Sunday, July 17, 2011

KING OF THE ROYAL MOUNTED AND THE CIRCUS HORRORS

The earlier adventures of King of the Royal Mounted published in Britain's Mickey Mouse Weekly (maybe I should paraphrase that as those published earlier in MMW as I cannot confirm whether the British publication followed the sequence of the adventuıres as they were originally run in the US newspapers) had a decidedly authentic tone as they often involved ordinary trappers and other locals of the Canadian countryside in their daily lives and were set in mountainous lanscapes. Eventually, the adventures took a turn in which the plots became more familiar comic-strip fare, such as 'The Terror of the Big Top' serialized in MMW no.'s 174-182 in 1939 where Sgt. King investigates a murder in a circus. The above panel is from the installement in no. 175, involving a dark, cloaked figure which had become a not-so-rare visual motif in the comics of the 1930s in the wake of The Bat Whispers (1930); below is a still from this mystery-thriller movie (whose Bat character was also an inspiration for the Batman):And the below sequence from the installement in the next issue involves the 'murder of a subject who is just about to disclose the identity of the culprit' theme so often seen in comics:The trapeze act in the below sequence from the installement in no. 178 provides an excuse for the first and only instance where some female flesh is displayed in any King of the Royal Mountain adventure that I've seen:
And the below segment from the installement in the next issue makes good opportunity of the circus setting for a tigers-set-on-loose sequence:

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