Warren Tufts (Dec. 12, 1925-July 6, 1982) was a terrific artist specializing in Western comics. His Casey Ruggles newspaper strip began in 1949 with a storyline involving the 1849 Gold Rush, but Tufts left the strip in 1954 in a dispute over ownership of the feature. To conclude his contract, he briefly drew a comedic science-fiction strip, Lone Spaceman, which he demonstrated was capable of syndication but that the syndicate turned down, ending its contract with Tufts. Following that, he began his Lance Western strip as a Sunday full-pager in 1957 and added a daily in 1957.

Tufts experimented with what was possible for the newspaper format. On at least some Sunday strips, he dropped the line art from the illustration. In this sequence of the dailies in 1957, he went from line art to an experimentation with toning.