple problems with this strip, having too easy a central puzzle to carry the narrative through - added to which are two unlikely suspects, unlikely threats, and the single dumbest criminal to ever wear a skull mask in the old west. There are, for those interested, quite a few similar skull-faced Western characters in American comics, and, for those keeping score, the character of Death predates Ghost Rider by fourteen years.

Stagecoach Blow-Up! begins with, naturally enough, an exploding stagecoach - which has the word "boom" placed over the explosion, in case readers imagined some silent explosive to have been utilised in the deed. I really dislike clumsily-handled sound-effects, and this is one of the least polished uses of the kind. Billy the Kid, for reasons not explained, was travelling on the stagecoach, and is knocked unconscious by the blast - the sole survivor of the thieves responsible.

Billy finds a cigarette case with a stamp for tailor-made cigarettes, then sets out to track a horse which survived the assault and bolted from the scene. He finds the horse, and after calming it down, rides into Ponca City - where the robbers are waiting - to inform the Sheriff of events. A slight improvement, yet there's a lingering sense of hurriedness to the telling, as if the script was rushed, with some jarring cuts from one panel to the next sitting uneasily beside more measured storytelling.

Dry-Gulch Terror! is a fantastic title, which ought to be aligned with an appropriately tense story. Unfortunately, despite a terrific set-up, this isn't a story worthy of its name - after the train he is riding on is robbed, Billy assists Ed Randall, shot in the exchange, to Dry-Gulch so his bullet wound can be attended. After ensuring Randall gets to Dr. Prince in one piece, the Sheriff draws on Billy, though is overpowered before he can shoot Billy in cold blood, or locked up for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Learning that the Sheriff is behind a crimewave, Billy sets out to thwart the man's criminal empire. Overhearing the Sheriff's plan to strike the assay office, he prepares to take down the men in one fell swoop.

And things are wrapped up so clean and neat that there is no question as to Billy the Kid's sense of morality, his personal motivations, or even his ambitions. Where spaghetti westerns would have twisted and tormented a character put into the position Billy is given here, there isn't a pause in the telling where possible repercussions are laid out, nor are recriminations from unseen associates of the corrupt lawman offered. There is a lot of potential, but there's not enough room to exploit such a delicious notion as a wanted criminal taking down a sheriff.

The Phantom Ranger might have been an attempt to provide quasi-superhero adventures in the west, though neither the name nor the story holds much appeal beyond spot-the-inspiration games. A rather unimpressive outing for a character whose appeal isn't immediately obvious, and the square-awed heroics wear out their welcome far too soon. There's simply far too many heroic western characters to immediately work a new figure up to the status of the big names in a single short story, and as much as I appreciate something different being attempted, it doesn't work for me.

This is the story of a private war - a war that forms the backdrop against which the gunman-killer the West knows as Billy the Kid first came to prominence! A war that takes its place in the South-West as one of the grimmest tales of death and killing ever written by roaring Colt .45s! It has been dug from old letters, from an old bible, from the dying whispers of men hired to kill!

It is the personal war of-

"Billy the Kid - Avenger!"

Seven pages is far from adequate to cover the Lincoln County War, and there are many instances where I know that things have been shortened, altered, or cut entirely - without even glancing in the direction of half a dozen accounts of the conflict which cover events comprehensively. If there was ever a crying need for an illustrated version of events, then the complete story of the rise of Billy the Kid, drawing on all the myriad published accounts, is right up there. The classics have, by and large, been mined for most of their worth, yet true-life stories are painfully absent.

Go ahead - try to name a work of considerable length which recounts Billy the Kid's story without embellishments.

While this annual has to be appreciated in light of its age, and the climate in which it was published, it is nevertheless a disappointing collection of material. Yes, the cover is wonderful, but it is also the best part of the annual - there is nothing within its pages crafted to the same level of care and attention.

[1954]

Billy the Kid
Western Annual

[1956]