Rawhide Kid

 

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…

                  

Jane Russell

     

       

 

 

 

 

 

Reading Wyatt Earp

Given that there are more books about Wyatt Earp and his world than there are about any other frontier gun-man, it can be difficult choosing which books to start with, which ones to add to your personal library, or even which ones to trust. I wont be tackling each of the many potential lines of inquiry in this post, but we’ll start with where to start with Wyatt Earp.

One of the reasons there are so many books on the life and travels of Wyatt Earp is because there was so much variation in his life with differing purposes. If you thought the first reason I was going to mention was because of all the disagreement among biographers, then you’re already familiar with the Earp field of study, I would have to assume. And though their is plenty of debate and bickering among researchers, it’s not something to wade into for this article.

Wyatt’s life could be broken up into several different eras, which is probably true of most lives worth a biography, but the fact that Wyatt lived so long opens up that many more avenues of study than the typical western gun-hand or lawman. With out getting too specific, we could say there was his youth traveling with his family and in California, his days on the frontier as a Buffalo Hunter, Bouncer, and Lawman, or his California based years as a speculator-capitalist, or his L.A. years as a prospector up until his death. And even in these brackets of time, there are still plenty more arteries to venture down.

This brings us to the subject of this post, and where to start with reading. There are two assumptions that I’ll make regarding this topic: one, that the average enthusiast is more interested in Wyatt’s time as a lawman, engaging in daring entanglements, and two, that looking online for books on Wyatt Earp boggles a persons mind and makes their eyes go crossed. Taking these into consideration, I offer forth what I consider to be the best starting point for someone who wants to study Wyatt Earp. (Please note that I am intentional in the use of the term study, and not meaning a casual one-book venture before moving on to a different topic all-together.)

There are four books that I would strongly suggest be the basis of a Wyatt Earp student’s book collection. I’ll list them in order, and explain the reasoning behind each.

 

Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal by Stuart Lake

People love to bash on this book and call it a fictional tale. The problem that I fear will happen is that new readers to the field will dismiss it thinking themselves one of the gullible masses for having indulged it. But you simply cannot study the life of Wyatt Earp without having first read Lake. There is a lot of discrediting of the book that goes on and some of that has been well founded and deserved, but with even further research, much of Lake’s account has been proven true, with primary thanks to the indefatigable efforts put in by author/researcher Lee Silva, who will be mentioned again later.

Lake’s book is certainly due its fact-checking, and there are some things he got wrong, but keep in mind that his primary source died early on in the development of the project. On top of that he was working in a time without internet, or easy phone calling and records like we have today. The very fact of how much the Lake Notes at the Huntington Library are referenced by today’s researchers shows how much value his work holds. The main fault against Lake is that he invented dialogue attributed to Wyatt, who was known widely for his laconic nature.

But because of, and in spite of, all this, Stuart Lake’s Frontier Marshal is a seminal work in the Earp arena. Essentially everything that comes after, whether in support or in contrast, is a branching out from the tale first told by Lake. It is also, if for no other reason, a very enjoyable read. What it lacks in footnotes and documentational support, it balances with an enjoyable tone and compelling wording. Make this the first book in your start to knowing Wyatt Earp.

 

Wyatt Earp: The Life Behind the Legend by Casey Tefertiller

Tefertiller’s book is probably the most prolific book of the new era of Earp research. Much of the book corrects the record on what Stuart Lake had gotten wrong, and with accurate well-researched information, he expounds on what was first recorded by Lake and others. When I had first read this book, I loved it and certainly learned tons, but it also made me realize that I had to read Lake before I really fully understood everything. So I read Frontier Marshal and then re-read Life Behind the Legend.

Tefertiller has proven himself to be level, fair, and understanding of the world he reports on. There is no agenda with his book, aside from straightening out the record where it’s warranted. He takes you through the early years and up to the end. The bulk of the book is very Tombstone heavy, however, and so what came before the Tombstone days, and after it, is not as in depth as Lee Silva, but is a very good book for getting a full story picture of Wyatt Earp, substantiated by all the footnotes and sources a person could hope for. After reading Lake and Tefertiller, a person should have a pretty good understanding of Wyatt Earp and his life. So let’s move on to the third book you need.

 

Wyatt Earp: A Biography of the Legend by Lee Silva

If you want to be an expert on Wyatt Earp you have to read this book. That is not hyperbole. The only other option is to do the same research that Lee Silva did on your own time; the smart enthusiast is going to go the route of reading what’s already published. What Lee Silva offers is an incredibly in depth look at every little facet of Wyatt Earps life, and the assorted claims and accomplishments. By doing so, he not only gives an amazing understanding of his life, but along the way offers a vindication of sorts for Stuart Lake. Silva breaks down any argument he can and often shows where Lake was coming from, and proves almost absolutely, that even when Stuart Lake was wrong, he wasn’t intentionally so; that everything he wrote he believed in, and had the notes and research to back it up.

This knowledge of Stuart Lake is helpful in the study of Wyatt Earp, but what of the lawman himself? Well, Lee Silva does an amazing job here, too. He deftly shows, time after time, that the claims Wyatt made, often interpreted as bluster by the detractors, were true if just researched deeply enough. Take for example Wyatt’s claim about being one of the men who answered the call to a Camp Cadiz when he was a late teen in Southern California. The anti-earpers have used this as an example of Wyatt making stuff up to inflate his importance, but Silva, through his mastery in research, points out that there was a Camp Cady, often referred to as Cady’s. Then with additional details, shows that Wyatt was much more likely than not telling the truth.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Author Silva then goes through question after question looking for all the info that can be had and makes the case for each conclusion. It is, simply, the most in-depth look at Wyatt’s life and his statements about himself. This overwhelming amount of detail and consideration is why the first volume only covers up to his departure from Dodge headed for Tombstone. And even then the book is almost a thousand pages. This is both a blessing and a curse. It is an invaluable item to have, but it’s also big and hard to come by. Online the average low price you can find it for is about two-hundred and fifty dollars. Take heart though, I found my copy for one-hundred on Abe books. So if you keep an eye out, you might find a more affordable copy. But either way, you need this book; I can’t stress it enough. It was the most fun I’ve had reading any biography or western book.

Wyatt Earp’s Cow-Boy Campaign by Chuck Hornung

Hornung’s book is the most detailed account of what happened following the murder of Morgan Earp. He offers some context, giving a look at all the key players in the Tombstone drama, and then follows with a day-by-day chronology of everything that happened in Tombstone leading up to the explosive finale. After this he makes the case showing how Wyatt operated in ridding the territory of outlaws and safely moving his team out of the country, and back again, all with the help of various authorities.

On this alone the book could probably be considered a must for Earp research, but what Hornung does by extension that is so important is that he doesn’t just lay out some interesting facts. Rather, that the culmination of these facts show Wyatt Earp to have been a lawman working in the scope of the law and working for the benefit of law and order. Some have considered him a lawless assassin seeking revenge. The facts show that he was a strongly supported agent of the law, and this is very crucial to the legacy of Wyatt Earp, and should definitely be read when forming an idea of who Wyatt Earp was and what his life was about.

 

So to sum up, these are the four books that need to be read, and realistically owned if possible, when starting your venture into Earpiana. I would suggest reading them in the order presented here. There are other great books that should also be read, but I will do follow up articles stating what I believe are the value of their contributions and where I think they should be placed in a persons buying order.

Recap:

• Stuart Lake’s Wyatt Earp Frontier Marshal (1931)
• Casey Tefertiller’s Wyatt Earp: the Life Behind the Legend (1997)
• Lee Silva’s Wyatt Earp: A Biography of the Legend vol. 1 The Cowtown Years (2002)
• Chuck Hornung’s Wyatt Earp’S Cow-boy Campaign (2016)

Sunday Funnies – 04

Rifleman (1958-1963)

In spite of all the great western shows that have been on TV, nothing beats The Rifleman for my dollar. Sure, Gunsmoke is the conventional pick, but as much as I love that show, I’ll take Rifleman first.

It was a pretty simple set-up that actually went deep with a lot of it’s stories. Lucas McCain was a widowed father raising his young boy in frontier New Mexico. After his wife died while they were living in Oklahoma, Lucas and his son relocated to the town of North Fork. When he arrived, McCain already had a reputation as a dangerous and deadly gunman, so the moniker of Rifleman was already acquired.

The dynamic between Lucas and his son, Mark, was the center-point for a lot of the story drama, and the hook that made the audience empathize. Lucas was both an experienced man-killer, as well as a loving father who worked hard to raise his son right. In an episode featuring Sammy Davis Jr. as a talented gun-twirler, Lucas got excessively stern with him for showing some of his gun tricks to Mark. Lucas wasn’t having it. It was a sample of the way in which McCain attempted to rear his child.

This dynamic is a lot of what made the show so great. Mark was a sincerely good-hearted boy, something that Lucas obviously valued, but yet it could sometimes get him into trouble. Take for example the episode where a pistoleer came into town looking for Lucas and Mark was proud to talk about his dad, thus unwittingly putting his father in a dangerous position. Positions of good and bad were strongly displayed, and while on one hand promoting good morals, they were never afraid to ask questions of why. Often Lucas found himself having to confront his own way of living, both past and present, while giving his son a proper lesson without being a phony.

It wasn’t overly heavy fare, but it did a great job of balancing it in.

Rifleman wasn’t a show with a robust regular cast. Apart from McCain and his son, the only other regular was the marshal Micah Torrance, who had his own great story of redemption from town drunk to local law enforcer. Some of the local townsfolk made repeated appearances, but none were on an every-episode basis. There were your standard issue townsfolk, like Frank Sweeney, the bartender, or Nils Swenson, the town blacksmith who was always pounding away at a horseshoe on the ol’ anvil. These people would show up occasionally, usually letting Lucas know where Mark was or when the last time they saw him was.

Yep, North Fork was a real friendly town. Until someone with wrong ideas came to town. But then, Lucas was always there to ensure the tranquility of both the town and his family.

Two-Gun Kid

Matt Hawk, Attorney at Law; Two-Gun Kid, Gunman at Play.

Both were the same person, but they took on crime in different forms. Matt Hawk was a Harvard educated law school graduate who had moved out west, and Two-Gun Kid was the handle by which he was known when fighting outlaws of the plains. Hawk had come out west to practice as a lawyer and it wasn’t long after he made his arrival that he was accosted by some of the local bad-guy gangs, namely the Clem Carter gang. He managed to avoid any serious trouble thanks to the intervention of Clem’s sister who took a liking to Matt, but shortly after this altercation he witnessed the same rabble harassing an older gentleman. Matt Hawk already showed the makings of a hero when he stepped in to help the old feller, and quickly discovered that it was none other than legendary gunfighter Ben Dancer.

The aged gun-hand took Matt under his wing and began to teach him how to look out for himself in the west. He taught him the tricks of the trade and Matt soon became an expert roper, rider, fighter, and most of all, pistoleer. In fact, he practiced so intently that he even surpassed the skill levels of his own mentor, and thusly decided he was ready to began fight against the forces of oppression. It was due to the foresight of old man Dancer that Matt began wearing a mask and going by a nom de guerre, all with the intent of keeping himself from being a target from badmen with bad intent.

The use of a mask served two purposes, one in the story and one in real life. At the time that Matt Hawk entered the scene comics were trending toward more super-hero stories, such as the DC’s new silver-age Showcase titles, and Marvel’s new Fantastic Four and Spider-Man. So the application of a mask helped broaden the appeal of the character and ideally extend his life as a marketable entity. On the practical side, it wouldn’t do for the town lawyer to be seen engaging so capriciously in life-threatening gun duels. Unlike todays heroes, who would probably need to keep their identities secret for legal reasons, law was a little more loosely applied in the old west, and a lawyer could just as well defend the citizenry as anyone else. This was the reason for Dancer convincing Matt that a mask and secret identity would serve him well against the threat of potential harassment and challenges.

Another possible result from the influence of the mask is that with the more “super-hero” aesthetic there were also more “super-villains”. Corny adversaries always popped up in the old western comics, but of the more popular ones, Two-Gun Kid possibly faced the most, counting among his rogues such villains as the Hurricane or the Rattler who became returning foes. One interesting moment due this dynamic was a story involving the modern day crime-fighter Daredevil.

Another lawyer named Matt, last name Murdock, went out west to handle a case and ended up in bad situation. Somehow a presence from the past helped to guide him and it was likewise lawyer/hero Matt Hawk, echoing from the past to today to help Daredevil. The story was only a one-shot episode in issue 215 of Daredevil, but it was certainly fun to see the old hero brought into a relevant story. Besides daredevil, Two-Gun Kid also came into contact with old west characters Jesse James, Billy the Kid, Cole Younger, Geronimo, and others.

Originally he was said to be living in Tombstone, Texas, but later comics amended it to Tombstone, Arizona. It was never stated if the claim of Texas was an editorial mistake, or if it was an actual in-story move, but the perception seems to be that they simply corrected themselves by changing from TX to AZ. But I guess that’s what you get with New Yorkers writing tales of the Old West.

Two-Gun Kid is a great comic and one of my favorites. It started just after Kid Colt did in the 40’s and continued into the early 70’s. So to put it in perspective, he came just after Kid Colt and before Rawhide Kid, but didn’t last as long as either of them, though he did have plenty of adventures with his fellow do-gooding cohorts. In fact, Matt Hawk didn’t even show up until issue 60 of Two-Gun Kid. Previous to that the main character was a fella named Clay Harder, but when the series was revamped, Clay Harder was said to have been a “dime-novel’ character that Matt Hawk admired. He co-opted the name, and that was where issue 60 picked up, which ran original stories up through issue 93, after which were all reprints with the exception of new material in issues 104 and 105.

 

Here are some additional covers of Two-Gun Kid for your eyes to marvel at…

        

Raquel Welch

Raquel Welch in “Bandolero!”

                    

The Downside of Studying the Old West

As I’ve noted before, my love of the old west started with the comic books; reading Rawhide Kid and Kid Colt and Two-Gun Kid. Then there were the road trips and making stops in Deadwood, or Dodge City. These were probably the best years of my young cowboy-loving life. Shortly after this, while I was still young, Young Guns came out, and then Young Guns 2. These movies took everything to a new level for me. Now, I had to learn more. Did Billy really kill twenty-one men? Was he really a bad guy? Was he really a bullied and mis-understood kid?

There was nothing wrong with asking those questions, or discovering new questions to ask. But soon I learned about Wild Bill, and then Wyatt Earp, and then Doc Holliday, Bat Masterson, and on and on. With each new gun-hand there was a new life to explore, a new desperate character to try and understand, and following logically, new items to study and learn.

I long since stopped reading the comics as my primary western learning source; I still pick one up for fun once in a while, but they’re no longer my escape in to the old west. Movies were, and are, still a great getaway, but never watched with quite the same wide-eyed awe that they had been before. I now was cognizant of the little nuances that were inaccurate, or perhaps remarkably correct. I wasn’t watching with the same eye of wonderment, but with a slowly transitioning eye of assessment. How did these things reconcile with the truths of western history that I was now more and more becoming knowledgeable of?

None of what I decry is an absolute negative; not by any means. I very much love to research, and I maintain a passion for the west and the time of good guys and bad guys, or slick gunfighters and brave frontiersmen, but something has altered, and that element  is the loss of the genuine fun that it all used to be.

I can’t say that I would turn things back, but I do miss the mystique of the unknown west, or the slightly dreamy façade of the righteous western lawman. The more that is studied and learned, the more that frontier of excitement becomes a landscape of argued knowledge versus proven fact. It may, perhaps, be best to liken the American frontier and todays’ well paved western states, to the path of a little boy playing cowboys and Indians to a research-obsessed man, learning every little detail of Wyatt Earp or Henry Antrim. There’s an excitement and purity in looking out into what we don’t know, and the anticipation of venturing forth to explore that frontier, but once we’ve gone out and learned the land and seen the sights, and made ourselves familiar with what lies beyond our present scope of knowledge, we can’t return to our position of innocence or naïve enjoyment.

I miss what the names Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday, Wild Bill and Billy the Kid, used to mean to me. But conversely, I love the comprehensive picture I can now understand; one that includes Dave Mather and Dallas Stoudenmire, and an understanding of the Royal Gorge War, or how John Chisum became so prolific working cattle in the Pecos. I can’t, and don’t want, to take back or lose all I’ve learned, but I also know that I won’t criticize the casual fan, who watches Tombstone or Young Guns and thinks it’s simply just a real good time, or the one who plays Red Dead Redemption and fancies themselves an outlaw or lawman in the mold of the well worn tropes and looks for nothing more. If it brings you joy, then I applaud it. Perhaps some will harken back to the days when we fancied our white-hat heroes, the way the we take a fancy to digging up absolute truths and ugly accuracies about all of our one-time heroes.

 

*The picture used for this post was found on google and not intended to violate any copyright privileges.