Il traditore

There are two different cover variants of this issue, as explained by Gianni Bono here.

Tex strips, like all those of the 1940s and 1950s, were printed three at a time, paginated one on top of the other, with a system that is technically defined as "stick". Then, once printed and packaged, the strips were cut and marketed separately. This is why, if you compare several copies of two consecutive issues, you may happen to see that a part of the design of a cover ended up in the one below, because the cut in the pack was often not accurate.

It wasn't always possible to put three different numbers on the same cue. This happened either for a practical reason or for a technical reason. The first, the most frequent one, was caused by the designer who was late in delivering and therefore did not allow the three numbers necessary for printing to be available. The second was due to the high circulation of a series which, if it exceeded one hundred thousand copies - the limit beyond which the printing plates were worn and had to be redone - made it cheaper to opt for a division of the printed copies.

This was not the case with Tex who, although he defended himself well at the time, circulating about sixty thousand copies, certainly could not afford what he did with Il Piccolo Sceriffo , which traveled about two hundred thousand copies a week. The thesis of the delay is also supported by the fact that already in January 1949 two issues instead of four had come out, therefore, in order not to "pierce the newsstand", when Aurelio Galleppini was late with deliveries, Mrs. Tea Bonelli had been forced to put the same number inside a single stick.

And here comes the chromist or the "clicettica", as it was called in Lombardy, that is the person who engraved the clichés by hand, and who had to do the same system three times. As long as he colored Galep's line, no problem, but when it came to drawing the lines of Tex's shirt with color, it is likely that once he did them in a certain direction and once in another. And so we have two covers, hoping there isn't a third version ...