Zane Grey’s King of the Royal Mounted is a good example of using brand recognition to sell a product. The comic strip that appeared on February 17, 1935 was attributed to Zane Grey, the top writer of Westerns in the world of Pulp. Grey and artist Allen Dean began the strip but later it passed to Grey’s son, Romer and publisher, Stephen Slesinger with art by Charles Flanders and Jim Gary. The comic strip was followed by Big Little Books, movie serials and a David McKay comic. In the 1938 Dell comics did a version of the serial but in 1948 they started doing issues of Four Color Comics about King. Finally in the 1950s, Zane Grey’s King of the Royal Mounted got its own comic book.
It is this comic book that features our strange Northern. Now Zane Grey’s King of the Royal Mounted was a little different from some Northerns. It was about a Mountie (which many were) but it wasn’t placed in the Klondike era of 1898. Zane Grey’s King of the Royal Mounted features a strange blend of rustic Canada in the modern era history. For example, the series has cars and tear gas. King is a Mountie of the same time period as those that captured the Rat River Trapper in 1932.
From Four Color #310 (January 1951) comes this story filled with weirdness. The author is not known but the art is by Jim Gary. It originally appeared as a comic strip run in 1945. The story is called “The Musketeer” and is 50 pages long! Because of that, it naturally breaks into two storylines.
Something is up at Oro Blanco, the ghost town, when One Feather reports ghostly lights and new graves! Dave King and his junior sidekick go to the old town and see light. A mysterious gunman lurks in the shadows but the owner of the light turns out to be a woman. The blond tries to run them off but her gun isn’t even loaded. She begs them to stay away from the cemetery. The lurking gunman shoots his pistol rather than have the blond reveal what is going on.
King worries about the woman, rather than chasing the sniper. As she is recovering, he wants to send the kid for water, but again she warns them against going to the well. She passes out before she can reveal why the well is so haunted. King decides he will go get the water. He is jumped by a man named Drake and knocked out. Drake goes to the well where the kingpin of the operation is, Squint. Squint reminds him to give the signal. Dan had been careless and ended up in one of those new graves.
We learn that the woman’s name is Jill and her father, the Professor, is a prisoner in the well. He is being forced to dig for something. Squint sends Drake up the secret door in a coffin to get around King and kill him.
King wakes up and tries putting his hat near the edge of the well. A bullet flies from inside, piercing his hat. Drake comes up behind the Mountie, gun drawn. King stalls Drake by asking what is going on. Jill, who has loaded her rifle, shoots Drake’s gun from his hand. Her gunshot wound makes Jill weak and dizzy.
Drake pulls King’s gun from his coat. King uses a kick to disarm the gunman. King knocks him to the ground. Kid shows up and King is drawn away to look after the ailing Jill.
Drake uses the distraction to grab a gun, but King is faster and shoots the gun from his hand. Another beating for Drake, as Squint and his henchman hear the gun battle.
King shoots at Squint to keep him in the well. The Mountie and his captive go back to the houses, taking the fainting Jill with them. Squint plans to go through the coffin and bushwhack them. King does some exploring, examining the new graves. He realizes two of them are new and the rest are actually mining rubble. Squint comes out of the coffin and has a chance to shoot King in the back. He doesn’t take it because he wants Drake back more. He needs him to help move the gold. He goes to the cabin and captures Jill and the kid. King discovers the coffin and piles boulders on it to stop anyone from using it again.
Squint plans on using the captives as gold mules. King tracks them to the well but a guard keeps him at bay. When Squint tries to leave through the coffin he finds he is trapped. King throws burning tear gas crystals down the well. The kid uses the distraction to take out Joe, one of the ruffians, but Squint has them covered with a gun.
Squint yells at King he can wait him out. King doesn’t wait, he jumps down the well and lands on Squint. The bad guys are captured and the mystery is solved. Squint and his men discovered gold on Indian land then cooked up the scheme to steal it. Jill’s father and his colleague, Dr. Scott, discovered the gold when they used the well and got pulled into things. Squint murdered Scott in cold blood, the second of the real graves.
Being comic strips originally, the comic jumps right into a second story, just as strange but a separate tale that will see Squint involved again. But next time “The Musketeer”…
The success of Zane Grey’s King of the Mounted paved the way for other Northern comic books like Dell’s Sgt. Preston of the Yukon. Tales of fake ghosts and haunted mines and superstitious native folk are common in many Northern series, in all media, first in the Pulps then later on Radio, television and comics.