Yet more Marvel Cowboys - Ghost Rider: Part 2

THE GHOST RIDER HAD ENJOYED A LONG RUN at his original home, Vin Sullivan's Magazine Enterprises, from late 1949 right through to the spring of 1955, in a variety of titles: Tim Holt (which became Red Mask), Best of the West, Bobby Benson and, of course, his own title The Ghost Rider. Dick Ayers, later to be one of Jack Kirby's most important Marvel inkers during the early 1960s, was the artist on every single episode of the character. So when comics fan Roy Thomas landed a job at Marvel Comics in 1965 as Stan Lee's assistant, he brought with him a broad knowledge of characters from earlier periods of comics, some of which he'd revive over his first few years at Marvel.

Marvel version of The Ghost Rider was pretty much identical to the Magazine Enterprises original, including the artist Dick Ayers.

The Ghost Rider had been one of Thomas' favourite comics when he was a kid so, figuring that the character had fallen out of copyright, Thomas pitched the idea of a revival to Stan, with Dick Ayers as the artist. It was a bit of a no-brainer.

WHO THE HECK IS ROY THOMAS?

Roy William Thomas Jr was born in Jackson, Missouri on 22 November 1940. An enthusiastic comic fan from his earliest years, Thomas would write and drawn his own strips and circulate them to friends. While studying for his degree at Southeast Missouri State University, he became involved in organised comic fandom through pioneer fanzine publisher Jerry Bails. The burgeoning DC superhero revival of the early 1960s led to Bails' fanzine Alter Ego, which Thomas took over in 1964. During those first years of the 1960s, Thomas had letters published in Green Lantern 1 (Aug 1960), The Flash 116 (Nov 1960), Fantastic Four 5 (Jul 1962), Fantastic Four 15 (Jun 1963) and Fantastic Four 22 (Jan 1964).

Alter Ego, then and now: The first issue appeared in 1961, edited by Jerry Bails with cover art by Roy Thomas. The fanzine went through a few stops and starts, but is still published today.

In 1965, Roy Thomas was offered a trial position as editorial assistant to DC's Dark Overlord Mort Weisinger. It wasn't a happy experience. Weisinger was notorious for being rude and abrasive and, coming from a background in education, this wasn't what Thomas was expecting. After a day's haranguing from Weisinger, Thomas told The Comics Journal in 1981 that, "I actually remember going to my dingy little room at the George Washington Hotel in Manhattan, during that second week, and actually feeling tears well into my eyes, at the ripe old age of 24. I've never done that over a job, before or since, but Mort really got to me."

That same week, Thomas wrote a letter to Stan Lee at Marvel Comics. "Not applying for a job or anything ... I just said that I admired his work." Stan remembered Thomas from his work on the Alter Ego fanzine and called Roy the next day. "He just asked me - on the phone - if I'd be interested in trying a writers' test Marvel gave." So Thomas went up to the Marvel office and collected the test pages from Flo Steinberg. That evening "I returned to my hotel room and banged out a few pages of dialogue for some Fantastic Four pages - they were from the conclusion of Annual 2, as I recall - and turned them in the next day."

Thomas got a call from Flo asking him if he could stop by the Marvel offices and meet Stan. "The previous day or so, Mort had been in rare form, so I guess I was ripe without knowing it. Ten minutes after I met Stan, he asked me what he had to do to get me away from DC. I was surprised to find myself telling him that all he had to do was offer me the $110 a week Mort had offered me when I was back in Missouri, but which had dropped to $100 a week, mysteriously, when I actually showed up. I also told Stan I'd have to give Mort indefinite notice, since I didn't want to leave him in the lurch. As it turned out, that was beside the point, because the minute I told Mort he ordered me out of the DC offices. I was back at Marvel less than an hour after I first left, and had a Modelling with Millie assignment (44, Dec 1965) to do over the weekend. It was a Friday."

Though earlier, Stan Lee seemed reluctant to release Marvel staples like Millie (and the westerns) to other scripters, as he became more confident of the success of the superheroes he handed the teen titles over to other writers.

From there, Roy Thomas became a staff writer at Marvel, starting with a few issues of Millie the Model, Modelling with Millie and Patsy and Hedy. "I wasn't hired as an editor or assistant editor." Thomas wrote in Marvel Age of Comics, in 2022. "I was supposed to come in 40 hours a week and write scripts on staff. I sat at this corrugated metal desk with a typewriter in a small office with production manager Sol Brodsky and corresponding secretary Flo Steinberg. Everybody who came up to Marvel wound up there, and the phone was constantly ringing, with conversations going on all around me. Almost at once, even though Stan proofed all the finished stories, he and Sol started having me check the corrections before they went out, and that would break up my concentration still further [and] they kept asking me to do this or that, or questions like in which issue something happened, or Stan would come in to check something, because I knew a lot about Marvel continuity up to that time. It quickly became apparent to them, too, that the staff writer thing wasn't working, and Stan segued me over to being an editorial assistant, which immediately worked out better for all concerned."

Once Stan was confident that Thomas was able to mimic the Marvel style, he moved Thomas up to Sgt Fury, starting with issue 29 (Apr 1966), and X-Men from issue 20 (May 1966).

Thomas would script just a year's worth of issues of Sgt Fury, but he stuck with The X-Men for the rest of the run, and was instrumental in reviving the team as The New X-Men in 1975.

It wouldn't be long before Thomas started his legendary run scripting The Avengers, starting with issue 35 (Aug 1966), which would last till issue 104 (Oct 1972). During those six years, Thomas added Hercules to the lineup, created The Red Guardian (The Black Widow's husband), introduced a new Black Knight, revived the Golden Age hero The Vision, added the Black Panther to the lineup, and gave us the Kree-Skrull war. Artists that Thomas managed to attract to the title included John Buscema (notably the run between 55 and 62, with sublime inks from George Klein), Barry Smith and Neal Adams.

Though Thomas would work with many super-star artists during his run scripting The Avengers, I still have a real soft-spot for Don Heck's work on the title.

Back in 1966, Thomas had been scouting around, looking for other writers to bring in to Marvel. His first success was in getting Stan to hire Gary Friedrich. Thomas then went after Denny O'Neill, who had been writing a series on the burgeoning comics industry for a local Missouri newspaper. Roy pretty quickly handed Millie the Model off to Denny and Sgt Fury to Gary. And it was probably about this time that Thomas started pitching the idea of a Ghost Rider revival to Stan.

THE GHOST RIDER HAS RISEN FROM THE GRAVE

Fast forward ten years and with the co-creator of Ghost Rider, Dick Ayers, safely ensconced at Marvel Comics, Roy Thomas pitched his first revival idea at Stan Lee. The Magazine Enterprises character The Ghost Rider hadn't been maintained as property by ME owner Vin Sullivan and, legally at least, was up for grabs. With a green light from Stan. Roy got together with his own protege Gary Friedrich and concocted a revised version of the classic western hero.

By this point in his career, Dick Ayers had developed into a very slick artist, even if he wore his Kirby influences on his sleeve. Shame about the unsympathetic Vince Colletta inks, though.

This Ghost Rider starts out as teacher Carter Slade, who's been hired to educate the children of Pitchfork, Missouri. As he approaches the town he witnesses an attack on a homestead by "indians". He does his best to fight them off, managing to reveal them as white men in disguise, but is shot and left for dead by his attackers. However, the homesteaders' young son, Jamie Jacobs, has survived the attack and tries valiantly to get the injured Slade to the town doctor. On the point of collapse, Jamie is discovered by genuine Indians and taken back to their medicine man Flaming Star. Against all odds Slade survives and Flaming Star takes this as a sign that Slade has been spared by the spirits for some greater destiny as "He Who Rides the Night Winds".

In the space of a few pages, Carter Slade tames an untameable wild bronco, adopts Jamie and demonstrates his new glowing meteor dust ... which I suppose from a health and safety point of view is better than Rex Fury's phosphorous powder.

And with that, Flaming Star gives Carter Slade a Cloak of Brightest Night, some glowing meteor dust and then guides him to a wild white stallion that Carter must tame for himself. It just remains for Slade to deal with Jason Bartholomew, the illegal sponsor of the "indians" who are trying to drive the homesteaders away.

That's some wordy exposition page right there. I have to wonder how much cutting up of the art board did the Marvel production department have to do to fit in all that verbiage.

It's an okay origin story, which pretty much follows the debut of the 1950s version, land-grabbing ranch-owner, fake indians and all. It is a bit dialogue heavy, but this is right at the start of Thomas' and Friedrich's writing careers, so they can be cut some slack for that. The inclusion of the kid sidekick indicates to me that Marvel was still chasing the ten-year old audience, and the addition of a love interest in the shape of the lovely Natalie Brooks - coincidentally the sister of the socially hostile Ben Brooks - has Stan Lee's fingerprints all over it.

Ladies and gentlemen, the lovely Natalie Brooks.

The 17-page Ghost Rider story is topped up with a six-page reprint from Kid Colt Outlaw 105 (Jul 1962), and Stan takes a paragraph on the Bullpen age to plug Ghost Rider and the other three Marvel western titles.

The Bullpen Bulletin page for February 1967, with an illustrated plug for the first issue of Ghost Rider - click image to enlarge.

It does seem a bit cautious to only invest in 17 pages of new script and art in the debut issue as though Stan, or more likely publisher Martin Goodman, isn't confident the book will sell enough copies. Though the Ghost Rider page count would increase later, the caution wasn't altogether unfounded.

As if the concept of The Ghost Rider wasn't gimmicky enough in the first pace, Marvel decided to pit him against equally gimmicky villains. The Tarantula was the first in a line of several, and would even return in a later issue.

With the second issue, Ghost Rider began to feature costumed or super-powered foes. The story starts with the Ghost Rider running off a gang of cattle rustlers using his customary tactics of pretending to be a headless horseman, making spooky talk ("Begone, servants of evil, lest you taste the vengeance of he who rides the night winds.") then fading into the night. After that skelping, Bart and his gang of rustlers decide it's better to find another territory, where the pickings might be a little easier. As they're packing up, another mysterious figure, The Tarantula, appears and tells them that they are running from a fake ghost. If they join him, he'll finish The Ghost Rider and they can run the entire state. 

The next night, The Tarantula and his gang show up in the town of Bison Bend and demand $100 per family for his "protection". Only Natalie's brother Ben stands up to the gang and is knocked down by one of their horses for his trouble. But as The Tarantula and his gang ride off, The Ghost Rider appears and shoots the guns from their hands. And even though The Tarantula uses his whip to bring down a building on top of The Ghost Rider, our hero emerges unscathed. In desperation, The Tarantula grabs Natalie as a hostage, but The Ghost Rider frees her with his near-invisible Lariat of Darkness, making look like the girl is flying from the villain's grasp. With young Jamie projecting an image of The Ghost Rider from the shadows so GR appears to be in two places at once, The Tarantula finally admits defeat and flees.

There were a couple of other interesting details in the issue. We're briefly introduced to Clay Rider, Natalie's fiance. He pops up in one scene and then disappears from the story, leading me to suspect that he may be The Tarantula - or at least that Gary Friedrich wanted us to think he might be. Next, Friedrich lines up Ben Brooks - who we know is deeply sceptical of The Ghost Rider's motives - to be the new sheriff of Bison Bend, which could spell trouble for Carter Slade. And, of course, in the darkness The Tarantula gives The Ghost Rider the slip, teeing him up for a return match.

Calling the villain The Cougar is doubly misleading. For one thing, he's not a costumed villain in the traditional sense and, for another, he's not actually the bad guy ... his brother in law is.

The Ghost Rider 3 (Jun 1967) gave us a new novelty villain, The Cougar, in reality circus trainer Adano Adriani, who comes complete with a Chico Marx comedy Italian accent. Adriani is a reformed crook now working for Mr Barton the owner of the Barton Brothers Circus, though it's never made clear which Barton Brother he is. When Barton is killed and the box office takings pilfered, Adriani inevitably becomes the prime suspect. But The Ghost Rider doesn't believe the animal trainer to be guilty and breaks him out of jail to try to prove his innocence. It's not really clear why The Ghost Rider needs Adriani out of jail. He could quite as easily investigate the case with Adriani safe from harm in his jail cell. Anyway, Sheriff Ben Brooks believes the Ghost Rider to be involved, despite the compete lack of evidence. The real culprit turns out to be the no-good brother, Philip, of Adriani's adoring wife. Killer unmasked, The Ghost Rider fades into the night, leaving Sheriff Brooks gnashing his teeth and the lovely Natalie wishing her brother would go easier on The Ghost Rider.

We also get to see Natalie's sketchy fiance again in one scene, his name now mysteriously changed from Clay Rider to Clay Riley, though Friedrich doesn't give him anything to do apart from hang around and look smarmy. I sure hoped Gary was going somewhere with this ...

This issue gives us two costumed baddies for the price of one. Main villain The Stingray fought Rawhide Kid the previous month under the name The Scorpion ... then a old foe turns up to save The Ghost Rider from the Sheriff's gunfire.

The fourth (Aug 1967) issue of The Ghost Rider featured the return of The Scorpion, actually an old villain who had appeared the previous month in Rawhide Kid 57, but now under a new name, The Stingray.

Bison Bend teacher Carter Slade is hosting a dance to raise money for school textbooks, when The Stingray grabs the takings and flees, pursued by Sheriff Ben Brooks' posse. But instead of chasing the real thief, stubborn Brooks leads his deputies in pursuit of The Ghost Rider instead, letting The Scorpio get away. The next night, while the posse set out in search of the Ghost Rider (again), The Scorpion takes the lovely Natalie Brooks hostage (again). But The Ghost Rider has witnessed the abduction and captures The Stingray, unmasking him as the town druggist, Jim Evans (unnamed here, but I looked it up in Rawhide Kid 57). At that very moment, the Sheriff and his posse show up, forcing The Ghost Rider to flee. Then just as the Sheriff aims at the Ghost Rider's back, The Tarantula shows up and disarms Brooks, claiming to be protecting his "friend", further deepening Brooks' distrust of The Ghost Rider.

He's back ... the man with the fake Spanish accent. This time claiming that he and The Ghost Rider are partners. Just what is his game? Will we ever find out?

As readers might have suspected, the fifth issue (Sep 1967) of The Ghost Rider features the return of the whip-wielding Tarantula, still claiming to be the partner of GR. In the opening scene, The Tarantula robs the Bison Bend bank and rides off after shouting that he has to go and divide his take with his partner The Ghost Rider. The townsfolk, disappointed that Sheriff Brooks didn't stop the robbery decide to offer a reward for the capture of The Ghost Rider. For some reason this really upsets the lovely Natalie Brooks. Later that night, The Tarantula finally uncovers the location of The Ghost Cave, and ponders that it's only a matter of time before he figures out who The Ghost Rider really is.

Back at Bison Bend, Sheriff Brooks has a surprise visitor - Federal Marshall Lance Sterling, who says he's been sent to help track down The Ghost Rider ... and if you think Brooks is obsessed with catching The Ghost Rider, well you just haven't met Lance Sterling yet. Later that night, The Ghost Rider confronts Sheriff Brooks trying to convince him that they're on the same side. But the conversation is interrupted when The Tarantula sets fire to the town jail. The distraction allows Brook to draw on the Ghost Rider, but the lovely Natalie tries to protect The Ghost Rider and is shot by her own brother. 

Though this is a book-length story, I strongly suspect it was drawn first as a 17-pager and Stan just had Dick Ayers add these two pages to extend the story to full-length.

The showdown between The Tarantula and The Ghost Rider is a bit of a let down. Though The Tarantula defeats The Ghost Rider, he develops sudden amnesia and rides off without unmasking his fallen foe. We don't learn who The Tarantula really is, though some of the things he says indicate that he is a citizen of Bison Bend, and none of them in a Spanish accent.

The sixth issue of The Ghost Rider takes us back to the village where Carter Slade first received his mission from Indian medicine man, Flaming Star.

The Ghost Rider 6 (Oct 1967) is a bit of a change in direction. Summoned to the Indian village by his benefactor Flaming Star, the Ghost Rider is given a powerful amulet - The Spirit Stone, a piece of the meteor that foretold of his coming - which bestows great strength on the wearer. But as he leaves the village, The Ghost Rider is shot in the back by disgruntled brave, Towering Oak, who covets The Spirit Stone for himself. Towering Oak takes the Stone then, back at the Indian village, confronts Flaming Star and the other braves. Though he claims to be The Stone's rightful owner, Flaming Star tells him that the ownership can only be determined via trial by combat, setting the stage for a showdown.

Meanwhile, Carter Slade is riding to find out how the lovely Natalie Brooks is doing, after being accidentally shot by her brother in the last issue. But he's flagged down by one of the Indian braves with a summons from Flaming Star. Putting his visit to Natalie on hold, he changes to The Ghost Rider and heads for the Indian village and his showdown with Towering Oak. Of course Towering Oak is defeated when The Spirit Stone extracts its toll on his body and kills him mid-battle. The Stone will be interred with Towering Oak's remains, never to be used by mortal man again.

Thankfully, no Vince Colletta inking this issue but, to be fair, George Roussos isn't much of an improvement. I think I preferred this story over the costumed villain tales Gary Friedrich had been pitching us since issue 2. This explores the native American lore behind the Ghost Rider a bit more, even though it's not exactly The Teachings of Don Juan.

This was the last issue of The Ghost Rider, though the next story "Hurricane" was announced below the story's final panel. "Hurricane" would be published, two years later, and another Marvel western title.

The final issue, Ghost Rider 7 (Nov 1967), opens with the lovely Natalie Brooks making the perilous journey to Denver for the operation that might allow her to walk again, accompanied by two of the three men in the world who love her most - her brother Ben and her fiance Clay Rider/Riley. Even now, Ben is a bit twisted out of shape, blaming The Ghost Rider for Natalie's shooting. But, Ben mate ... you pulled the trigger. Take some accountability, for goodness sake.

Shadowing the covered wagon is Carter Slade, aka The Ghost Rider. Like Ben Brooks, he's also a bit confused about who's responsible for Natalie's condition. Suddenly, Slade is set upon by a crazed "Mountain Man", who doesn't care much for intruders, and is taken prisoner. Meanwhile, Ben and Clay decide to take shelter in a nearby cave against the gathering snowstorm. It's not long before Mountain Man arrives to take care of these intruders, too. But when he sees Natalie, he has a meltdown, mistaking her for his long-lost love, Melinda.

There's an unnecessary scene where The Ghost Rider tries to convince Ben to work with him against Mountain Man to save Natalie - it doesn't go well. The Ghost Rider returns to Mountain Man's shack, reveals the crazed hermit's real name - Zebediah Jones - and his back story. The old man's mind had become unhinged when his wife was killed in an Indian massacre years before. Zebediah dies saving Natalie when the roof of his cabin collapses. The Ghost Rider takes over the transporting of Natalie to Denver for her operation.

It's a very odd story, full of forced coincidences and random events that exist only to move the plot forward. The scene where The Ghost Rider tries to convince Ben to put their differences to one side for Natalie's sake seems awfully like padding to fill out the 17-page tale to length.

Not sure what's going on with Herb Trimpe's inking here, but it looks like he did it in the dark with a ballpoint pen.

The cancellation of the title must have been sudden, because not only does the final panel of the story trail the next adventure, "Hurricane", but there's also no mention that this is the last issue on the letters page, usually one of the last items to be prepared for press.

So, it's a mystery ... we can only guess that Ghost Rider was cancelled suddenly and because of poor sales, despite the claim in one of the replies that the title is a "smash sensation". Click image to expand.

While I loved the concept (pretty much identical to the original Magazine Enterprises series from the 1950s), I have to admit that the stories and scripting could have been a lot better. Gary Friedrich was very likely directed to pit The Ghost Rider against costumed villains to give the series a superhero slant, but I think that's at odds with the core premise of the character. I think it would have been more effective if at least some of the stories had used fake supernatural menaces, in the same way that the ME original did, so we could enjoy the spectacle of a fake supernatural character exposing other "supernatural" characters as fakes.

When The Ghost Rider returns, the lovely Natalie has been lying in a hospital bed for two years. A series of unlikely plot twists bring us to the point where The Ghost Rider unmasks an unconscious Tarantula, and ...

But what I didn't know, until I did the research for this blog entry, was that The Ghost Rider did rise from the grave one more time, in the Bronze Age title Western Gunfighters, with the advertised story "Hurricane" appearing in issue 3. Quite why editor Stan Lee decided not to pick up exactly where The Ghost Rider title had left off I couldn't say. Perhaps he thought the resolution of The Tarantula storyline was a bigger pull. Anyhow, the lovely Natalie Brooks is recovering in her hospital bed in Denver while brother Ben and fiance Clay stand anxiously by. A little later, in the shadows outside Natalie's room, lurks Carter Slade, and we're reminded that all three men blame themselves for Natalie's plight. Suddenly - everything seems to happen suddenly in this strip - The Tarantula appears, knocks Carter to the ground and then flees.

"An hour later" The Ghost Rider has tracked The Tarantula down to his hotel room - no explanation is given for how Carter found The Tarantula. There's a five page fight in which The Tarantula is knocked out and The Ghost Rider unmasks him to reveal ... well, we'll have to wait for the next issue to discover the identity of The Ghost Rider's only recurring villain. I mean, I guessed ages ago - did you?

The Great Unmasking is a bit of a damp squib. I'm pretty sure the readers were way ahead of the scripters in this case. Especially if they'd read Amazing Spider-Man 39 (Aug 1966).

The Ghost Rider story in Western Gunfighters 2 (Oct 1970) picks up a the exact moment where the last episode finished. The Ghost Rider is standing over the unconscious form of Clay Riley, who's just been unmasked as The Tarantula. Suddenly Sheriff Ben Brooks crashes through the door and ... refuses to believe the evidence of his own eyes. His friend Clay could never be a criminal. It must be some sort of frame-up ...

Realising his case is hopeless, The Ghost Rider shoots out the oil lamp in the room (again? He already did that last episode), loads Riley onto a horse and disappears into the night. Once clear of town, The Ghost Rider pauses to reflect on his best course of action. It'll be hard to prove to a Marshall that Riley is really the Tarantula. Momentarily distracted by his pondering The Ghost Rider fails to notice that Riley has recovered and is now springing at him, despite Clay's hands being tied behind his back. A tussle ensues.

Meanwhile back at the hospital, perhaps alerted by some sixth sense, the lovely Natalie Brooks awakes from her coma, calling Clay's name. The doctors confirm that not only is she awake but the operation to restore her ability to walk has been a success. Back at the fight, Clay doesn't fare so well. Knocked off a handy cliff by The Ghost Rider, Clay lands on his head and appears to forget that he is The Tarantula.

Though the artwork by Dick Ayers and Tom Sutton is a big improvement over the Ayers/Colletta combination seen in GR's own book, this scripting is tired, coincidence- driven stuff - Gary Friedrich is capable of much better work than this. It's as though his heart wasn't in it. Perhaps this was a filler mandated by Stan to bring readers up to speed before continuing with the actual next story in the series, "Hurricane", announced at the end of Ghost Rider 7.

Harry Kane the Hurricane, for all his speed, isn't much of a threat to the mighty Ghost Rider. In fact, you could say he's a bit of a pushover ...

It would have been scheduled for at least 17 pages if it had appeared as originally intended in The Ghost Rider 8, but in this incarnation, it ended up as a 10-pager. Consequently, Gary Friedrich gallops through the plot every bit as quickly as the story's villain Hurricane. Not that there's a great deal of plot to gallop through.

Stan doesn't seem to recall which issue of Two-Gun Kid that The Hurricane originally appeared in ... but we know, don't we, readers? It was issue 70 (Jul 1964).

While Harry Kane, aka The Hurricane, is trying out his powers in the desert, he's spotted by Carter Slade, who's taking the lovely Natalie Brooks to Denver for her operation (it's a flashback, you see). Kane doesn't want any witnesses to his powers so decides to find out how much Carter knows. There's a bit of pushing and shoving and Kane discovers the Ghost Rider costume hidden in Carter's wagon. No match for Kane's speed, Carter is trussed up with rope and hurled off a handy cliff. Kane then turns his murderous attention on the lovely Natalie Brooks. Just as he's about to shoot the helpless girl, The Ghost Rider appears (isn't his costume still hidden in the wagon?) ... Kane charges at The Ghost Rider at full speed and right over the cliff he'd chucked GR over just moments before.

I'd rather have seen Friedrich spend a little more time on this and perhaps present it as a two-parter. As it stands, The Hurricane has hardly made an appearance before he's despatched by The Ghost Rider, which gives the whole thing the feel of a filler.

The story's padded out with three splash pages, which leaves us just seven pages for actually telling the story. Nice image of The Ghost Rider by Ayers, though.

Western Gunfighters 4 (Feb 1971) pits The Ghost Rider again another of Marvel's b-western heroes, The Gunhawk. When a low-rent gunman tries to bushwhack The Gunhawk, The Ghost Rider intervenes and sends the ambusher packing. That takes up the first eight pages of the story. The Gunhawk isn't fooled by The Ghost Rider's spook act and announces that he's in the area to claim the bounty on The Ghost Rider's head. The final page shows us the return of Ben Brooks and the now-amnesiac Clay Riley (aka The Tarantula) to the small town of Bison Bend. Fortunately, this is a two-parter, so we should get some more story next time.

With art by a pre-Conan Barry Smith and a script by Steve Parkhouse (better known now as the artist on Resident Alien), Outcast is an intriguing concept that never got a second outing.

One interesting aside about Western Gunfighters 4 is the inventory story "Outcast"  drawn by Barry Smith back in 1968 and scripted by my old friend and collaborator Steve Parkhouse. It's an interesting premise about the nameless protagonist, raised by native Americans after his parents are killed during an Indian raid, searching for his identity.

The wind-up of the confrontation between The Ghost Rider and The Gunhawk ends as you might expect, with each man finding a level or respect for the other. At least The Gunhawk won't let Ben Brooks shoot The Ghost Rider in the back.

Marvel made us wait four months for the next instalment in the Ghost Rider/Gunhawk battle. But the Ghost Rider story in Western Gunfighters 5 (Jun 1971) wasn't written by Gary Friedrich. For some reason he left it to Len Wein to resolve the tale. Though it's not unsatisfying for that. The Gunhawk arrives in Bison Bend looking to collect the town's bounty on GR. Even so, Sheriff Ben Brooks doesn't want any gunplay in his town and warns The Gunhawk off the rough stuff. Inevitably, the two antagonists face off in the main street in the middle of the night. But before a shot can be fired, some crooks dynamite the town bank. The Ghost Rider is the first on the scene and exchanges gunfire with the bad guys. The Gunhawk and Sheriff Brooks arrive and join the battle. But after The Ghost Rider saves his life by shooting one of the bad guys, The Gunhawk decides that he'll leave GR be, as he appears to be not such a bad guy after all.

You don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out who's behind all the kidnappings of influential citizens in Bison Bend. Not with a character called Reverend Reaper around.

Len Wein continues as the script in Western Gunfighters 6 (Sep 1971). The plot is fairly straightforward. Someone is kidnapping the officials of Bison Bend. When they try to abduct Carter Slade, the attempt is foiled by the timely arrival of Carter's big brother Lincoln, now a federal marshal. The only one not kidnapped so far is the town pastor, Reverend Reaper. That name and the fact we've never seen him before should tip you off to who is behind the kidnappings. Lincoln keeps watch on the parson, until he sees him ride off with some rough-looking characters. He follows, reasoning that the kidnappers will lead him to the rest of the captives. Lincoln trails them to an abandoned mine and goes in for a rescue. The Ghost Rider also turns up (though it's not explained how he found the mine) and in the battle, Sheriff Ben Brooks leads the captives to safety while Lincoln and The Ghost Rider polish off the bad guys. With the parson revealed as the mastermind, he kicks away the timbers supporting the mine roof and The Ghost Rider is buried in the cave-in.

Not a dream, not a hoax, not an imaginary story. The Ghost Rider really is dead in this issue. Though there would be more Ghost Riders ...

In the normal course of things, we'd expect that somehow The Ghost Rider would survive and continue his battle against wrong-doers. But The Ghost Rider tale in Western Gunfighters 7 (Jan 1972) was more of an epilogue than a continuation. What we actually get is the funeral of Carter Slade (yes, he really is dead) and a bit of back story from Jamie Jacobs (I was wondering whatever happened to him).

There would be other versions of The Ghost Rider later, but for this incarnation, that was it. Overall I enjoyed the series, both now and then. Often the execution didn't live up to the concept and in that respect, the series was let down by the writing which swerved between adequate and sub-par. Perhaps if editor Stan Lee had spent a little more time nurturing his apprentice scripters we might have seen a better result.

But coming right at the start of Marvel expansionist phase of the late 1960s, it's likely that Stan just didn't have the time. So we can just file The Ghost Rider under "interesting curiosities" and move on.

Next: The Split Covers of Marvel Comics

Yet More Marvel Cowboys - Ghost Rider: Part 1

OLD-TIME FANS TEND TO THINK OF GHOST RIDER as an obscure, short-lived cowboy character from Marvel's late 1960s expansion period. Unless you were born ten years later and think of the character as a motorcyclist with his head on fire. But what might not be quite so well-known is that the character first appeared in the late 1940s as the creation of a completely different publisher.

Though Dick Ayers drew all the Ghost Rider stories, somehow ME managed to get Frank Frazetta to draw a few of their covers.

The first Ghost Rider began as a backup feature in ME's (Magazine Enterprises) Tim Holt comic, which was a licensed title starring then popular western movie actor Tim Holt. Initially the character US Marshal Rex Fury posed as the timid, cloth-peddling Calico Kid and did his best, along with his comedy Chinese sidekick Sing-Song, to disrupt the criminal elements in the old West. 

The first two pages of the first Calico Kid story from Tim Holt 6 (May 1949).

After running in Tim Holt for five issues, ME's publisher Vincent Sullivan told Ayers, "We’re gonna have him be a different character. You think up the costume. We wanna call him the Ghost Rider, and he’ll have clothes that glow in the dark and all that ..." Though some sources credit writer Ray Krank and Dick Ayers with creating the Ghost Rider identity, Ayers himself said that it was mostly Sullivan's idea. Ayers elaborated on the story in an interview with Roy Thomas for Alter Ego. "Vin would come in and sit down and describe what he wanted in The Ghost Rider. He told me to go see Disney's Sleepy Hollow - Ichabod Crane, the Headless Horseman - and then he told me to play the Vaughn Monroe record, 'Ghost Riders in the Sky'."

In his first appearance in Tim Holt 11 (Nov 1949), The Ghost Rider didn't sport his trademark blank white facemask ... no explanation was given for his change of character or the ghostly theme.

"And then he started talking about what he wanted the guy wearing." The white costume came from either Sullivan or Ray Crank. "I don't know which one it was, Vin or Ray, thought that one up," Ayers told Alter Ego, "but I know they thought of the white and also said it glows in the dark, so we had to think of what made it glow. All we could think of was phosphorescence or phosphorus. And even the horse, we had to have him painted with phosphorus." Don't try this at home, kids.

Rex Fury had a lot of fun scaring the chaps off cowboys all over the West. Especially effective was the "talking through a log" routine.

Pretty much from his first appearance in Tim Holt 11, The Ghost Rider started acting like a supernatural being, a schtick was later adopted by DC's The Creeper. Using simple tricks, Rex Fury tried to make his enemies think he was an unstoppable spirit of vengeance. It seemed to work quite well for him.

Over the first few issues of the run in Tim Holt, The Ghost Rider fought rustlers, fake indians and a gang who'd installed a weak sheriff to there'd be no one to stop their robbing. As the series progressed, The Ghost Rider's opponents became spookier, as he battled (fake) supernatural menaces in stories like "The Screaming Skeleton" in Tim Holt 20 (Nov 1950), "The Haunted Hangman" (issue 27, Dec 1951) and "The Headless Horsemen" (issue 28, Feb 1952) - and even faced a fake Ghost Rider in Tim Holt 25 (Aug 1951).

Iron Mask in Tim Holt 32 (Oct 1952); Iron Mask in Kid Colt 110 (May 1963); The Brain in Tim Holt 32; The Brain in Kid Colt 7 (Nov 1949).

A little later, Both Tim Holt and The Ghost Rider faced some opponents who were a bit super-villainy, like Iron Mask and The Brain. Interestingly, villains with the same names would also show up in the Silver Age run of Kid Colt - Outlaw, covered in this blog last time. Even more of a coincidence, Dick Ayers was the inker on the cover art for the Kid Colt Iron Mask issue. Coincidence? Perhaps ...

The last Ghost Rider story was in Red Mask 50 (reprinted from Ghost Rider 2) where, presumably to comply with the new Comics Code rules, a nose and mouth were added to the character's usually blank face.

The series continued through the rest of the Tim Holt run until ME changed the title of the book to Red Mask with issue 42 (Jun 1954). The last Ghost Rider story was in issue 50 (Jul 1955), though the Red Mask book continued until issue 54 (Sep 1957).

Ghost Rider 1 (Aug 1950), art by Dick Ayers.

Somewhere in the middle of all that, Ghost Rider got his own book. With the first issue cover-dated August 1950, concurrent with Tim Holt 19, the series lasted 14 issues, with the last dated around October 1954 (which have been the same month that Red Mask 44 came out). Quite why ME decided to change the parent book's title from Tim Holt to Red Mask isn't known, but my best guess would be it was so they wouldn't have to pay the movie actor to use his name any more.

After starting out as a funny animal cartoonist for the Pines publishing house, fledgling artistic genius Frank Frazetta got some of his earliest dramatic work drawing Ghost Rider covers for maverick comics publisher Magazine Enterprises.

But with the solo series, editor Ray Krank was free to feature The Ghost Rider in increasingly macabre situations on the covers of the spin-off series. After a glorious run on issues 2 - 5 by a young artist called Frank Frazetta the subsequent cover art, by Ghost Rider regular Dick Ayers, became more and more outlandish.

The steadily spookier covers on Ghost Rider might have had something to do with the rise of EC Comics in the early 1950s. But it also sort of makes sense to have a character called Ghost Rider at least appear to battle supernatural menaces.

It started off with a bunch of guys in white sheets - more Klan than spooks - and a brainy midget, but by issue 7, we were getting giant winged snakes, zombies and murder in the wax museum. Issue 8 gave us a haunted hotel, a haunted girl and dope-smoking murderers. These all turned out to be fakes (except for the dope smokers), the sort of stuff that Scooby-Doo and the gang would be up against in the cartoon series of the 1960s.

How did Vin Sullivan not get sued by Universal Pictures for his Frankenstein rip-off in Ghost Rider 10? Maybe the top brass at Universal didn't read comic books.

Ghost Rider 9 (Oct 1952) gave us a flying vulture man, a walking dead man and a town that seemed to be possessed by demons. Issue 10 went all-out with The Frankenstein Monster, a giant lizard man and a tiger demon. Things calmed down a little in Ghost Rider 11 (Mar 1953) with just a beautiful witch, a haunted portrait and snoopy reporter to deal with.

Ghost Rider 12 (May 1953) was the last of the horror covers on the title. The last two issues - still a little edgy - were more traditional in their subject matter.

The last couple of issues toned down the horror elements on their covers. By this time the anti-horror movement, spurred by Frederic Wertham's campaign in the newspapers and magazines of the period, may well have made Vin Sullivan a little cautious. That said, the supernatural shennanigans continued inside the book, at least for issue 13, with talking skeletons and a native American demon. With Ghost Rider 14 (undated, but probably early 1954), the final issue, things took a slightly more sedate turn, as though Publisher Vincent Sullivan was thinking about a new, safer direction for the character ....

Nevertheless, even after the cancellation of The Ghost Rider's own title, the character continued to battle his way through a horde of fake supernatural menaces in the pages of Tim Holt (and its continuation Red Mask) right the way up to issue 49 (May 1955). Then, with the effects of the anti-comics campaign really beginning to bite, the last Magazine Enterprises title Red Mask was cancelled with issue 53 (May 1956).

It would be ten years before The Ghost Rider would once again rise from the grave to terrorise bad guys across the West, this time at Marvel Comics under the sponsorship of Stan Lee's assistant editor Roy Thomas.

Next: Marvel's Ghost Rider (no, the other, other one)

More Marvel Cowboys: Kid Colt - Outlaw

BACK IN THE 1960s IT WAS THE SUPERHEROES THAT CAUGHT MY ATTENTION. First, the colourful DC heroes like Flash and especially Green Lantern. Then by the mid-Sixties, I'd focussed more on the Marvel heroes. I was aware that Marvel published other titles from the house ads in the superhero titles, but as I've mentioned before in this blog, I was never much of a fan of war comics or cowboys. It wasn't until much later in my comic collecting endeavours that I began to appreciate that Stan was a pretty good writer in almost any genre.

Marvel had three western characters that stood the test of time. I already covered Two-Gun Kid in an earlier post. Of the remaining two, Kid Colt Outlaw had the longer run, clocking up 229 issues of his own title, as opposed to Rawhide Kid, who only managed 151 issues. Kid Colt also racked up dozens of appearances in Marvel's contemporary Western anthologies, like Wild Western, Western Winners and the odd filler slot in Two-Gun Kid.

Originally titled Kid Colt Hero of the West, the book joined existing Timely Westerns like Western Outlaws and Sheriffs and Wild Western, becoming the sixth Marvel Western comic and the third cowboy to appear in his own title.

Kid Colt Outlaw arrived, full-blown, in his own title on 25 June 1948 (cover-dated August), in a 52-page mag, scripted by Ernie Hart and drawn by Bill Walsh. Who actually created the character is now lost in the mists of time, but as the back story of Kid Colt is so very similar to that of Two-Gun Kid, I wonder if Stan Lee didn't have a big hand in both.

HOW IT ALL BEGAN

Both Kid Colt and Two-Gun Kid grew up the sons of farmers. Both are pacifists who have sworn not to carry guns. And both take up shootin' irons when their respective fathers are killed. When Blaine Colt's father is murdered and the family farm stolen by crooked Sheriff Yates, young Blaine takes up his dad's six-gun to avenge his murder. But killing a lawman will never end well for the shooter, so young Blaine becomes Kid Colt, Outlaw ... always one step ahead of the posse, roaming the range and righting wrongs wherever he goes.

Marvel wasn't too sure what to call Kid Colt's comic at the start, but quickly settled down to Kid Colt Outlaw. For some reason, Kid Colt 2 (Oct 1948) was 36 pages, while 3 and 4 were 52 pagers. All the covers of this first run were by Syd Shores.

The earliest stories were written by Ernie Hart, which will be a familiar name to regular readers of this blog, and drawn by Bill Walsh, a veteran of the Iger Eisner shop who had largely disappeared from comics by 1953, returning to the medium for a long stint on Treasure Chest in the early to mid 1960s. 

Over the next few issues many Marvel regulars contributed art to the series, with Russ Heath as the main artist and others, like Mike Sekowsky, Gene Colan and Joe Maneely, pitching in, mostly over scripts by Ernie Hart and, later, Leon Lazarus.

There was a three month break between Kid Colt 4 (Feb 1949) and Kid Colt 5 (May 1949) and when the series returned it was again as a 36-pager, though issues 9 and 10 of the book were back to 52 pages, before reverting to the standard 36 pages for the remainder of the run.

Kid Colt 7 (Nov 1949) was the first to break away from the formula of the first few issues, sporting a Russ Heath cover and a book-length Kid Colt story by Hart and Heath.

Judging from the job numbers, issues 5-8 of Kid Colt Outlaw were using up Ernie Hart/Russ Heath inventory stories and Syd Shores covers from the earlier 1948 run, though the frequency was a bit haphazard, with an inexplicable four-month gap between issues 6 and 7, then finally settling down to a bi-monthly frequency with issue 12.

One other interesting thing I found in Kid Colt 4 was an anti-Wertham editorial, presumably written by Stan Lee, in which "The Editors" of the "Marvel Comic Group" take issue with the Wertham's anti-comics campaign a full five years before the Kefauver hearings of 1953. Click image to enlarge.

The stories mostly had Kid Colt foiling schemes to take over ranches by crooked sheriffs and other unsavoury characters (well, it is a cowboy series). One notable exception was the tale "Fight or Crawl, Outlaw" in Kid Colt Outlaw 4 (Feb 1949) which had the Kid forced to take the place of a fighter in a boxing match, by Ernie Hart and Russ Heath. Curiously, an almost identical story had been published a few months earlier, "Death in the Ring" in Two-Gun Kid 3 (Aug 1948), drawn by Syd Shores. The scripter remains unidentified, but there's a good chance it's Ernie Hart - unless Stan Lee wrote the original and asked Hart to rework it for the Kid Colt story. Another Kid Colt trope was the tale in which The Kid encounters a youngster who wants to be an outlaw, for example "The Man from Nowhere" in Kid Colt 9. Then Kid Colt has the task of convincing them that the life of an outlaw is anything but glamorous. The Kid would encounter many, many rannies like this during his long run.

One odd story in Kid Colt 4 involved the Kid meeting a giant - the grandson of Paul Bunyon - in a rare fantasy-tinged tale. Pencilled by Mike Sekowsky, the scripter is unknown, though it does use fantasy tropes that wouldn't be out of place in a Stan Lee script.

I've mashed up some of the pages of Kid Colt 7 here to give a sense of the scope of the tale, with The Kid transported to New York at one point to investigate the source of The Brain's wealth. Click image to enlarge.

One stand-out issue of the earliest Kid Colts was 7 (Nov 1949). The epic 18-page story, "Trapped Between Two Fires", had The Kid battle a ruthless Wall Street financier, The Brain, who decides to take over swathes of the West and set himself up as an absolute monarch, with an actual medieval castle. We also see the Kid travel to New York to take out The Brain's investment company that's funding his mad schemes - though I had to wonder why all the shooting didn't bring the NYPD down on The Kid. We wouldn't see its like again, and I can only surmise that editor Stan Lee experimented with this book-length format and abandoned it until it was revived with Fantastic Four 1 (Nov 1961). 

Kid Colt 9 (May 1950) featured some early Marvel work by the great Joe Maneely. Maneely, had started drawing for Stan Lee's titles the preceding month, focussing mainly on western titles like Western Outlaws and Sheriffs and Whip Wilson ... and contributed art for another epic-length tale in Black Rider 8 (Mar 1950).

Joe Maneely contributed many great covers to the Kid Colt series, though rarely drew any of the interior art. His bold, powerful designs made him a natural cover artist and he drew more Atlas covers than any of Stan Lee's other artists.

Maneely rapidly became Stan Lee's go-to guy for covers and over the next seven years contributed hundreds of covers to Atlas titles and dozens to Kid Colt Outlaw, including 10, 11, 12, 16, 20, 21, 40, 41, 42, 43, 47, 51, 52, 53, 54, 56, 60, 61, 65, 67, 68, 69, 71, 73, 75-79, 80 and 81. Jack Kirby's first cover for the title was Kid Colt Outlaw 83 (Mar 1959)

It seems odd to retell Kid Colt's origin story so soon after his first appearance, but I guess editor Stan Lee must've had his reasons. The second Kid Colt story also allows for a character to give a speech about how The Kid has never been known to steal and has only ever gunned down those who later proved to be murderers themselves.

Kid Colt 11 (Oct 1950) was something of a reset issue. It presented a newly-drawn version of the "origin" story from issue 1 after little over two years, and a back-up story, "Captured by the Comanches", where an old timer sets an obsessed lawman straight on exactly the kind of man Kid Colt is ... and even though an earlier story established Kid Colt as an ally of the Comanche, in this tale he's at odds with them.

From Kid Colt 9, the old team of Ernie Hart and Russ Heath gradually gave way to scripter Leon Lazarus and artist Pete Tumlinson. 

Lazarus worked mainly on Atlas western titles until the mid-1950s. He had started at Timely as a letterer, then moved into script-writing, joining the Timely staff as an assistant editor under Don Rico. When Rico (and fellow editor Ernie Hart) left the company at the end of the 1940s, Lazarus became Al Jaffee's assistant. One of the writers overseen by Lazarus was Patricia Highsmith, who would later go on to a stellar career as a novelist. Lazarus lost his staff job in January 1950, when publisher Martin Goodman decided that it was cheaper to use only freelance talent, though Lazarus continued to freelance for the company. Gradually, he transitioned away from comics to work almost exclusively for Goodman's "slick" magazines. In 1965, he made a brief return to Marvel Comics, scripting a single Giant-Man story in Tales to Astonish 64 (Feb 1965). As he explained to the fanzine Alter Ego: 

"[Goodman] wasn't sold on [the Marvel Method] of doing stories [in which writers would supply artists with a plot synopsis, rather than full script, allowing artists to tell the story's visual narrative with their own pacing and details]. He became concerned that Stan would have too much leverage over him, and he worried about what would happen if Stan ever decided to leave the company. Goodman wanted other writers as a back-up in case he needed them, so he ordered Stan to use other writers ... Goodman told Stan to, 'Have Leon write stories.' Stan called me and up and asked if I was willing to come in and work there again. ... I didn't want to say 'no' because I was working for Goodman's men's magazines, and didn't want to lose the account. I only did this one story, because I wasn't comfortable with the way Stan wanted writers to work with the artists, though I see now how right he was."

Leon Lazarus: 22 August 1919 - 28 November 2008.

Howard Peter Tumlinson started selling artwork to Timely in 1949 and quickly became a frequent contributor to the western titles, drawing Kid Colt's appearances in his own magazine and in the back-up stories in Wild Western. Towards the mid-1950s Tumlinson also drew quite a few horror stories for Atlas, but dropped out of comics around that time to concentrate on book illustration.

Pete Tumlison: 2 June 1920 - 5 June 2008.

Lazarus and Tumlinson worked on Kid Colt until issue 24 (Jan 1953), when long time artist Jack Keller took over for an unprecedented 109-issue run, from Kid Colt 25 (Mar 1953) to 133 (Mar 1967).

The tone and content of the Lazarus/Tumlinson stories weren't a lot different to the Ernie Hart/Russ Heath ones. The Kid continued his travels around the west, thwarting crooked sheriffs, busting up gangs of rustlers and making hero-worshipping teenagers hate him.

With Kid Colt 25 (Mar 1953), the legendary Jack Keller took over as artist, though Lazarus would continue as scripter until Kid Colt 31 (Oct 1953) so, unsurprisingly the tone of the stories didn't really change.

Three occasions in the first 24 issues of Kid Colt Outlaw where The Kid has shot a fleeing villain in the back - not really cricket, is it?

What struck me during this period was just how ruthless Kid Colt was. Even though he was battling bad guys - and he himself was really only an outlaw due to a series of misunderstandings - The Kid would routinely shoot an escaping baddy in the back. In fact, in the first 24 issues of his mag Kid Colt killed 197 opponents by gunshot. And this doesn't count the other bad guys he despatched by knife, hurling from a height or, on two memorable occasions, causing the villains to blunder into a noose intended for The Kid.

So, although I'm not fan of censorship, I can see why some authorities might have some valid objections to some of the action in some comics of the period. And bear in mind there were other companies that published much more extreme material than Atlas/Marvel. We know that Frederic Wertham was campaigning against comics as early as 1948, when Kid Colt Hero of the West 1 debuted. So rather than rein in the killings, Marvel hired a psychiatrist to endorse the comics. From Kid Colt 2 (Oct 1948) to issue 9 (May 1950), there was a sign-off from "Jean Thompson, MD, Psychiatrist" of the New York Board of Education.

For a period, all Timely/Marvel comics carried an endorsement from Dr Jean Thompson of the New York Board of Education.

From Kid Colt 32 (Dec 1953) onwards, there would be a softening of the violence. The Kid would more regularly shoot the guns out of his opponents' hands rather than drilling villains through the heart. This might well have been because by the time that issue was going to press the Kefauver Hearings on juvenile delinquency would have been in full swing, and comics publishers deemed it wise to tone down the ultra violence. At the same time, Leon Lazarus was out as scripter - which may or may not have had something to do with the inherent violence in his stories - and another Timely veteran, Joe Gill, was in. Gill's WIKIpedia entry suggests he left Marvel for Charlton in 1948, but that doesn't appear to be the case. It seems that Gill may have left comics for a period, but soon fetched up at Marvel and Charlton in 1953, starting with a story in Kid Colt 30 (Sep 1953). Gill would write strips for Marvel in all kinds of genres, but as the 1950s wore on, he contributed fewer and fewer stories to Marvel and more an more to Charlton. Nonetheless, he continued writing Kid Colt Outlaw right up to the Great Atlas Implosion of 1957, after which the scripting was taken over by Stan Lee.

Joe Gill: 13 July 1919 - 17 December 2006.

So if we look at the next 24 issues of Kid Colt Outlaw - which takes us to the beginning of the Comics Code Approved issues of the title - there's quite a drop in the body count, where The Kid only kills 157 opponents by gunshot. And by the time we get to issue 50, just five issues into the era of the Comics Code, the body count had dropped to zero.

It's hard to attribute the toning down of the violence to any one thing. Probably the Senate Hearings and the resultant introduction of the comics Code was a big factor, but Joe Gill's scripts may also have been a bit less kill-happy by choice. And the third factor is that with the arrival of Jack Keller as artist, The Kid seems to make far more disarming shots than kill-shots.

WHO THE HECK IS JACK KELLER?

Jack R. Keller was born on 16 June 1922 in Reading, Pennsylvania. On graduating from West Reading High School Keller starting looking for work as an illustrator and in 1941 his creation The Whistler appeared in Dell's War Stories 5, published mid-1942. From there Keller landed assignments for Quality Comics on Blackhawk, and doing backgrounds on The Spirit while Will Eisner was in the army. 

"While I was still working for Quality Comics I took some work around to Fawcett and got a strip called Johnny Blair in the Air," Keller said in a 1972 interview. "It was a filler for Captain Midnight’s comic book and was an airplane strip about the Civil Air Patrol. So I did that and I also got some work from Fiction House [Wings Comics 46 (Jun 1944) to 66 (Feb 1946)]. I was very much influenced by air war which was quite a thing of the time. I illustrated Suicide Smith and Clipper Kirk. Clipper was a naval pilot and he was always on an aircraft carrier. Every time he cracked up he fell into the arms of a beautiful girl. It was always the same script every time! Suicide Smith was pretty similar only he was a marine pilot. After the war the army and navy stories disappeared and crime stories were starting to pick up. I did some work for Biro and Wood on Crime Does Not Pay. I also did some work for Hillman Publications including a strip called The Rosebud Sisters. It was about two elderly ladles, a takeoff of Arsenic and Old Lace, that got into all kinds of curious situations. So I worked on those strips and then it seemed that detective stories were fading a bit and around '48 and '49 I also did some work for a parochial school magazine called Topics. It contained comic strips that would tell the lives of priests and various types of heroes."

In 1950, Keller took a staff job in the Timely/Marvel bullpen, and began churning out horror and crime stories for Martin Goodman's very hungry comics line.

After a couple of years Keller was drawing western titles for Atlas/Marvel, at first on Wild Western, but then really found his niche as the permanent artist for Kid Colt Outlaw, where he would continue for the next 15 years, the longest run by an artist on any Marvel character.

Though never as distinctive as contemporaries John Severin or Bill Everett, Keller's work was solid, with bold figurework and deft storytelling. Looking at Keller's 1950s output now, I'm reminded at times of the Simon and Kirby work of the same period. Stan Lee must have thought so too, because not even during the early 1960s did Stan feel the need to have Jack Kirby draw a few Kid Colts to "course-correct" Keller. 

After the Atlas Implosion, Keller supplemented his income by working in the auto trade as a salesman, then began drawing for Charlton, notably on the popular racing car comics of the time, like Hotrod Racers and Teenage Hotrodders.

Though Keller was drawing a few westerns for Charlton during his stretch there, it was the race-car comics that he enjoyed drawing the most.

"I was getting very wrapped up with automobile illustration," Keller told fan John Mozzer in 1972. "The racing stories that I was producing for Charlton were progressing quite nicely. Dick Giordano, who was editor at the time, offered me a very nice package if I would go exclusively with Charlton and forsake my duties with Marvel. So, after telling Stan Lee about this he gave me a counter offer to go with Marvel exclusively. I pondered the question quite a bit because they both had been excellent people to work for. I like Stan Lee very much and I also enjoyed Dick Giordano’s company. I finally decided on going with Charlton for the simple reason that the subject matter was more appealing to me. That was the sole reason. Actually, financially. Stan Lee’s offer was superior. so it was a matter of illustrating what I liked best and at that time it was auto racing."

By the early 1970s, Jack Keller had largely given up drawing comics and had returned to the auto retail business. He died in 2003, and was buried in Forest Hills Cemetery in Reifften, Pennsylvania.

Jack Keller: 16 June 1922 - 2 January 2003.

BACK TO KID COLT

One thing I particularly noticed about Jack Keller's style of storytelling was that traditionally, the first page of any story in a multi-story comic would usually depict an eye-grabbing scene from somewhere in the narrative. Pretty quickly after Keller taking charge of the illustration, the first page of the Kid Colt stories would actually have the splash page as the first scene in the story. I had always thought that this had been a Jack Kirby innovation that he'd introduced with the 1960s Fantastic Four comics ... but no.

Successive splash pages from Kid Colt 24, 25 and 26: All this time I'd thought it was Jack Kirby who invented the idea of making the first splash page of a story the opening scene rather than a "mini-cover" highlighting the most interesting scene in the strip ... but turns out it was Jack Keller.

Something else I noticed about Joe Gill's Kid Colt scripts was that there were fewer instances of recycling the same old story tropes. The only two that Gill returned to a few times were the tried and trusted "Youngster wants to be outlaw and the Kid dissuades him" (six times!) and the less trusty "Kid Colt convinces the lawman chasing him that he's decent type after all" (just three instances). Larry Lazarus also used these cliches, but also enjoyed "The Kid breaks out of jail to catch the real villains" and "Kid Colt is tortured by indians".

After the departure of Joe Gill in late 1957, Stan Lee became the regular scripter on Kid Colt Outlaw, with issue 77. Though not the most reliable indicator of actual sales, the Publisher's Statement of Ownership information for 1960 has Kid Colt as the third best-selling Marvel Comic after Tales to Astonish and Tales of Suspense at an average 144,746 copies a month. Which is why Stan may have been reluctant to quit scripting the western and teen titles even as the super-hero books were burgeoning, preferring instead to hand over writing chores on Astonish, Suspense, Journey into Mystery and Strange Tales to Ernie Hart, Robert Bernstein and Jerry Siegel.

Under Stan's scripting, it was pretty much business as usual, but with just a little touch of humour. Stan would continue using the same tropes that had made the Marvel cowboys among the best-selling titles of the period, warning the occasional wayward youngster away from the outlaw life and changing lawmen's opinion of him - most of the time.

Stan Lee's first dozen or so Kid Colts pretty much followed the style of Joe Gill's stories, with a dash more pep and humour. Stan also made sure he had Jack Kirby on cover art, to ensure the continued high sales of the title.

Stan also got Keller an inker ... quite why he did that I'm not sure. Maybe it was to free Keller up to take on more Charlton work, but artwork does take a noticeable upturn at this point due to the polished enhancements veteran Christopher Rule brought to the artwork.

In a first for Kid Colt, Stan Lee introduced an ongoing nemesis for The Kid, Marshal Sam Hawk, the most ruthless and dedicated lawman in the west. The character would appear in at least three more Kid Colt stories.

Another innovation Stan made was to introduce an ongoing antagonist for Kid Colt. Marshal Sam Hawk was a no-nonsense lawman, who would uphold the law rather than justice. A bit like an early version of Judge Dredd. Sam Hawk would go on to appear in Kid Colt 80, 84 and Gunsmoke Western 60 (Sep 1960), then Kid Colt 98 (May 1961) and 101 (Nov 1961), then again in Kid Colt 121 (Mar 1965). I don't think The Kid ever did change Hawk's mind about him.

Stan must've figured it was time to remind readers how a good young cowboy like Kid Colt came to be an outlaw ... though this time the villain was a local gang leader (still named "Lash Laribee", though) instead of a corrupt sheriff who wanted the Colt ranch.

In Kid Colt 79 (Jul 1958), Stan and Jack Keller did a retelling of the origin, but this time changing the villain from a corrupt lawman to a local thug. The first origin story was set in the town of Purgatory, whereas Stan's retelling is set in Abilene. This was an old choice because on several occasions during the series, by-standers have remarked that they recognise The Kid because they saw him in a shootout in Abilene, so by re-tooling Purgatory as Abilene, Stan has retroactively had Kid Colt repeatedly returning to the scene of his father's murder for further gun-duels. It also suggests that Stan didn't bother reading over the file copies of Kid Colt before he took over the scripting. Perhaps he figured no one would care.

For a man on the run from the law, that Kid Colt sure spends a lot of time in Abilene ... (click image to enlarge).

Then with issue 89 it's as though Stan figured that as the fantasy titles were doing so well, he'd introduce some fantasy elements into the western titles. Kid Colt 89 (Mar 1960) cover-featured a ghost and, although it turns out to be a gang of bandits impersonating a ghost, just as The Kid is at their mercy, an unseen something scares the wits out of them. The monster Warroo, in Kid Colt 100 (Sep 1961), is just gunfighter Rack Morgan posing as a travelling magician and further moonlighting as a creature of native American legend. By contrast, the alien in Kid Colt 107 (Nov 1962) is a genuine alien, stranded on Earth when his ship is damaged by a passing comet. The friendly creature is defended from some terrified townsfolk by The Kid, and is rescued by his fellow aliens at the end of the tale. I'm pretty sure this was Kid Colt's only brush with extraterrestrials.

Ghosts and monsters and aliens ... just some of the fantasy story elements that would haunt Kid Colt during the first year or two of the 1960s.

The other innovation Stan brought to the title was the concept of larger-than-life villains. Sometimes foreshadowing later villains of Marvel's various superheroes series, Kid Colt would face off against such colourful protagonists as Iron Mask (twice, in Kid Colt 110 and 114, May 1964 and Jan 1964), The Scorpion (115, Mar 1964), The Invisible Gunman (116, May 1964) and The Fat Man and his boomerang (117, Jul 1964) - all of these would be recycled as Marvel villains just a year or too later. And although I tend to be sceptical about most Marvel prototypes, the Fat Man character was very much a forerunner of The Kingpin, who would debut three years later in Amazing Spider-Man 50 (Jul 1967). As one bystander in the Kid Colt story remarked  ... "That ain't fat, that's solid muscle".

Story elements from the Marvel superhero titles began to crop up in the Kid Colt stories. Issue 109 (Mar 1963) also featured a pirate called the Barracuda, an idea that would later turn up in Strange Tales 120 (May 1964).

Kid Colt Outlaw 123 (Jul 1965) was the last issue to feature Stan Lee scripts and Jack Kirby covers ... and for me, this is where my interest in the title ended. Jack Keller would continue to pencil the interiors until Kid Colt 130 (Sep 1966), when the format changed to 72-page giants for three issues, but when the title returned to 12 cents and 36 pages, the scripting was by Gary Friedrich or Denny O'Neill, and Herb Trimpe, Dick Ayers and Werner Roth variously provided the pencilling.

Even though overtaken in sales by Rawhide Kid in 1963, Kid Colt Outlaw's run remains impressive. From 1948 to 1968 the title was one of Marvel's best-sellers. And even when the new material was replaced by reprint, the title continued for another 11 years, finally being cancelled with issue 229 (Apr 1979), an incredible 30 year run.

Though stories did get a bit samey - a familiar half dozen plots were dragged out and re-tooled on a too-regular basis - I still have real soft-spot for the Marvel westerns, particularly those scripted by Stan.

Next time, I'll take a look at my very favourite Marvel western character, which was essentially a revamp of a 1950s cowboy superhero.

Next: The Ghost Rider (no, the other one!)