striking, albeit busy, image. It’s drawn by the great Joe Maneely,
who was one of Stan Lee’s favorite artists and who died just before
the start of the Marvel Age of Comics. I’m sure Maneely would have
been a part of that revolution and his fans often speculate on what
features he might have handled.
Kid Colt Outlaw holds the record for longest running western comic
book. The title ran 229 issues from 1948–1979, though there was a
single-year hiatus in 1968. I remember being somewhat upset when
the title went away for that year and only moderately pleased when
it returned in 1969 as a reprint title.
This issue, which hit the newsstands in my birth month of December
1951, featured three Kid Colt stories. All of them were drawn by
Pete Tumlinson:
“Revenge in Sagebrush City” (8 pages)
“Mystery of the Stolen Cache” (4 pages)
“The Big Smoke” (7 pages)
The issue also has a four-page non-series tale - “The Lonely Trail”
- drawn and signed by Warren Broderick. No writers for any of the
four stories have been identified at this time, though Paul Newman
(1947-1953) and Leon Lazarus (1952-1957) are known to have written
for the character.
How did the Kid become an outlaw? According to Kid Colt Outlaw #10
[September 1950], he killed his father’s murderer in a fair fight
but was, nonetheless, accused of murder. If that origin sounds a
mite familiar, it’s because it’s pretty much the origin of the Stan
Lee and Jack Kirby version of the Rawhide Kid I’ve been blogging
about on Wednesdays. The difference is that the Rawhide Kid wasn’t
branded an outlaw until sometime after he’d brought his adoptive
father’s killers to justice.
Keep reading this blog for more comics from the month of my birth.
There are a lot of them to cover.
I’ll be back tomorrow with more stuff.
© 2012 Tony Isabella
First Rawhide and now Kid Colt, where's the Two-Gun Kid? Personally, Two-Gun was my favorite back then.
ReplyDeleteDid love the Marvel westerns as a kid, even though most of my comics budget was going for their super-hero titles.
I wonder, had Maneely not died so tragically, if Stan might have tried to revive the Black Knight with him as artist on the strip. The character certainly has shown up in various incarnations (hero & villain) since fairly early in the Marvel era. A demonstration that Lee & Thomas, among other creators, liked the character.
For all the love and glory that these characters get, my favorite Marvel western title remains GUNHAWKS / GUNHAWK. Short lived as it was, it was a fun comics and actually had to guts to kill one of the lead characters.
ReplyDeleteAnyone read Ostrander's limited series BLAZE OF GLORY some years back? Featured a new take on most of the Marvel western characters? Another great Ostrander read.