Wednesday, April 27, 2016

RAWHIDE KID WEDNESDAY 74

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 74th installment in that series.

The Rawhide Kid #89 [July 1971] has a cover signed “Larry Lieber,” though the Grand Comics Database credits John Tartaglione with the inking and Marie Severin with “alterations.” I won’t dispute either of those additional credits, but I will say I think the cover does not do what a cover is supposed to do, which is sell the comic to a potential customer. I’ll explain...

This issue features a guest shot by Kid Colt, one of Marvel’s two best-known western heroes, the other behind Rawhide himself. This is only mentioned in a speech balloon; it should have been heralded more prominently. Adding to the problem is that Kid Colt’s traditional garb is colored incorrectly. Missed opportunity.

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“When Outlaws Ride!” by Lieber (script and pencils) and Tartaglione  (inks) has a simple plot that fits the story’s 14-page length well. Rawhide spots his friend trying to escape from a posse and figures Colt’s horse Steel is much faster than the steeds of his pursuers. But Steel stumbles and Rawhide and his horse Nightwind must rush in to prevent Colt from being captured.

In flashback, we learn that Colt helped out a young woman named Ann and was invited to dinner. Ann’s father runs the town’s express office and, because he’s working late, is not able to join them. On leaving the house, Colt is knocked out from behind and wakes up to find his clothing scattered around him.

During Colt’s nap time, a masked robber wearing his clothes stuck up the express office and killed the manager. The townspeople spot the groggy Colt and aren’t in a listening mood. Colt took off and that’s where the story gets back to real time.

Rawhide and Colt head back to the town because it’s “the last place they’ll think of looking for you.” Specifically, they go to Ann’s house where the angry grieving woman beats her fists on Colt’s chest and says that, if she had a gun, she would kill him. Colt gives her one of his guns...and she shoots him dead.

Just kidding.

She can’t do it. Colt tells her she can’t shoot a man in cold blood and neither could he. Rawhide tells Colt to lie low while he does some investigating. He finds a clue a few panels later: a tobacco pouch with an unusual design.

The returning posse spots the Kid and, because they figure he’s in cahoots with Colt on account of Rawhide helped his buddy escape and all, they start shooting at him. Rawhide heads for cover and, not wanting to hurt the townsmen, starts shooting the guns out of their hands. Colt rushes into the street to help the Kid.

Rawhide spots the tobacco pouch design on saddlebags on a horse. He waves around the pouch and tells the posse it belongs to the real killer. Someone recognizes the horse as belong to Sam Tanner. Colt impulsively runs at Tanner...who shoots Colt in the leg. Clearly, Colt has gotten rusty since his own comic book went to all reprinted stories.

Rawhide corners the fleeing Tanner and disarms him. Tanner admits he wanted to pin the robbery on Colt. He killed the manager because his mask slipped and the manager recognized him. Tanner wants the Rawhide Kid to let him go because they’re both on the wrong side of the law. But it’s just a ploy to give Tanner a chance to use a gun  hidden in his hat.

Rawhide’s spider-sense warns him of this treachery and he manages to avoid the bullet. Tanner doesn’t get a second shot. He’s gunned down by the Kid:

I’ve regretted many a death, but not his! He was a sidewinder right up to the end!

Kids Colt and Rawhide ride out of town “knowing that in movement and distance lies the only safety they may ever know!”

This story has never been reprinted in American comics, but did run in three foreign titles.

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As usual, the half-page Mighty Marvel Checklist ran after page 6 of the Rawhide Kid story. Highlights of the month included Neal Adams drawing the Inhumans in Amazing Adventures #7, the Green Goblin in Amazing Spider-Man #98, a turning point for my favorite Avenger in Captain America and the Falcon #139, Thoth-Amon making his Marvel debut in Conan the Barbarian #7 and the Thing and the Hulk battling  in Fantastic Four #112.

The rest of the page advertised the fan club Marvelmania’s official Marvel stationery. For $1.75 (including postage), you would get ten envelopes, 10 stationery sheets and 40 scratch pad sheets, all of them “drawn by your favorite artists!”
Some comics dealers had dropped out of the Marvel “classified” ads, but there were two new dealers from San Diego, California: Doug Van Gordon and Brain Laurence. But the most significant advertisement was this one:

COMIC CONVENTION. San Diego’s Golden State Comic-Con, Aug. 6-8, 1971. Many comic and sci-fi pros, art displays, films, dealer’s tables, and fellow fans! Please sent 25c for full details. Comic-Con, Box 23182, S.D., Ca 92123.

This issue’s reprint story was “Redmen On the Rampage!” featuring The Kid From Texas (5 pages). Penciled and inked by Joe Sinnott and possibly written by Stan Lee, this tale first appeared in Kid Colt Outlaw #85 [July 1959].

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The GCD synopsis says most everything you need to know about this story, which is filled with references to “savages,” and “Injuns” and “palefaces.” The synopsis:

A small frontier town is besieged by Indian attacks. The Kid from Texas and his sidekick, Cactus, help a doctor end the conflict by treating the Chief's son for cholera.

Cactus is a typical Gabby Hayes type. The Kid is a voice of reason and compassion. In response to a townsman declaring the Apache need to be wiped out, the Kid says:

Maybe there’s been too much of that already...We’ve pushed further west, and all the time we took what he wanted! There are ways to win their confidence, and without the use of guns.

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There were many cool items on this month’s Marvel Bullpen Bulletins page. We get the first announcement of a future black-and-white mag to be called The Tomb of Dracula or The House of Dracula. It will show Dracula as he is, as he was and as we will be...and with art by Gene Colan, Berni Wrightson, Gray Morrow and others. The “Tomb” title would end up being used for a legendary color series and the magazine, when it finally came out, would be called Dracula Lives!

There’s a note that Tower of Shadows and Chamber of Darkness have changed their titles to Monsters on the Prowl and Creatures on the Loose.

Tom Palmer gets congratulations on the birth of his first child, a girl. Sal Buscema gets the same for his second child, a boy. Items like these always made me feel closer to writers and artist I had never met, but would meet within the next few years.

The page pointed out Marvel references in recent movies There’s a Girl in My Soup (a Hulk poster) and Brewster McCloud (a character reading Captain America).

Roy Thomas was on TV station KFVS in Missouri, a 20-minute spot on relevance in comics. He appeared “in his Brooks Brothers suit and tie, overlapped by his long blonde hair, which must have confused everyone who was watching!”

Besides the usual shout-outs to artists moving from one comic book to another, the page listed the nominees for the Academy of Comic Book Arts awards for 1970...

Best Penciller: Adams, Buscema, Kirby
Best Writer: Lee, O’Neil, Thomas
Best Inker: Giordano, Palmer, Sinnott
Best Continuing Feature: Fantastic Four, Green Lantern, Spider-Man
Outstanding New Talent: Conway, Smith, Wrightson

“Stan’s Soapbox” discussed the eternal question of whether or not Marvel should use dialogue balloons and captions on its covers and if doing so gave the comics a juvenile look. As usual, Stan tosses the question to the fans.

[My take is that we should use all the tools in the box as we need them. That includes word balloons on covers and thought balloons in stories. Why limit ourselves?]

The “Ridin’ the Trail with Rawhide” letters page has four letters and responses to same. Dan Mulcahy of Brandon, Vermont wants new adventures of Kid Colt, the Ghost Rider and other western heroes, suggesting these be written by Larry Lieber and Gerry Conway with art by Barry Smith and Herb Trimpe. He wants an all-new Rawhide Kid Annual. (He’ll get a reprint annual soon.) He wants Rawhide to stay in one place for a few issues at a time. He wants the Kid to team up with the Ghost Rider.

David Lomazoff of Philadelphia likes John Tartaglione’s inking, but thinks there’s room for improvement. However, he might be confusing inking with coloring. He also wants to see Larry Lieber doing more than Rawhide Kid and a return to costumed villains in the series.

Elliot Cohn of Ann Arbor, Michigan didn’t like Rawhide Kid #84, but thought issue #85 was great.

Dan Botelho of Cheyenne, Wyoming declares Rawhide Kid to be “one of the greats of the comics world.” 

                                                                                

The final editorial page this month is a full-page house ad for Kid Colt Outlaw #154 [July 1971] with a new cover by Herb Trimpe. The issue reprints...

Kid Colt: “Gunduel In the Desert” (5 pages) by Stan Lee with Jack Keller (pencils) and Dick Ayers (inks) from Kid Colt Outlaw #91 [July 1960].

“The Fury of Bull Marker” (5 pages), a non-character story by Lee and Don Heck from The Rawhide Kid #27 [April 1962].

Kid Colt: “Jailbreak” (6 pages) by Lee and Keller with Christopher Rule inking from Kid Colt Outlaw #81 [November 1958].

Kid Colt: “Plunderers” (5 pages] by Lee and Keller from Gunsmoke Western #32 [December 1955].

That’s our “Rawhide Kid Wednesday” for this gallop around the West. I’ll be back tomorrow with more stuff.

© 2016 Tony Isabella

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