Created by Hergé, the titan of European comics, when he was drawing the first few Tintin adventures, Peppy in the Wild West is a lighthearted, freewheeling, farcical, and briskly paced adventure featuring anthropomorphic characters and some of the loopiest takes on tried and true tropes of the Old West that you’ve ever seen. When his hat business fails, the adventurous bear Peppy heads west to start a new life. Brimming with good-natured naiveté and a dash of all-American grit, Peppy, accompanied by his sweet wife, Virginny, and his faithful steed, Bluebell, find an idyllic patch of grass somewhere in California, where Peppy’s hats start a craze among the local Rabbit-Ears tribe. Threatened by the influence of foreign goods on the local feather headdress economy, the chief declares war and mobilizes the tribe, but Peppy’s screwball defense — involving a Gatling gun with arrows, canned goods, and a well-placed magnet — works. What follows is a rollicking cascade of one darned thing after another — not one but two kidnappings, a river full of gold, a bulldog outlaw, and even a side trip to Santa Barbara! First serialized in black and white in 1934, this is the first publication of Peppy in the Wild West and the only English translation since 1969.
