The Truth Western: Early Gredown BC (Before Comics)

Regular readers of Comics Down Under will no doubt be aware that the history of the Australian comics publisher, Gredown Pty Ltd (Sydney, NSW), is of ongoing interest to myself - and to more than a few other collectors of that company's eclectic and intriguing range of comic books, issued during the 1970s and early 1980s.

Pictured at left is yet another intriguing piece of the Gredown 'puzzle' - it might look like one of the company's numerous 'one-shot' Western comic books, but The Truth Western is, in fact, a non-fiction magazine, packed with lurid, tabloid-style accounts of the American West, including "The Incredible Cimarron War of the Vigilante Minister" and "The Untold Saga of Sheriff Pat Garrett", illustrated with contemporary photographs and newspaper illustrations.

The contents of The Truth Western appear to be reprinted entirely from the April 1973 edition of Frontier West, which was one of several US magazines (such as Real West, Golden West and Frontier Times) that flourished throughout the 1960s and 1970s, specialising in dramatic retellings of American Western history.

Bookending this magazine are publicity stills from a long-forgotten 'blaxploitation' Western, Thomasine & Bushrod, which are captioned '(Release Early 1975'). Given the film was originally released in the United States in 1974, it's most likely that these captions are referring to the film's Australian release date.

This is largely confirmed by the fact that, unusually for any Gredown publication, The Truth Western bears a publication date of 1974 - which means this quite arguably predates any of that company's long line of horror/war/western/science-fiction comic books which, to the best of my knowledge, only began appearing around 1975. (Though I am happy to be corrected on this point!)

The date 1974 is potentially significant, because that was the year when KG Murray Publishing's magazine assets (including its comic book range) were acquired by Australian Consolidated Press - and bolsters the theory that Gredown Pty Ltd was set up by Greg Murray (son of Kenneth G. Murray), in competition with the former family-owned business.

That Gredown Pty Ltd should publish a text-based, non-fiction magazine like The Truth Western is not as surprising as it may seem - it was quite common for Australian magazine publishers (such as KG Murray, Southdown Press, etc) to cobble together one-shot magazines dedicated to specific subjects, compiled from previously published material culled from other titles in their publishing 'stable'. KG Murray (later as Murray Publishers) would publish numerous one-shot titles, on topics like war and westerns, under the imprimatur of their better-known men's mags, such as Adam or Man.

While we are no closer to uncovering the truth about Gredown's origins or business operations, little nuggets like The Truth Western can, over time, help us fill in some of the blanks about this intriguing Australian comic book publishing company.