'Buck Ryan' was a detective strip published in the British newspaper Daily Mirror from 1937 onwards till 1962. During its heydays, there has been only a single one-shot Buck Ryan comics published in the UK (in 1946) and there was also an Australian Buck Ryan comics periodical. Other than what appears to be a fan-based reprint series from Newspaper Daily Comic Strip Library, there has not been any English-language reprints. However, there were some Buck Ryan albums published in Italy. The first one, in oblong format (see above image for cover) came in 1973; I don't know about its contents. Later in the same decade, the same publisher, Milano Libri Edizioni, also published a series of four albums, which appear to be hardcover editions, reprinting in chronological order from 1937 through 1940:
I've just ordered two issues of the British NDCSL reprint series and will post about them when I receive them.
Sources on the 1946 British one shot and the Australian comics: Denis Gifford, The Complete Catalogue of British Comics (1985: Webb & Bower, Exeter) and ibid, The International Book of Comics (1988: W H Smith) resp.
Sources on the 1946 British one shot and the Australian comics: Denis Gifford, The Complete Catalogue of British Comics (1985: Webb & Bower, Exeter) and ibid, The International Book of Comics (1988: W H Smith) resp.
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I own a copy of the of the oblong Buck Ryan. It reprints four stories from the fifties, when Monk's originally crude artwork had settled into a curiously smooth and partially realistic style. Their English titles are "Arty Crafty" (the villainess Twilight pairs with a dishonest artist to sell fake Tudor miniatures), "The sport of kinks" (an adventurer seduces the daughter of a rich horse trainer), "The strange antique shop" (Twilight is involved in a diamond smuggling ring) and "Number One" (Twilight, who has gone straight, is abducted by a mad scientist). They are uniformly well and inventively written, altough it is clear that by the fourth, Monk - if it was he who wrote the strip - had decided to take the strip in a more rough-edged direction, with Ryan doing six months in jail and being very unpopular with the police, and Twilight recycled as his lover while keeping her vampish and gangster's moll attributes. Except from when Monk used the strip to rehearse his ludicrous and offensive view of "dagos" - it is hilarious to reflect that it was in Italy that his strip was kept alive, when his country had totally forgotten him - the strips are consistently well and inventively written, and the characters are someting more than cardboard cut-outs.
Can you tell me when the character of Number One first appeared? Is any background given?
Thanks,
Paul Murphy.
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