So, why would I nominate the second issue of
Lone Ranger's Western Treasury into the Hall of Fame rather than the first volume? Or perhaps I should have considered the follow-up,
Lone Ranger's Golden West #3. Well, to be perfectly honest, they all contain a number of excellent Lone Ranger stories (some even have solo Tonto and Silver stories) and have pages of neat facts about life in the wild west to help pad the page count to 'Dell Giant' levels. In addition, they all feature artwork by the master of deceptively simple storytelling, Tom Gill. What sets this one apart is the cover (and back cover). While I love the traditional painted covers used on the Lone Ranger series, I really, really dig the character design here. It recalls one of those great Little Golden Books like
Seven Little Postmen or
The Little Red Caboose. There's just a great, post-WW2 charm to that kind of artwork. The back cover shows the same map, but with lines indicating the "Famous Cattle Trails". Seriously, I am not making this up. You need a copy for your collection.
1 comment:
Not a big fan of Tom Gill, but gotta love those big Dell Giants, and westerns are a favorite genre for me. I'm on board with you with that 40s-50's design style.
Also from Dell, I love those ROY ROGERS, DALE EVANS, GENE AUTRY (and other western icons) covers where the main character is in color photo with cartoon backgrounds.
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