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…
Matt Hawk, Attorney at Law; Two-Gun Kid, Gunman at Play.
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 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.
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.
Could a six-foot, blonde-haired, country boy named Blaine Colt come from anywhere other than the state Wyoming? Of course not! And so, appropriately enough, that’s just where Kid Colt came from, the town of Abilene Wyoming (it’s fictional, no need to look it up). Kid Colt was probably the earliest of the comic-book cowboys to make it in to the later days of the revisionist era, and although he took a slight back seat to Rawhide Kid in popularity, he really was the center piece for comic-book gunfighters.
One twist to this characteristic, however, is that unlike Rawhide Kid and Two-Gun Kid, Kid Colt had a minor paramour. She only showed up in the early days long before Marvel started publishing the title, and then wasn’t heard from again after the revamp, but nonetheless, it can be said that Kid Colt had a sweetheart, that sly dog.
Kid Colt didn’t have as many crossover adventures with real life characters, but he did have to face John Hardin, and also had an adventure in Leadville, home to Doc Holliday and Luke Short. He hosted Rawhide kid several times in his own book, and they had a sort of colleague-friendship, but this was after the obligatory fight-it-out-then-become-pards interaction. He also teamed up with Two-Gun Kid in a couple of stories and later shared a reprint book that contained individual stories of the two of them as well as Apache Kid.
Handy With A Gun...! 