I protagonisti was a western comic series created by Rino
Albertarelli and published monthly from 1974 to 1975 by Daim Press. The series
presented documented and meticulous biographies of the heroes of the West and
was only interrupted by the death of the author.
Each issue contained a monograph of a Western epic
character with a comic strip story accompanied by a bibliography containing
books consulted by the author in his documentation work. The series ran from
September 1974 until June 1975.
The series was commissioned by Sergio Bonelli and Rino
Albertarelli who wrote and designed the series for Daim Press in 1973. When
Albertarelli died, on September 21, 1974, he was working on the tenth issue and
only the first issue had been released on newsstands. The publishing house
decided to end the series with the tenth volume, of which Albertarelli had
completed only the first 42 tables, so Sergio Toppi was hired to finish the
series.
In 1994 the series was reprinted in the series The
Protagonists of the West, edited by Hobby & Work. A second reprint was
published in 2007 in the series of History of the West by If Editions with the
headline “History of the West Presents the Protagonists”. In each issue there
are two stories in the chronological order of the original publication.
Sheriff Frank M. Canton was most notable for being the
judge of Johnson County, Wyoming during the 1890s and he was the key player in
the Johnson County War. He lead cattlemen and gunfighters all over the county
to intimidate and drive off small farmers to allow more range for the rich and
powerful. His real name was Joe Horner, born near Richmond, VA in 1849. As a
child his family moved to Texas where he became a cowboy, and worked the trails
from Northern Texas to Kansas in the late 1860's.
His life of crime began in 1871 when he started robbing
banks and rustling cattle. In 1877 he
was jailed for robbing the bank at Comanche, Texas. He escaped jail and
returned to herding cattle. He took a herd up to Nebraska where he officially
changed his name to Frank Canton and vowed to give up his outlaw ways.
And that’s when he got into protecting the wealthy. He was hired on as a detective for the
Wyoming Stock Grower's Association, a group of powerful cattlemen determined to
drive out any small rancher or farmer who settled in Johnson County. He ran his own ranch near Buffalo, Wyoming
and was later elected sheriff of Johnson County.
He married in 1885, and had two daughters; one died in
early childhood. He resigned his office as sheriff and went back to his old job
with the Wyoming Stock Grower's Association. At the same time he was made a US
deputy marshal. However, he clearly worked for the big cattlemen, and enforced
the law as they wished.
Soon after, Canton joined Frank Wolcott's regulators, a
group of more than fifty gunmen hired by the cattlemen to drive the settlers
out of the County. A violent incident in which two men were
killed in early 1892 left a bad taste in his mouth, so he quit the cattlemen
and left Wyoming for Oklahoma.
In Oklahoma, Canton served as a deputy marshal for Judge
Isaac Parker, and quickly made a name for himself as a lawman that would stand
up to any outlaw (1895-1896)
Canton left his family in 1897 and accepted an
appointment as U.S. Deputy Marshal in Alaska.
Canton’s adventures became quite well known and he reportedly tamed the
entire lawless town of Dawson. He befriended
a writer named Rex Beach who then used Canton as the role model for many of the
frontier heroes he portrayed in his novels.
The harsh Alaskan winter of 1898 took a great toll on
Canton’s health and so he returned to Oklahoma and once more became a
lawman. In 1907, Canton became the
adjutant general of the Oklahoma National Guard and held that position until
his death in 1927.
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