Casey Ruggles is a Western

Western (genre)

The Western is a genre of various visual arts, such as film, television, radio, literature, painting and others. Westerns are devoted to telling stories set primarily in the latter half of the 19th century in the American Old West, hence the name. Some Westerns are set as early as the Battle of...

 comic strip

Comic strip

A comic strip is a sequence of drawings arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions....

 written and drawn by Warren Tufts

Warren Tufts

Warren Tufts , born Chester Tufts, was an American comic strip and comic book artist-writer best known for his syndicated Western adventure strip Casey Ruggles which ran from 1949 to 1954....

. The Sunday strip

Sunday strip

A Sunday strip is a newspaper comic strip format, where comic strips are printed in the Sunday newspaper, usually in a special section called the Sunday comics, and virtually always in color. Some readers called these sections the Sunday funnies...

 was launched 22 May 1949. Four months later, the daily strip

Daily strip

A daily strip is a newspaper comic strip format, appearing on weekdays, Monday through Saturday, as contrasted with a Sunday strip, which typically only appears on Sundays....

 began September 19, 1949.

Characters and story

Until 1950, the Sunday strip and the daily strip both told the same story, following the adventures of Casey Ruggles and his companions on a wagon train

Wagon train

A wagon train is a group of wagons traveling together. In the American West, individuals traveling across the plains in covered wagons banded together for mutual assistance, as is reflected in numerous films and television programs about the region, such as Audie Murphy's Tumbleweed and Ward Bond...

 to the gold fields of California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

.

Some early dailies were ghosted by Al Plastino

Al Plastino

Al Plastino is an American comic book artist best known as one of the most prolific Superman artists of the 1950s, along with his DC Comics colleague Wayne Boring...

. Some later strips were ghosted by Alex Toth

Alex Toth

Alexander Toth was an American professional cartoonist active from the 1940s through the 1980s. Toth's work began in the American comic book industry, but is known for his animation designs for Hanna-Barbera throughout the 1960s and 1970s. His work included Super Friends, Space Ghost, The...

 and Ruben Moreira

Ruben Moreira

Ruben Moreira was a Puerto Rican comic book artist and writer best known for his work on Tarzan and as a DC Comics artist.-Biography:...

. Tufts did not write or draw the Sunday strip between 31 August 1953 and 30 January 1954. The last Tufts' daily was 3 April 1954, and his last Sunday was on 5 September 1954.

The strip continued for a short while with Al Carreño as artist and writer.

Episode guide

• daily and Sunday
  • The Trek to California
• daily 1950
  • Black Barney
  • The Hard Times of Pancho and Pecos
  • Aquila
  • The Spanish Mine
  • The Whisperer
  • The Pomo Uprising

• daily 1951
  • Old Ancient
  • In Old Los Angeles
  • King of the Horsemen
  • Juan Soto
  • Jenny
• daily 1952
  • Sidney Town
  • Death Valley Gold
  • The Growlersburgh Church
  • The Babysitter
  • Smiley Sweet
  • Miss Hawks
• daily 1953
  • A Real Nice Guy
  • The Marchioness of Grofnek
  • The Highwayman
  • Leaves of Strength
  • The Spanish Pearl Galleon
  • Santy Claus
• daily 1954
  • The Willits Family
  • Penelope's Gold

• Sunday stories
• 1950
  • The Emperor of Tilly Valley
  • Murietta
• 1951
  • Silver Belle
  • The Return of Black Barney
  • Captain Beauregarde
  • The Fairy Godmother
• 1952
  • Apache Convention
  • The Trial of Kit Fox
  • Wedding Bells
  • River Steamboat War
• 1953
  • Yagali
  • A Man of Peace
• 1954
  • The California Express Co.
  • Spanish Doubloons

Reprints

• All of the daily stories except for one week have been reprinted by Pacific Comics Club or Comics Revue
  Comics Revue
  Comics Revue is a bi-monthly small press comic book published by Manuscript Press and edited by Rick Norwood. Don Markstein edited the publication from 1984 to 1987 and 1992 to 1996....
  
  . The first few Sunday stories were reprinted in color in Comics Revue.