When we think about the genre of Westerns, many of us think about movies or TV shows or even advertisements. But, Will Grady, author of "Redrawing the Western: A History of American Comics and the Mythic West," has researched and written a book about a different form of media: the Western comic book.
Grady joined The Show to discuss what western comics entailed — how prevalent they were and how similar or dissimilar they were to other media depicting the West.
Full conversation
WILL GRADY: Yeah, so, I'd say they, they kind of it's, this is the odd thing because in the study of sort of the Western, everyone, as you say, sort of there is all these dominant kind of media, sort of the films, the television and so on. But no one was looking at the comic books and especially in the sort of the mid, mid-1950s, mid-century rather, the 1940s and the 1950s especially, Western comics were printed, American Western comics were printed in the mill, like, you know, like, were read by millions of people. By mainly largely children, and I think that's why it's so interesting, and children and adolescents I should say.
And that's what makes it so interesting is because this is a uniquely sort of young person's Western space. And so they were doing things that just, film and television just weren't doing. So it might have been that they were sort of they had these sort of very politicized stories again speaking very much to a young, young people that were reading these. Or it might have been that they're just, you know, a sense of fun.
You know, Western comics or comic books in general, the stories were typically told across sort of, you know, eight pages, you know. Very short, sort of snappy stories, so it kind of had to condense all the action and all the fun and the thrills that comes with Western adventure into just a small handful of pages. And I think that's what makes it that like, for me anyway, and I'm sure for lots of other readers, that's where the enjoyment derives from. It was almost like you cut out all the boring talky bits of a Western film and it's straight to action and adventure.
BRODIE: Yeah, well, so in terms of the imagery, is it what we would imagine or recognize from, you know, movies or TV shows, you know, a cowboy on a horse in a in a hat and, you know, beautiful landscapes and bets and dusty, you know, dusty ground all around?
GRADY: Of course, it's, it's got all of them bits to it, and I think and so that, that is part of the kind of the appeal because it's all what we're familiar with. All these Western heroes had their own comic book adventure, so it almost extended sort of people's kind of experiences with these sort of characters in a way.
BRODIE: Was that sort of the, the heyday of of these comics, sort of the middle of the last century?
GRADY: Oh yes, yeah, so, I mean they, the superhero, ‘cause everyone, when you think of comic books, you naturally think of sort of the superhero and but after the World War, after World War II, the, the superhero kind of declined in popularity, and that's where the Western took over as the sort of main central sort of adventure genre. So they were printed, there were thousands of different comics titles and read by, you know, millions of readers.
So that was the sort of, the key sort of height of popularity, but so was the height of popularity in film and other sort of media as well. They did resonate and they were so popular in the sort of mid-century, but the Western comic has been around for literal decades or centuries even.
BRODIE: Wow. Well, so it's, it's interesting that that was sort of the time when they were the most popular, you know, the middle of the 20th century. Because that was sort of the beginning of big population booms in, you know, in Arizona and other parts of the West, and when, you know, the, the West sort of as it had been known, was changing a little bit into the West sort of as we know it today.
GRADY: Yes, yeah. I mean, I, I think there's always been an element of nostalgia with the Western. I mean, it kind, it came about with the dawn of cinema at the turn of the century, and it was always that thing of looking backwards to a past that no longer exists, existed. But I think then by the sort of mid-century, it's almost like it's been sort … some of them sort of references have been taken away and it's just a kind of fun, you know, adventure genre.
But there was always the sort of the underlying kind of elements of triumph. It is that story of American triumph, against a sort of an opponent, oh gosh, for want of a better word, obviously the rugged frontier, the sort of the the sort of the, the landscapes that were inhospitable and and the way that they went out and they sort of was able to expand across the nation in that way, across the landscape, shall we say.
BRODIE: So you mentioned that these stories were in many ways political. What kinds of messages were they trying to get out? What kinds of stories were they trying to tell here?
GRADY: And that is a very huge part of the book is because it, it travels through such a long period of time. I mean, again, if we do focus so much on the sort of the mid-century, I guess you could sort of look at the kind of, for example, there's a Western film called “Colt 45,” and the storyline is a film from 1950 and it's about the story of, you know, keeping a dangerous weapon, which is of course the, the Colt repeating pistol out of the hands of the wrong people, which is the obviously the outlaws, the villains.
And of course this is completely a code for the atom bomb, keeping the bomb outside of the hands of those villainous Soviets. And so where film we're kind of using a bit more nuance and a bit more sort of subtle allegory, comic books tended to be a bit more on the nose.
So in the book you'll see examples of sort of an Indigenous character who in the 1800s, is threatened by a group of Russians, and one night he has a nightmare about Joseph Stalin and realizes that he has to get the Russians off the continent before it's too late because in the future communists will be a threat to America. And so there's lots of sort of really wacky kind of stories, and you know, storylines about the Soviet spies in the frontier and in the west.
But then other other, in other ways, they kind of, I mean, ‘cause that shifts so much over time, so obviously in the sort of 1960s and 1970s, the Western politically sours, you know, it becomes unpalatable for audiences in the face of things like the Vietnam War. And so again you get these sort of storylines of of kind of, it shifts the sort of the imagery of the kind of the triumphant you know, cavalry, the knights in shining armor, and you get these sort of rampaging military men and things, so you get these subversions of the Western, very much like you do in sort of cinema as well.
BRODIE: So I've got to ask about your interest in this genre because as folks back in the 1800s might have said, you're not from around these parts.
GRADY: So, yes, no, funnily enough, it's, it's a story about Arizona. And I actually visited there with my parents in 1998, and we went to Williams and we took the steam train to the Grand Canyon, and of course, I don't know if anyone has as listeners or yourself, have rode that train. And of course it gets stopped by bandits, and it's all very good fun.
But it kind of the thing is, is like my memories of that that, so, so of course that was a bit of fun, but the the actual landscape itself is so arresting and my memories of these sort of vast desert landscapes are so, for want of a better word, exotic, there's like nothing I've ever seen before. And I think, yeah, it's something that always inspired me.
I think for us as outsiders looking in, I think it's always been very appealing for sort of foreigners for want of a better word, as Europeans, perhaps not a European anymore, damn. But yeah, the, the Western is, it's just, it's just this, this plate and the sort of simplicity of the images of, you know, the, the wandering figure on that desolate, sort of vast desert landscape, it's always sort of inspired something in me.
And so then it was kind of like when I got to university and I realized, oh my God, we can study comics, wow. It was kind of, I realized there's multiple histories of the Western in film, multiple histories of the Western in television, fiction, painting, classical music, but where's the history on the Western comic?
