Wednesday, July 13, 2016

RAWHIDE KID WEDNESDAY 81

The Rawhide Kid is my favorite western comics character and one of my favorite comics characters period.  Something about the short of stature (but big on courage and fighting skills) Johnny Clay spoke to the short of stature (but big on comics-reading skills) teenage Tony Isabella.  After rereading the Kid’s earliest adventures when Marvel Comics reprinted them in a pair of Marvel Masterworks and an Essential Rawhide Kid volume, I wanted to reacquire every Rawhide Kid comic, reread them and write about them in this bloggy thing of mine. This is the 81st installment in that series.

The Rawhide Kid #95 [January 1971] promised “Blazing Western Action As You Like it!” on its Larry Lieber (pencils) and Frank Giacoia (inks) cover. Marvel was continuing the art-in-box cover design it had adopted a while back while also loading those covers with lots of often extraneous cover copy. As for the art itself, as I have noted before, Frank was a great inker for any penciller and my pal Lieber was no exception.

“Renegades of the Wild North” (14 pages) is one of those rarest of things: a Larry Lieber Rawhide Kid story that just doesn’t work for me from start to finish. There’s some real nice Lieber art in the story, ably inked by George Roussos, but the story made me wince on more than one occasion.
 
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The Rawhide Kid has ridden north in search of safety. When he sees smoke, he figures there might be folks in trouble. What he finds is a scene of horror: a fearful young girl clutching a doll with her burnt-down home in the background.

Claude Dijon and his border bandits had come to her family’s farm. They killed her father, ransacked their house for valuable before setting it afire and took her mother with them:

You will come with me! Dijon admires beautiful things!

Dijon is problematic from the get-go. His flowery speech grates on my mind’s ear. Visually, he looks as conceited and western foppish as he sounds. Knowing her daughter Sally is hiding from these men, Ann meekly goes with the bandits. The Kid promises Sally he’ll get her mom back after burying her dad and taking the girl to a nearby town. To her credit, Sally is a pretty tough little girl and seems to accept what’s happened. Or maybe she was just in shock.

The town sheriff says it would be useless to go after the bandits. They would’ve gone back over the border into Canada...where a U.S. lawman has no authority. Rawhide has a different notion:

I reckon you can’t act unless it’s all nice and legal. But me...I’m not totin’ a badge or an oath! All I carry are twin colts that shoot just as good on either side of the border. 
 
The confident “polecats” haven’t covered their tracks. Rawhide is having no trouble following them.

At the gang’s hideout, the fiery Angelique is not at all pleased to see Dijon riding into camp with another woman. She does not share her man. Claude says perhaps he will no longer be her man. So the angry woman pulls a knife on Ann. I thought Canadians were supposed to be nice.

Dijon roughly grabs Angelique and disarms her. He’s had enough of her temper. He orders her to calm down or leave.

I’m going! But beware, Dijon, I am half Indian...and that part of me does not forget or forgive.

Apparently, a shared love of over-the-top dialogue isn’t enough to keep a relationship strong. There’s also a decided lack of trust. Claude orders one of his men to follow Angelique. He wants to know where she goes.

The Rawhide Kid has reached the camp. He takes out a sentry, then gets the drop on the bandits. Unfortunately, he misses the bandit hiding behind a rock. The guy fires at the Kid and grazes his temple.

Dijon orders his men to tie up our hero. He’ll deal with him later.  Because that always works out well for villains.

Ann tends to the Kid’s wound and admires his courage. He tells her he was driven by anger. He also tells her Sally is safe and not to give up hope. You never know when you’ll get a break.

Enter...the break. Angelique goes to the Mounties and says she’ll lead them to Dijon’s hideout. Claude’s man sees this and rides back to the camp to warn the bandit leader. The bad guys plan an ambush and quickly pin down the Canadian lawmen.

As the battle rages, Ann distracts Rawhide’s guard long enough for the Kid to cut his ropes on a sharp rock. Rawhide karate-chops the guard on the back of his beck and gets his twin colts of justice.

The Kid guns down six outlaws in two panels because he’s the best there is at what he does when he’s on page 13 of a 14-page story. When Dijon won’t draw on him for fear of the Kid’s lightning-fast draw, the two men engage in fisticuffs. The fight takes them to the rocky edge of a cliff. Dijon goes over the edge.

Angelique runs to the dying Claude’s side as he asks why the woman betrayed him:

I was insane with jealousy! I did not know what I was doing! Oh, my love, forgive me!
 
Dijon has enough breath left for some equally bad dialogue:

It is too late! Too late for love...too late for forgiveness...too late for everything...

The Mounties thank Rawhide for saving them. The Kid says it was his pleasure. Ann makes her move:

And when we get home, it will be my pleasure to serve you the best home-cooked meal in the country. 
 
I guess 10 pages is more than enough time to mourn her dead hubby. That cheerful closing line also made me wince.

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This story was reprinted in The Rawhide Kid #147, which was cover-dated September, 1978. Paul Gulacy drew a new cover for the issue.
                                                                               

The “Ridin’ the Trail with Rawhide” letters page is back this time around. The first of four letters is from Michael Braun of Danbury, Connecticut. He says Rawhide is the best-written western comic on the stands and loves the artwork. But he’d like to see Giacoia ink an issue or two. The Marvel response is that Frank’s services are needed elsewhere on the company’s ever-increasing schedule.

Jane Wentz of Fountainville, Pennsylvania, having read an article in the New York Times on the relevance of comics, wants to know why the Rawhide Kid is just a cowboy. She requests Marvel make Rawhide Kid relevant to today’s problems.

Robert Schreiber of Brooklyn, New York, spotted some mistakes with the coloring of Nightwind, the Kid’s horse. Schreiber also echoes an earlier reader’s request for more firearm variety and recommends the popular Westerner .44.

Patricia Rowe of Ontario, Canada, repeats the frequent request for the Kid to settle down. Marvel’s response:

There’s one problem. Every time he tries to stick around somewhere, there’s a gunhawk out for a fast rep...a bounty hunter out for a fast buck...or just a plain ol’ ornery coyote who’s out for his hide, Maybe some day the Kid’ll be able to settle down, but for now he’s having enough trouble just stayin’ in front of all the bullets whizzin’ past his head.

This issue’s classified ads include a bunch of comic-book dealers: Howard Rogofsky, Brian Laurence, Comic Sales, Mike Towry, Doug Van Gordon, Grand Book Inc., Passaic Book Center, Clint’s Books, Robert Bell and David Alexander.

Once again, Marvel went to the 1950s for the four-page reprints filling out this issue. “The Man Who Wears the Badge” by Stan Lee and Dick Ayers is from Two Gun Kid #35 (February 1957). “The Last Notch” is drawn by Al Williamson. It comes from The Outlaw Kid #18 (July 1957). The Grand Comics Database also credits Stan Lee as the writer of the Williamson story, but that credit does not appear on the story itself. Stan usually signed the stories he wrote. List me as undecided on this one.

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“The Man Who Wears the Badge” is a pretty weak effort. Sheriff Tom Norbett is warned the Case brothers, who he sent up the river, have been released from jail and hanging out in the town saloon. Corbett tells the brothers they’ve nothing to fear as long they stay out of trouble.

The Case boys definitely do have trouble on their minds. They taunt the sheriff and promise revenge. They say there is no law against talking, but Bob Ingersoll could probably steer them right on that count...unless threatening an officer of the law wasn’t a crime in the Old West.

The brothers call Corbett a coward who’s hiding behind his badge. In a truly stupid move, Corbett takes off his badge and calls them out. What is this? Grade school?

Seeing Corbett only has one gun, the brothers draw on him. They figure he can’t get both of them. They’re wrong. It takes Corbett two panels, but he out-shoots them with just his one gun. The Case boys are going back to jail.

The surprise twist? Corbett was shot in the arm the previous month when he took down three gunhawks. He can only use one arm. That’s why he only has one gun.

“The Last Notch” is a better story. Gunman Rick Thorne has a habit of carving a notch on his gun before he kills a man. When he gets into a beefy with prospector Jamesie, Thorne decides the old man is not fit for the last notch on his gun. He’s going to go kill Young Jamesie.

Young Jamesie has never drawn on a man in his life. He’s not going to shoot it out with Thorne. He turns his back on the gunslinger. But, when Thorne tries to force a fight by threatening the just-arrived Old Jamesie, the younger man yanks the gunman off his horse with a barbed wire lariat.

The fisticuffs that follow don’t go Thorne’s way. He pulls his gun to shoot down Young Jamesie, but the two-fisted prospector’s son is fast enough to knock Thorne down. The gun goes off, killing Thorne. Fate decreed that the last notch the gunman carved was for himself.

The message that it takes more than a gun to make a man is common in western comics. Stan did use it often, so it is possible that he wrote this story. However, I remain undecided.

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That’s all for this week’s edition of “Rawhide Kid Wednesday.” I’ll be back on the morrow with cheesy movie reviews before hitting the road for Chicago and G-Fest. See you tomorrow.

© 2016 Tony Isabella

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