The Mounties At Work

I was recently able to purchase a collection of Zane Grey's King of the Royal Mounted comics from Etsy on the cheap, in cbr (Comic Book Reader, for the uninitiated) format. I'm working through those now and while sharing a 30-or-so-page story here would be awkward, I do plan on adding some of the added features for your viewing pleasure. 

The pages below are from issue number 207, published in 1940. The first image is the cover and I believe the bottom two are the final page and back cover respectively.

I've acquired copies of a number of other publications, some in comic book form and some in short stories, which I look forward to sharing.

WFHM4: "Saga of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police"

I've been gathering NWMP/RCMP-based comic book material for some time and have begun a page to display some of it. At the moment it's specific to cover art, but interior content will be added at some point in the future.

In continuing my search earlier today, the book below jumped out while I was on the Comic Book Plus website. Rather than tell the tales of a particularly gifted fictional Mountie, like Preston or King, it aims to teach about the challenges faced by these young men back in the day. 

It was published in 1942 by Centaur and was 64 pages in length, not counting covers. Touching on a wide variety of subject, it told of Napoleon, Wild Bill Hickock, Freddie Fitzsimmons' great game in baseball's World Series the previous year and, of course, the RCMP.

The Mountie pages follow. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find story/art credits.

There have been some touch ups to these pages, involving brightening the colours, slight rotation to straighten the images, and reducing the file size to tighten up the resolution a little bit. Those aside, all credit to CB+. Click on the pages for larger versions. 

Commando #4973: Mountie Hunter

Mountie Drew Fraser and Ross McKinley were partners and best friends. But when Drew enlisted in the Canadian Army, Ross was left behind.

However, Mountie life was far from quiet for Ross as the destruction of the war in Europe had extended its deathly claw all the way to Canada. Trains and supply lines were being targeted with ruthless precision, destroying vital supplies for the Allies. So ruthless in fact it spelt only one thing – sabotage!

Hunting the German spies would push Drew to the edge and force him to make the ultimate sacrifice. But a Mountie always gets his man...

So reads the solicitation text for the issue of Commando below. 

Commando being war-themed magazine dating back to the early 60s, I had not expected to come across a story involving the RCMP in its catalogue. Indeed, looking at this specific issue on Commando's website, no other book was revealed from clicking the "Mountie" tag included in its listing.

The issue has a publishing date of November 2016. I purchased the digital version for the Kindle. The story begins in 1940 and tells the tale of two friends on the force over the course of the next five years or so. It was written by Alan Hebden, drawn by Vicente Alcazar, and its cover is the work of Janek Matysiak. 

It doesn't break any new ground, and as the two join the military we get away from the Mountie adventure aspect for the most part. Since the war stories are Commando's stock and trade , that's hardly surprising.

Character development is not a key goal, either, since Commando has rarely used the same ones in multiple tales anyway. Several pages in, you'd still be hard-pressed to tell Ross and Drew apart.

Still, it's entertaining enough, and since Mountie fiction is difficult to come by these days, relatively speaking, it's a solid addition to a collection. 

Zane Gray' King of The Royal Mounted in The Secret of Roaring River (Part 1)

The following images are copied from the Miles City (Montana) Star newspaper. These specific strips ran from March 7th to 17th in 1939.

The best method of viewing/reading is probably to click on the first image then select the next strip from the menu at the bottom of the page. 

I'll be back later with part two of this particular story. It was not the first King tale to be told in the Star, nor the last. The King strip had already been running for years by 1939 and would continue to do so for several more. I just happened to land on a good hop-on point.

Sergeant Preston's Famous Family

There was a pleasant surprise waiting for me in the third issue of Dynamite Entertainment's Lone Ranger / Green Hornet mini-series entitled Champions Of Justice.

The Lone Ranger and The Green Hornet are related. I believe this is largely common knowledge, at least for fans of either or both characters, though at times I see it referred to as a piece of trivia. Let's let Wikipedia explain it:

(Dan Reid Jr.) is the name of Captain Reid's son, the Lone Ranger's nephew, a character introduced in the radio series in 1942, who became a juvenile sidekick to the Masked Man, is Dan Reid.  

When (Lone Ranger co-creators George) Trendle and (Fran) Striker later created The Green Hornet in 1936, they made this Dan Reid the father of Britt Reid, alias the Green Hornet, thereby making the Lone Ranger the Green Hornet's great-uncle.

Got all that? When the man who would become the Lone Ranger's (sometimes named John Reid) Texas Rangers group was ambushed, his older brother Daniel Reid was among the victims. That man's son, Dan Reid Jr, fathered Britt Reid, who went on to become the Green Hornet.

In the book above, writer Michael Uslan added a very interesting element. In the scene below, The Lone Ranger and Dan Reid Jr visit the President who is in the process of honouring foreign lawmen for their assistance to the USA.

Uslan plays it coy in the book's notes but that can only be Sergeant Preston Of The Yukon in the scenes above. The family connection is detailed in the following two pages and in light of Preston's real life origins, no other Mountie character makes sense. Again, from Wikipedia...

Following the success of The Lone Ranger and The Green Hornet on Detroit radio station WXYZ ...the station owner, George W. Trendle, asked for a similar adventure show with a dog as the hero....The dog was originally called Mogo, but after criticism by Trendle, (writer Tom) Dougall re-christened the canine King. Dougall likewise created Sgt. Preston and the French-Canadian guide. Fran Striker, who also wrote for The Lone Ranger, contributed show scripts.

Nice work by Uslan to more directly connect Preston to both The Lone Ranger and The Green Hornet due to their true-life origins. A tip of the hat to the writer for both the idea and the execution.

Of course now I expect a series featuring the three men in action together. I wonder if Uslan would be up to tackling that challenge?

Trent: The Dead Man

I don't read as many comics as I did when I was a kid, but I do like to keep track of what's going on in the industry. Part of my routine, in an effort to stay up to date with independent publishers as well, is to scan Comixology's new releases every Wednesday afternoon.

I came across a pleasant surprise last week. It's not every (Wednes)day that you stumble into a mountie comic book.

Sergeant Philip Trent is a 'Mountie', a member of the Canadian Northwest Mounted Police. At the end of the 19th century, it's up to him and his fellow officers to crisscross the vast open spaces of Canada to maintain law and order. Sent after a small-time killer, he finds himself saving the beautiful Agnes from a pack of hungry wolves. The young woman has come from the city to find her missing half-brother. Against his better judgment, Trent agrees to help her...

There are three volumes available as I write this. I believe the books are French in origin but translated into English. Here's a sample page.

The book doesn't seem to be featured particularly prominently on the Europe Comics website as I had to use the search function to find it. Not sure if I'll go digital or print with this one, but it'll find it's way into my small collection at some point, that much is certain.