Tex Ritter Western

    (Charlton, 1950-1959)
™ and ©1955 Charlton Comics Group

By the time Charlton got around to licensing a real-world singing cowboy for its comic line, all the best ones (Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Hopalong Cassidy, even Gabby Hayes) were all taken. So Charlton readers were treated to Tex Ritter Western, a shoot-em-up, ride-em-in cowboy title featuring the narrow-eyed Ritter in colorful sheriff‘s garb, busting up bad guys along the sagebrush-speckled plains. Goofy lawman Sam the Sheriff held down the back of the book with four-page humor stories.

Ritter’s adventures were drawn by Stan Campbell, a capable artist who made generous use of Zipatone shading to add depth and complexity to the panels. Though his best efforts were undone by Charlton’s notoriously cheap printing process, his draftsmanship helped elevate Ritter above other more pedestrian 1950s western strips.
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