Abstract
“Buffalo Bill” Cody’s fame moved from his “show” to dime novels and comics with a clear fixed image. He appeared in three comic series in the 1950s American Youthful magazines, British Buffalo Bill Annuals of Denis McLoughlin and Brantonne and Fronval’s French Buffalo Bill of 1949. All of these center on Cody’s relationship with Native Americans, combining both the motif of the “duel” with different levels of racism in the portrayals of Cody’s enemies.
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Notes
- 1.
Although, for convenience, Cody’s Wild West is described as a “show” in some places in this text, that was not a term used by Cody himself. He believed his Wild West was a recreation of “the real thing”. Some of the vast amount of merchandise that was generated is shown in R. L. Wilson, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West: An American Legend, London: Greenhill Books, 1998.
- 2.
Randolph Cox, The Dime Novel Companion: A Source Book (Westport: Greenwood Publishing, 2000), 43. After many adventures fighting more normal adversaries, Cody eventually also fights ghosts, skeletons, and giant spiders at some points.
- 3.
Maurice Horn, Comics of the American West (South Hackensack: Stoeger, 1977), 50.
- 4.
Michael A. Sheyahshe, Native Americans in Comic Books: A Critical Study (Jefferson: McFarland & Company, 2008), 9.
- 5.
Martin Barker and Roger Sabin, The Lasting of the Mohicans (Jackson, University of Mississippi Press), X.
- 6.
Fredric Wertham’s Seduction of the Innocent was published in the UK in 1954 and its impact as part of a large anti-comic campaign there is explained in detail in Martin Barker’s A Haunt of Fears: The Strange History of the British Horror Comics Campaign (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1984).
- 7.
The text from word balloons can be difficult to transcribe. It is often over-heavy with exclamations, pauses, and bold emphasis. In the main an attempt has been made to follow the layout of any given text, but sometimes there has been a mild simplification to improve clarity.
- 8.
William Katz, Black Indians: A Hidden Heritage (New York: Athenaeum, 1986), 1.
- 9.
Pewewardy, Cornel. “From Subhuman to Superhuman: The Evolution of American Indian Images in Comic Books.” American Indian Stereotypes in the World of Children: A Reader and Bibliography. 2nd ed. Ed. Arlene Hirschfelder et al. (MD: Scarecrow Press, 1999), 198.
- 10.
Cody’s book, The Life of Hon, William F Cody Known as Buffalo Bill, the Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide was originally published in 1879, but has been reprinted many times, including facsimile editions, such as William F Cody, The Life of Buffalo Bill (London: Senate, 1994).
- 11.
Jane Tompkins, West of Everything: The Inner Life of Westerns (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 186–7.
- 12.
Tompkins, West of Everything: The Inner Life of Westerns, 193.
- 13.
Tompkins, West of Everything: The Inner Life of Westerns, 195.
- 14.
Tompkins, West of Everything: The Inner Life of Westerns, 201.
- 15.
Quoted in Ray Merlock, “Preface”, Peter Rollins (ed) Hollywood’s West: The American Frontier in Film, Television, and History (University Press of Kentucky 2005), xi.
- 16.
Jeremy Agnew, The Creation of the Cowboy Hero: Fiction, Film and Fact (Jefferson: McFarland and Company, 2015), 21.
- 17.
Tompkins, West of Everything: The Inner Life of Westerns, 228–229.
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Huxley, D. (2018). Inventing and Selling “Buffalo Bill” in Comic Books, 1949–1957. In: Lone Heroes and the Myth of the American West in Comic Books, 1945-1962. Palgrave Studies in Comics and Graphic Novels. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93085-5_2
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