PIONEER PUBLISHERS OF ITALIAN WESTERN COMICS IN TURKEY
The roots of Ceylan Yay�nlar� lie at Ceylan, a children's magazine with extensive comics, started initially by a partnership between Tekdal Brothers and Erdo�an Egeli (1925-83) in 1955, but soon taken over solely by Egeli himself. Egeli, who established Ceylan Yay�nlar�, also began publishing another magazine titled Bill Kid in which the post-war Italian western comics 'Capitan Miki' by the EsseGesse team was used as filler space. When readers demanded more space to be devoted to this comics, Egeli bought its rights from the French subcontractor Opera Mundi and began issuing it as a separate comics magazine titled Tommiks. All of this took place within the span of a single year in 1955.
Tommiks was a big hit and was joined the next year by Teksas ['Il Grande Blek', another EsseGesse effort]. The influence of these magazines was to such an extent that the phrase "Teksas-Tommiks" became synonymous with comics for years (those whose teenage years were in 1950s still refer to comics as "Teksas-Tommiks").
Ceylan Yay�nlar� was a major force in the Turkish comics market throughout the 1960s as well. While its most successful titles were western comics of Italian origin, it also experimented with American material such as 'Superman' and 'Mandrake', but they proved short-lived. Ceylan survived on the market untill late 1980s with mostly reprint series.
The covers of Ceylan's magazines feature art by Samim Utkun, who also drew some 'Kinowa' stories when the original Italian stock of this comics was depleted.
Bill Kid [?] 1955
Tommiks [Capitan Miki] 1955
Teksas [Il Grande Blek] 1956
S�permen [Superman] 1958; another series in 1967
Kit Taylor [?] 1959
Kinova [Kinowa], retitled as Kinova-Tex 1960
Tex 1961
Zagor 1962
Mandrake 1962
Akbulut (Turkish medieval heroics) 1964
Tina 1967
Tim (western) 1967
Tomteks (western) 1970
Billkid (western) 1971