Western comics is a comics genre usually depicting the American Old West frontier (usually anywhere west of the Mississippi River) and typically set during the late nineteenth century. The term is generally associated with an American comic books genre published from the late 1940s through the 1950s (though the genre had continuing popularity in Europe, and persists in limited form in American comics today). Western comics of the period typically featured dramatic scripts about cowboys, gunfighters, lawmen, bounty hunters, outlaws, and Native Americans. Accompanying artwork depicted a rural America populated with such iconic images as guns, cowboy hats, vests, horses, saloons, ranches, and deserts, contemporaneous with the setting.
Western novels, films, and pulp magazines were extremely popular in the United States from the late 1930s to the 1960s.
Western comics first appeared in syndicated newspaper strips in the late 1920s. Harry O'Neill's Young Buffalo Bill (later changed to Buckaroo Bill and then, finally, Broncho Bill), distributed by United Feature Syndicate beginning in 1927, , and was a pioneering example of the form. Starting in the 1930s, Red Ryder, Little Joe, and King of the Royal Mounted were syndicated in hundreds of newspapers across the United States. Garrett Price's White Boy (later changed to Skull Valley) was another syndicated strip from the 1930s.
The first Western stories to appear in the comics were in the mid-1930s: National Allied's New Fun Comics #1 (Feb. 1935) ran the modern-West feature "Jack Woods" and the Old West feature "Buckskin Jim"; Centaur Publications' The Comics Magazine #1 (May 1936) ran the feature "Captain Bill of the Rangers"; and David McKay Publications's Feature Book #1 (May 1937) and a single issue of King Comics (also 1937) featured King of the Royal Mounted reprints before Dell took over licensing of the character. Dell Comics' The Funnies published a run of short adaptations of B-movie Westerns starting in vol. 2, issue #20 (May 1938).