Diablo

First Appearance: Tex Morgan #8 (November 1949).
Appearances: Tex Morgan #8, Tex Taylor #7-8, Blaze the Wonder Collie #2.
Years Active: 1870s?

Diablo is a big grizzly--"mightiest of the grizzlies!"--and in his adventures displays what might be a form of sentience. One story ends with "Diablo knows better than to interfere with a mother horse again!" and another with the statement in the caption in the image on this page. Too, Diablo is even somewhat benign (for a grizzly), saving a cowpoke in one adventure and helping weaker animals against other predators in other stories. He lives on "Renegade's Peak...in the heart of a savagely beautiful range of hills in the wildest part of the American Rockies," a place where "the fight for survival is more intense...than anywhere else." Diablo's arch-enemies are Man (of course) and Slasher, the puma.

Diablo, as I said, is somewhat sentient and a bit more benignly inclined than many other wild bears. After one battle with Slasher, when Diablo has collapsed, "bleeding from a dozen wounds," he is rescued and nursed back to health by the "lonely old prospector...Old Man Crabtree." When Old Man Crabtree is threatened by "Derringer, the outlaw," who has heard rumors of Old Man Crabtree's horde of gold, Diablo kills Derringer with one swipe of his claws and then smiles mildly (if a grizzly can be said to smile mildly) at Crabtree.