Friday, April 22, 2011

Laredo Crockett Again

Both Bob Schoenke’s Jack Armstrong and its successor Laredo Crockett were extremely violent comic strips. The two strips ran a total of 21 years from 26 May 1947 to January 27 1968. Laredo Crockett was a bit more adult than Jack Armstrong with the added spice of sex to the plots. It’s a wonder the strips survived so long since they flourished during the period when the crusade against comic books was at its height. The comic strips enlisted the aid of Milt Caniff and Al Capp to defend and distance the strips from the comic books. As Caniff pointed out the comics already had their censors in syndicates, editors, advertisers and readers, anyone of which could reject anything they found offensive. Somehow, perhaps because it was a western, Laredo Crockett avoided censorship, even when he introduced what looked like a cat-house into the background. These selections are from various times in 1950, 1951, and 1952.





No comments:

Post a Comment