BLAZING WESTERN ACTION AS YOU LIKE IT!
As westerns enjoyed a heyday of television and movies, comics jumped on the scene, too. And while there were countless titles produced at the time of the ’50’s and into ’60’s, Rawhide Kid has proven to be the preeminent gunfighter of the four-color page. His stories started in the late fifties and only ran for sixteen issues, but then a few years later, when Marvel Comics decided to pump some air in to the near breathless lungs of a few western titles, they restarted the Rawhide Kid, continuing where he had left off and began by numbering at 17.
Rawhide Kid went through a few changes from his initial run of sixteen issues to his revamp by the now-titled Marvel comics, and different were his hair, his wardrobe, and his name. Previously he had been a blond haired fella with a blue shirt and a red neckerchief named Johnny Clay. After the revamp he adorned himself with the rare hair color of fiery auburn, and a more era-appropriate bib shirt. Also, he was now going by the name of Johnny Bart.
When he was very little, the Kid had been born to a family with the last name Clay, but when they were killed by wild Indians, he was taken in by a Texas Ranger named Ben Bart. They lived in the town of Rawhide, TX, and in a few twists and turns typical of the time, Johnny Bart was a wanted man, unable to prove his true innocence. He donned the name the Rawhide Kid, and lived his life roaming the west trying to avoid trouble. Which of course meant he would naturally be plagued by it at every turn.
The comics of this time were painfully, delightfully simplistic in their approach, but always a kick. Rawhide Kid would be quietly sitting in a typical western saloon, no doubt drinking a warm glass of milk, when one of two things would happen. Either an innocent man was harassed by local owl-hoots and he just couldn’t abide it, or someone recognized him as a wanted outlaw and a brouhaha was thusly stirred up.
The fun in these comics really came from the high morals of the Kid and his resolute adherence to what is right, no matter what. Often times whatever passle of lowdown hombres was funning at the kids expense would have a giant of a man in their crew who the kid would have to go mano-a-mano with in a knock-down drag-out slugfest. Incredibly, according to the narration boxes in the comics, these fights would go on for hours and the kid would never relent, ultimately finally sending his larger opponent to the ground in a daze. What ten year-old kid wouldn’t think that was darn cool?
If it wasn’t some big lummox that had to be overcome, then it was a sharpshooter who had a reputation as the fastest gun in the territory that the kid had to match skills with. But no matter how fast the opponent, the Rawhide Kid…well, nevermind, I wouldn’t want to give anything away. But let’s just say that the Rawhide Kid was always exciting.
New stories were printed up until issue 115 and after that they only printed previous stories with new covers up until 151. There was a four-issue mini-series released in 1985 that was a more grounded and touching story about the Rawhide Kid as an aging gunfighter still traipsing across the west. And with that final four-issue series, the era of western comics was pretty well concluded.
In his time on the frontier Rawhide Kid met quite a few interesting characters. He frequently teamed with other comic book cowboys, such as Kid Colt or Two-Gun Kid, but also ran into the likes of Wild Bill Hickok, Doc Holliday, and John Wesley Hardin, and even performed in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show in his later days. You won’t find a lot of accurate history in any of these tales, but you will definitely find the kind of fun and fantasy that made little boys dreaming of growing up to be cowboys.
And here’s a sample Cover Gallery just for kicks…
Handy With A Gun...! 