Number 1366: When the bills come due: Wild Bill and Buffalo Bill

I showed the first story from Avon’s Wild Bill Hickok #1 (1949), drawn by Jimmy Thompson, in December, 2012. You’ll find a link to it below the scans for the second story, “Cheyenne Campaign,” also drawn by Thompson.

In this story Wild Bill meets up with Buffalo Bill and even George Armstrong Custer for a fight with some Indians on the warpath. You read dialogue like “. . .those red fiends will...get our scalps...” and “Every shot must be a dead or wounded Cheyenne!” and realize this is one of those stories with casual racism common when Westerns were at the height of their popularity. My apologies to those who may be offended. It was fairly standard fare for its era, but made vivid by Thompson’s excellent and action-packed drawings.

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Read more about artist Jimmy Thompson. Click on the picture to go to another rip-roarin' story:

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Number 1278: A legendary comic book artist adds to the legend of a Western icon

Although Wild Bill Hickok is an historic character from the American West, he's also accorded a legendary status. Much of the story that is written of him mixes in heavy doses of fiction. That includes the Wild Bill Hickok series from Avon, which began in 1949.

For the purposes of this blog, what interests us here is that Wild Bill’s origin story, told here in Wild Bill Hickok #1, is drawn by Jimmy Thompson. Thompson, as this article states so well was fully formed as an artist when he entered comic books in their early days. He drew for Timely and DC, and left both of them in the late forties. He showed up here at Avon in 1949, and then, as the article states, left comics after 1952.

Jimmy Thompson, like some other really good artists of the Golden Age, hasn't exactly flown under the radar — he's been written about, and his work shown, including here at Pappy's* — but most people who write about him don't believe he's accorded the status he deserves for his artistic skill. I think when you look at this story you'll recognize that he was a very good artist, right up there with the best of them, but whose proverbial light has remained mostly under the proverbial basket.

*See Pappy's #317, and Pappy's #1115

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