Alas, Big Tex wasn;t big enough to make past its first issue.
Tex White is new to the town of Gambler's Gulch, which is under the thrall of a murderous snake named Blackjack Wells, who has a habit of shooting people in the back for no reason. Wells, just to show how much he likes killing, has ;painted his gun red. Tex enters the town just after Wells has shot Clem Watkins from behind. This gets the townspeople mad; the most vocal is local gambler Jeb Sykes, who is accusing the old sheriff of not getting his job done. We soon learn, long before everyone else in town does, that Sykes is in the pay of Wells, who wants him to rally the townspeople against the sheriff and force him out of his job. Seems the sheriff is just too honest for Wells and his gang. The sheriff's feisty daughter , Miss Val, is the local school marm and she calls Sykes nothing but a tinhorn gambler. Sykes calls Miss Val a little she-cat and grabs her. Well, grabbing a school marm is against the code of the West -- especially if the school marm is a pretty blonde who wears very tight shirts over some very pneumatic assets -- so Big Tex clocks him. That's enough for the sheriff to ask Tex to be his deputy because he is short-staffed, especially after Wells killed the last deputy.
A little later, after Tex is all sworn in, some school kids playing hooky overhear Blackjack and his gang plan to rustle the longhorns in the valley while one of Balckjack's gang shoots up the dance hall in town to distract the sheriff. The kids go running to Miss Val, who% goes running to her father and Big Tex. The three of them set up an ambush for the gang but it is spoiled when a mountain lion attacks Big Tex and the sheriff shoots it, warning the bad guys. The cattle stampede and the gang is about to be crushed under their hooves when Big Tex takes aim and shoot the lead cow. The gang is caught, but Tex decides to fight Blackjack himself. Turns out Tex has been hunting Blackjack since the owlhoot killed his buddy Jack Dean back in Arizona City. Blackjack fights dirty but it turns out that the code of the West says that dirty fighti8ng don't mean blip when you are going against a man named Tex. There's a neat bit of banter during the fight. Blackjack: "Better start sayin' yore prayers, White!" Big Tex: "I'll save my prayers for Sunday church, Wells -- and today is only Friday!" Then, after Tex beats the blip out of Blackjack, the Sheriff: "Today might be Friday, Son, but I still think that you hit him with your Sunday punch!" You just don't get that sort of dialog from an episode of The Lone Ranger.
Anyway, the bad guys are in jail, the newspaper is calling the sheriff a hero, and Big Tex and Miss Val are getting friendly.
I have no idea how old Tex Wells is supposed to be, but he is drawn old, with tired, crinkled eyes. also, it turns out that this issue reprints stories from the publisher's John Wayne Adventure Comics, which ran from 1949 to 1955, with the name of the character changed to Big Tex. Go figure.
Tex has two more adventures in this issue: "Sudden Death at Dragon's Peak" (in which we meet Barney Betts, a grizzled old coot who is Tex's oldest friend) and "The Mysterious Valley of Violence" (in which Tex comes across a outlaw hideout fashioned as in old Rome, complete with a coliseum, and a fat madman in a toga who considers himself Nero). Those interested in Miss Val and her tight shirts (and what young b oy in 1953 wouldn't be?) will be disappoint to learn that she does not appear in either story. Evidently, like the comic book itself, she was one-and-done. But the story about Nero is pretty interesting in a what-were-they-thinking? kind of way, though.
Enjoy.
https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=97622&comicpage=&b=i
When I was a kid reading DC Comics mostly, I was mostly attracted to Super Heroes. Although I watched a lot of Westerns on TV--HAVE GUN WILL TRAVEL was my favorite--somehow I never got into Western comic books.
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