Il totem misterioso

In first release Tex is known as outlaw before this word is replaced in subsequent reprints (due to the censorship) with that of "executioner". Initially G.L. Bonelli thought of Tex as a real "outlaw" and made him assume not too benevolent attitudes towards the sheriffs: "For all the devils!" he says in the first strip. Among the many censored characters, Tex is certainly one of those who suffer the most from having to give up a certain freedom of language.

But it is GL Bonelli himself who makes Tex, in his first story, a - executioner - thus transforming him, in one of the following adventures, even into a ranger at the service of the law.

The first character to appear in a Tex story is the Indian Tesah. In the first uncensored edition, on the first page, Tesah has bare legs! In the late 1950s, her nakedness will in fact also be censored in the strips on the following pages. If her intention, in 1948, was to promote the sales of the new register with a small dose of eroticism, it must be added, however, that Tesah perfectly fulfills her task at a narrative level, presenting herself in the part of the heroine in difficulty, as in the novels of Dumas of which GL Bonelli is an attentive reader, victim of the suppressed by the brutal Coffin, the antagonist of the story and ready to be saved by the fearless hero. 

This very first adventure by Tex is contained in only three striscia, for a total of 96 strips equal to thirty-two pages of the normal Bonelli register.