“At first,” Lynde said when I interviewed him in 1992, “the strip [Rick O'Shay] was something of an anachronism. It dealt with the twentieth century intruding upon this sleepy little Montana town. But the readers tended to want their West to be the Old West. And I kept hearing that, and finally, I thought to myself, that’s what I want too. So in the late sixties I adopted a centennial theme: if it was 1969, it was 1869 in the strip. And I kept that going. Once we were in the Old West,” he continued, “I felt I had to be authentic about it. Charlie Russell sort of set the standard.”
Montana’s Charles M. Russell, the cowboy artist, is celebrated for the fidelity of his portraits of the Old West. “Painters of the West today are locked into doing it very authentically;” Lynde said, “—you don’t find much successful impressionism of Western subjects.”
Through his art, Russell “has achieved the status of sainthood in Montana," Lynde went on. "No politician can succeed in Montana unless he's for Charlie Russell and against gun control," he added with a grin.
That's R.C. Harvey, in his fine obituary for the late Western cartoonist and novelist Stan Lynde, who passed away last week. The piece is packed with information, but those who want to know more should refer to Harvey's last piece on Lynde, published on this site in February.
Elsewhere:
—Reviews of All Kinds. Dominic Umile writes in the Chicago Reader about John Lewis and Nate Powell's March. Douglas Wolk writes in the Washington Post about Jason's Lost Cat. Cara Ellison writes in the New Statesman about Brandon Graham's Prophet. Tom Scioli writes in Comics Alliance about four semi-random superhero back issues. Joe McCulloch talks with "Janeane Patience" at length about Kevin O'Neill and Pat Mills's Marshal Law. (Part one of that conversation can be found here.)
—Koyama Press has announced its spring 2014 lineup.
—I'm interested to see how the Matt Bors/BuzzFeed dispute pans out.
—This kind of social science study is notoriously tricky, but it matches up with my own experience (but then I would think that) and could be applied to comics and so...
—The Comics Undressed documentary fundraiser from Ladydrawers has four days left, if that's a project you'd like to support.
