Last month we took a look at Avengers #141, which, as regular readers of this blog will remember, ended with three time-travelers — the founding Avenger named Thor, the would-be Avenger known as Moondragon, and their temporary ally, Immortus — touching down in the American West of 1873, just in time to be startled by someone coming up behind them… a someone, or someones, whom our travelers could see, but whose identities remained unknown to us readers…
…at least until the cover of the next issue — the subject of today’s post — where the illustration by Gil Kane and Frank Giacoia (with a likely assist from John Romita) rather gives the game away ahead of the book’s opening splash page…
…where we find fledgling penciller George Pérez, whose first outing on this series had him (with the aid of veteran inker Vince Colletta) tasked with delineating thirteen, count ’em, thirteen different costumed characters, called on to do the same for an additional five heroes, each with their own distinct look. Luckily for us fans, even this early in his career the indefatigable Mr. Pérez seems to have never met a crowd scene he didn’t like.
The five so-called “cowboys” whose names have so helpfully been called out by Immortus on the page above were, of course, all well-established Western heroes at Marvel Comics, each of whom had held down a title of his own in the past… and, with one exception, continued to do so in September, 1975, albeit mostly in reprint form.
As the writer of Avengers at this time, Steve Englehart, has noted on several occasions, prior to becoming a professional he was a voracious reader of Marvel’s comics — all of Marvel’s comics, in whatever genre. To him, it only made sense to treat the characters of the humor, romance, and Western books as belonging to the same fictional universe as the company’s superheroes; thus, taking a cue from Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in Fantastic Four Annual #3, he’d already brought back the titular star of Patsy Walker, first as a supporting character in the Beast’s strip in Amazing Adventures, and much more recently — issue #141, in fact — in the same capacity in Avengers, at least for the present storyline. Now, he was expanding the boundaries of the Marvel Universe to encompass the publisher’s Western stars — characters whose share of the comic-book marketplace was clearly fading by the mid-1970s, but whose genre had dominated the spinner racks in earlier decades.
Unlike Englehart, your humble blogger never got into Western comics, either from Marvel or from any other publisher (the only exception I can think of is Gold Key’s TV tie-in title The Wild Wild West, way back in 1966). So, at the time I bought and first read Avengers #142, I knew so little about Marvel’s cohort of gun-totin’ hombres that, while I’m sure I at least recognized their names (after all, it’s not like you could avoid seeing their books on the stands while hunting for the titles you actually wanted), I’m not sure I could have matched those names to the characters’ individual visual designs.
Not that that’s going to stop me from doing what I normally do when a set of pre-existing characters gets dropped into a comic I’m blogging about — which is of course to give you a basic rundown of the origins and history of each of these heroes. If you’re not interested in this kind of background information, feel free to skip on ahead to the next Englehart/Pérez/Colletta page (don’t worry, the rest of us will never know). For those who do care, however, here are the essential facts about “the wildest Western heroes of all!!”, presented in the same order Immortus introduced them to Thor and Moondragon on the page above.
Cover to Rawhide Kid #17 (Aug., 1960). Art by Jack Kirby and Dick Ayers.
Cover to Rawhide Kind #1 (Mar., 1955). Art by Joe Maneely.
We begin with the Rawhide Kid, the second version of which is the one featured in our present storyline. (As we’ll soon see, having at least two discrete iterations was pretty much par for the course with Marvel’s Western stars). The first version, who never got a “real” name, was created by writer Don Rico and Joe Maneely, and debuted in Rawhide Kind #1 (Mar., 1955). His title originally ran for sixteen issues; cancelled in 1957, it was revived with #17 (Aug., 1960) with its star receiving both a new origin story by Stan Lee and a new design by Jack Kirby. In this version, the Rawhide Kid was really Johnny Bart — the adopted son of a Texas Ranger who was unjustly driven into outlawry after shooting a cattle rustler in self-defense. Johnny’s exploits continued to appear for over a decade, with his last issue featuring new material being #115 (Sep., 1973); but even after that, Rawhide Kid managed to hang on as an all-reprint title through #151 (May, 1979), making it the last of the old-time Marvel Western titles to bite the dust.
Cover to Two-Gun Kid #1 (Mar., 1948). Art by Syd Shores and Vince Alascia.
Cover to Two-Gun Kid #60 (Nov., 1962). Art by Jack Kirby and Dick Ayers.
Next we have the Two-Gun Kid — who, like Rawhide, was actually two different heroes. The first to go by the moniker was also known as Clay Harder; the creation of an unknown scripter and artist Syd Shores, he debuted in Two-Gun Kid #1 (Mar., 1948). Claiming the status of being Marvel’s first ongoing all-Western title, Two-Gun Kid ran for ten issues before going on hiatus in 1949; returning in 1953, it continued through #59 (Apr., 1961), which proved to be the end of the trail for Clay Harder. Nevertheless, the title was revived over a year later with #60 (Nov., 1962), which introduced a brand-new Two-Gun Kid named Matt Hawk — another creation of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. Compared to Harder, Hawk was more in the mold of the superheroes that Lee, Kirby, and their Marvel cohorts were also developing around this time; i.e., he wore a mask and had a secret identity. The last issue of Two-Gun Kid with new material was #104 (May, 1972), though the title would continue as a reprint vehicle through #136 (Apr., 1977).
Cover to Kid Colt #1 (Aug., 1948). Art by Syd Shores.
Cover to Kid Colt Outlaw #201 (Dec., 1975). Art by Gil Kane.
Our next hero, Kid Colt, is blessed with a relatively straightforward publishing history (and a similarly uncomplicated in-universe biography, as well, at least through the 1970s). He first appeared in Kid Colt #1 (Aug., 1948), in a story which bore no credits, but the script for which the Grand Comics Database attributes to Ernie Hart, with the art possibly being by Bill Wash and Chu F. Wing. Rather like the Rawhide Kid (2nd version), Blaine Colt was unjustly accused of a crime (murder, in his case) and forced to become a fugitive from justice. His title proved to be the longest continually running Marvel Western series, with its last issue, #229, arriving in January, 1979 — though new stories had mostly stopped appearing following #140 (Nov., 1969). One exception to that rule was Kid Colt Outlaw #201 (Dec., 1975), which featured a previously unpublished team-up between Kids Colt and Rawhide — and, perhaps coincidentally (but also perhaps not), hit the stands only a couple of weeks prior to the release of Avengers #142.
Cover to Ghost Rider (1967 series) #1 (Feb., 1967). Art by Dick Ayers.
Cover to Ghost Rider (1950 series) #1 (Aug., 1950). Art by Dick Ayers.
On the other hand, the fourth member of our little band, Night Rider, has a background narrative that’s as convoluted as Kid Colt’s is simple. To begin with, his name was previously Ghost Rider, and he wasn’t even a Marvel character in the early days. Rather, the lawman Rex Fury, after having first appeared as “the Calico Kid” in the fifth through tenth issues of Magazine Enterprises‘ Tim Holt, reinvented himself as a spook-impersonating justice-seeker in that title’s issue #11 (Nov., 1949). A creation of publisher Vincent Sullivan, editor-writer Ray Krank, and artist Dick Ayers, the Ghost Rider appeared a few more times in Tim Holt before his horror-tinged adventures moved into their own title in 1950. The Ghost Rider ran for fourteen issues, ending in 1954, through the last appearance of the character himself didn’t come until Red Mask #50 (Jul.-Aug., 1955). Magazine Enterprises proceeded to go out of business in 1958, and its intellectual property rights lapsed; eight years later, this legal loophole allowed Marvel Comics to bring out its own version of Ghost Rider (this one having a new secret identity, schoolteacher Carter Slade), once again featuring art by Dick Ayers.
Marvel’s Ghost Rider title ran for less than a year, ending with #7 (Nov., 1967), after which the character moved over into the new Western Gunfighters series. Carter Slade appeared in six issues of that title in 1970-71 prior to dying heroically and passing the white outfit down to his brother, Lincoln, who served as the second Ghost Rider for a single adventure in WG #7 (Jan., 1972) before the feature was cancelled.* Like many of his fellows, Ghost Rider eventually returned in a reprint title — only now he was called the Night Rider, the better to distinguish him from the new, motorcycle-riding Ghost Rider that Marvel had introduced in Marvel Spotlight #5 (Aug., 1972). Launched in July, 1974, Night Rider ran for a mere six issues, its last arriving on stands just four months before the release of Avengers #142.
Complicated enough for you? Wait, there’s more! Because, although the account given above sums up the white-clad Westerner’s history up through 1975 pretty well, your humble blogger feels he’d be remiss not to mention the fact that, several years after this, someone at Marvel seems to have realized that the term “night rider” had unfortunate historical connotations, and changed the hero’s name once again, this time to “Phantom Rider”. And now you know.
Cover to Ringo Kid #1 (Aug., 1954). Art by Joe Maneely.
Illustration by Dick Ayers for the aborted all-new Ringo Kid series, c1971-75.
After all that, it’s something of a relief to come to our fifth and final hero, the Ringo Kid. Ringo — he never seems to have been given any other name — first appeared in Ringo Kid #1 (Aug., 1954), in a story drawn by Joe Maneely; its scripter remains unknown. Headlining twenty-one issues of his own title as well as being featured in Wild Western, the character was distinguished from his gunslinging brethren primarily by his heritage, as he was established to be the son of a white father and a Native American mother. Cancelled in 1957, Ringo Kid was revived as a reprint-only title in 1970; this volume would run for thirty issues, reaching the end of the trail in 1976.
Intriguingly, the Ringo Kid came close to returning to the spinner racks in new stories in the early ’70s, courtesy of none other than one Steve Englehart. As the writer explains on his personal web site, the character was “always my favorite of Marvel’s true cowboy heroes (as opposed to the Two-Gun Kid, whom I also liked but who was more a superhero) — with classic Western artist Dick Ayres [sic]. But after this first issue was drawn and scripted, Marvel decided to do more superheroes and fewer cowboys, so it was set aside before inking.” (See surviving pencils-only illustration by Dick Ayers at above right.)
And now — finally! — we return to our story…
Below the mesa lies the town of Tombstone — which, in addition to being an actual community in Arizona best known for its historical associations with Wyatt Earp and the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, is where Matt Hawk, the current Two-Gun Kid, normally hangs his spurs. Leaving their horses with the Night Rider (who, as Kid Colt explains, “hates towns”), the odd assortment of heroes descend into the community’s streets, which they find completely deserted…
Inker Vince Colletta gets routinely dinged by comics fans for his documented tendency to occasionally cut corners by erasing supposedly extraneous details from the original pencilled art. One thus imagines that he wasn’t thrilled by being called on to deal with the varied decorative patterns George Pérez added to his backgrounds (especially in the time-travel scenes), both here and in the previous issue; that said, Colletta didn’t skimp on the job in either instance, at least as far as I can tell.
The Western heroes explain that Kang has somehow made most of the townspeople his slaves; they’ve also overheard him boast of being able to, as Ringo puts it, “kill anybody in town just by pushin’ a button.” “But what could he want with this realm?” Moondragon wonders aloud. To which the hitherto-silent Immortus replies:
Yes, in case you’ve forgotten, there’s a whole other plotline, with a different assortment of Avengers — and enemies — going on in this run of issues, as Captain America, Iron Man, the Scarlet Witch, the Vision, and prospective new member the Beast (not to mention the aforementioned Patsy Walker) have run afoul not only of Roxxon and Brand (shady corporate entities previously introduced by Englehart during his runs on Captain America and Amazing Adventures, respectively), but of those supposed superheroes of an alternate Earth, the Squadron Supreme…
Seems like everybody’s got a plan, doesn’t it? In any event, that line of Cap’s is our storytellers’ segue back to this issue’s “A”-plot…
Thor and Moondragon are keen to participate actively in the upcoming operation — Moondragon is especially (and frankly, somewhat annoyingly) eager to enhance her experience of Earthly ways by observing a bona-fide “shootout at a train robbery!” Of course, they can hardly pass for natives of the Old West as presently garbed — but, never fear, Hawkeye has a workaround in mind…
This is a mostly static page, but that fact hardly prevents George Pérez from demonstrating his affinity for graphic design to good effect; his decision to portray the six horse-sitting heroes in two flanking, symmetrical tiers of identically-shaped panels adds to the page’s visual interest, without sacrificing any clarity in the storytelling (one could even argue that the non-standard layout enhances that clarity).
While Two-Gun broods over his new, unexpected feelings of inferiority, the would-be train robbers make their move, galloping down from the bluff to overtake the object of their larceny. Their leader, Ace, leaps from the back of his horse onto the locomotive…
The Rawhide Kid may be the first of our five Western stars to see action, but his comrades follow quickly thereafter, with Englehart and Pérez being careful to give each of them (and Hawkeye, too) an individual chance to shine…
Perhaps unsurprisingly, it’s the most “Marvel-ous” of the gunfighters — the Two-Gun Kid — who gets the last, and largest, spotlight. If a reader back in ’75 were to have gathered from this that Englehart had plans for this particular masked rider of the plains beyond those he had for the others, well… they’d have been right on the money.
Some readers in 1975 — I may even have been one of them — might have been disappointed that the disguised Thor and Moondragon end up not doing much of anything during the whole Pecos Train robbery sequence. Still, that final page’s splash panel of the two Avengers taking the Mjolnir express is great stuff, and (at least in my present-day self’s opinion) well worth the wait.
But, in any event, that’ll have to do us for this month, pardners. Come October, we’ll rejoin the time-traveling contingent of Avengers for their final showdown with Kang the Conqueror, and also check in to see how well Captain America’s plan will work to get the modern-day heroes out of their jam. I hope to see you all then.
*Interestingly, some online resources identify the Rider appearing in this Avengers storyline as Carter Slade, while others say it’s Lincoln. As best as I can determine, there’s no good reason for believing that the Rider appearing in a 1975-published comic book is the same guy who’d already bought the farm in a 1971-published comic book, other than the fact that Immortus refers to the former as “the original Night Rider” (which I’ve always taken to be simply a subtle nod on Steve Englehart’s part to the existence of Johnny Blaze, the contemporary Ghost Rider). I rather suspect that the inclination to excise Lincoln Slade from Avengers #142, et al, has more to do with a particularly odious heel turn that that character would take years hence, in a quasi-sequel storyline appearing during Steve Englehart’s West Coast Avengers run, than it does any in-story evidence; that said, if anyone out there has further information or insights to share on this topic, I hope you’ll do so in the comments section.
Much enjoyed your overview of this Avengers & Cowboys romp. I was never big on the cowboys but I had gotten a few of them in the past, including a couple of the Night Rider reprints. Nevertheless, I got a kick out of this story. I could tell Englehart was having some fun with this mix-up of some of Marvel’s modern cohorts with Marvel’s gunslingers of the west of roughly a century earlier. And Perez’ art shines in this mag. I didn’t mind that Englehart mostly downplayed the involvement of Thor & Moondragon in the action this issue to allow for some glory to Hawkeye and the cowboys. Also good point about Englehart’s greater emphasis on the Two-Gun Kid. It was noticeable to my 13-year-old self in 1975, that Two-Gun was the only one of the Western heroes whose thoughts Englehart shared with the readers, making a point of his being utterly awestruck at encountering these very strange people from the distant future. We couldn’t know what exactly Englehart had planned for him, but it sure seemed he was up to something with all that.
It’s entirely possible that Englehart himself wasn’t sure about specific plans for Two-Gun Kid, other than he liked the idea of doing a “man out of time” from a REALLY different time period. (After all, Cap was technically only on ice for less than 20 years.) I think that Two-Gun and Hawkeye in the present might have been the basis for at least a two-part story in MARVEL SPOTLIGHT, along with his plans for a VISION/WANDA story. Alas, we’ll never know unless we visit Lucien’s library in the Dreaming or find a way to go to that alternate universe where Englehart stayed at Marvel at least a year or more longer…
If I was to go into Lucien’s library, unless I was kicked out, I might never be seen again outside of it!
The only western comics in my collection have art by Frazetta, Williamson, and Doug Wildey (1950s) and Joe Kubert, Neal Adams, and Tony de Zuniga (late 1960s – 1970s). Both Steranko and John Buscema wanted to do some western stories for Marvel circa 1969/70, but Stan Lee told them they would receive a lower page rate – so they name came to be.
I recall Doug Wildey’s two volumes of Rio from the early 1980s, but do not own them. Jean Giraud, better known as Moebius, did some fine work with his Blueberry stories in the 1960s, a western where the lead morphs from a Jean Paul Belmondo-type to Clint Eastwood’s man with no name as the years progressed.
Tex was a beloved western character in Italian comics, but the only volume I have is a 200+ pages story drawn by Joe Kubert in the mid 1980s. Beautiful work.
In comic strips the Cisco Kid, drawn by Jose Luis Salinas, is superbly drawn. Al Williamson believed Salinas’ drawing powers were greater than Hal Foster’s (on Prince Valiant). High praise indeed!
George Perez was near the beginning of his career, so his art on this Avengers story is competent, if a little bland. His page layouts remind me a bit of Starlin’s (probably an early influence). As for Colletta’s inks, he often enlisted friends, family, and Marvel bullpen staff to do a bit of inking here and there. This may account for some of the non-erasing of pencils on this story.
…so they *never* came to be…
I remember loving this run with the dual storylines running through George Perez’ debut on the Avengers. While I didn’t really care all that much about the Western Heroes, it was kind of fun to tie them into the then-current day Marvel continuity. (Although I noticed you neglected to mention the rather controversial Rawhide Kid: Slap Leather miniseries put out by the Max imprint).
For me, I was a huge fan of Moondragon, and while she didn’t any action in this issue, I kind enjoyed her imperious ways (shades of more to come) as it set her apart from many of the other heroes at the time. Nice work!
I’m not a Western fan at all but Slap LEather and its sequel are two exceptions. They were solid gold!
I thought about including “Slap Leather”, as well as some of the other later revivals of these characters, but that part of the post was already so long!
I’ve always had a whole lot of difficulty keeping all of Marvel’s different Western “Kids” straight, so thanks for the rundown on the quartet that appeared in this issue!
In the 1990s. John Ostrander wrote BLAZE OF GLORY, a miniseries that was billed as “The last ride of the Marvel Western heroes.”
I told John that I suspected the WHOLE REASON he wrote the four-issue miniseries was for one scene in the last issue, when somebody runs into a saloon and yells “Kid!” and four different guys answer “Yeah?”
John did not disagree with me…
That’s hilarious!
I also eschewed the western cowboy titles, but anything that Marvel was putting out in the silver age had a certain class and feel to it. Interesting to see how they all get woven together in a tapestry in this arc. Is it next issue that Kang is dis-corporated by a fighting mad Thor?
When I started reading comics, most of my early reads were westerns, or Tarzan, or funny animal comics. This was my second or third Avengers that I picked up on my own and it was the first time I’d seen these western characters in a few years. It was a cool experience to this 12 year old.
I’d read enough of their books when bored or it was otherwise a light week to be familiar with them all but I’m not a Western fan in the least. They were used to great effect here though and fed into Englehart’s skill at weaving together Marvel’s past into its then present. It’s a great foreshadowing for the master class he would someday present using Carol Ferris. Two Gun was my favorite and it’s a shame that no one used where Englehart had left him and Hawkeye.
Interesting to see such early work from George Perez. You can see glimpses of where he’d end up, but he was still figuring things out and groping towards his mature style here. As always, I hate to dump on Vince Colletta, but Colletta was a particularly bad match for Perez. A few years later, Colletta would fill in for Joe Sinnott for one issue of Perez’s run on the Fantastic Four, and the contrast between the degree of polish Sinnott and Colletta brought to Perez’s pencils is striking.
After Kirby left Marvel, the “house style” of the 1970s rested largely upon the shoulders of Joe Sinnott and John Romita Sr. Even John Buscema, prolific and superb draftsman that he was, was constrained to keep an element of Kirby dynamics and aesthetic in his work, especially that of the super-hero variety.
Vince Colletta, a competent inker who wavered between journeyman and outright hack at this point in his career, was a safe bet for hitting deadline at the Big Two, especially in a crunch. I much prefer the inks of Tom Palmer, Dick Giordano, and Klaus Jansen in mainstream ’70s Marvel, though they didn’t define “the look” the way Sinnott and Romita did.
And in the Marvel mags I loved the inks of some of the Filipino greats like Tony de Zuniga, Alfredo Alcala, and Rudy Nebres, though I preferred seeing their solo efforts (and vision), and not just inks. But business is business, and they were making a living doing something they loved.
I admit that I knew absolutely nothing about these western characters but found this story very entertaining. In fact I found it so entertaining at the time that I didn’t even realize that Kang doesn’t show up at all (except for a very brief silent flashback) in this issue. When I did realize that I was a little disappointed but not too much and after all there would be plenty of Kang in the next issue! I don’t recall if I ever saw any of the comics of those western heroes on the stands at the time, but I’ve been told that Gil Kane did some nice covers for some of those western heroes. Of course, Gil’s cover for Avengers 142 was good (but Iron Man’s nose…!). Colletta was not really the right fit for Perez but he was tolerable here, but already you could see how good George was. The story felt entertaining and exciting and Englehart’s character bits were fun, too like Thor’s friendship with Hawkeye, and MoonDragon’s comments. Thanks for the memories Alan. Looking forward to next month!
Thinking back on it, I think this is the first time that Thor and Clint, as either Hawkeye or Goliath II, really worked together as a pair of experienced Avengers, in this situation with one potential new Avengers but no other regular Avengers. Moreover, it was Hawkeye who came up with the plan and Thor went along. Intentionally or not, Englehart was showing a maturing side to Hawkeye for once, one which would come more to the fore a few years later when West Coast Avengers was launched.
I think I’d flipped through a couple of Western reprint books by the time this came out. I wouldn’t say that made me familiar with them — but like a lot of cowboy characters, they didn’t need much backstory. Wandering Western gunfighter heroes were a standard of the genre—when I read this I don’t think I conceived of them as having origins or backstories.
The only Western comic I got into was Scalphunter in Gerry Conway’s run, and that wasn’t a Western — Keh-wo-no-tay spent far more time in the East, embroiled in the Civil War, than he did out west.
That said, this issue was fun. Establishing Marvel’s gunslingers coexisted with the superheroes was cool — though not as cool as when the West Coast Avengers went up against some of the Old West supervillains years later (“A guy who throws boomerangs and a master of magnetism with a horseshoe magnet! Gee, team, do you think we can beat them?”).
I believe before Lincoln took over the Ghost Rider name, a young kid took over the identity for about one issue, then died. I can understand you not bothering to include that. Possibly one reason everyone assumes it was Carter in this issue is that a lot of people didn’t know about Lincoln — I had no idea there’d been a legacy Old West Ghost Rider until the WCA story.
I believe the final verdict on the Rider’s name was “he is known by many names — Ghost Rider, Phantom Rider, He Who Rides the Night Winds” — which leaves them flexible.
Decent enough cover as always (though misleading) by Gil Kane , but can’t help thinking I would be underwhelmed by the thought of conventional firearms against often more than mortal superhero powers. Feels like a variation on the phrase ” bringing a knife (Hammer/Bow and arrow?) to a gunfight?
Then Thor just makes it rain heavily and lo and behold, they are really just all mates after all.
I realize Marvel pulled their western heroes from different decades and sometimes other companies, but the similarities in names and costumes made this story really hard to follow. I was never a fan of Marvel’s Western imprint anyway, so even if I had been an Avengers fan (which I wasn’t), there wouldn’t have been a lot for me to enjoy here.
It’s easy to talk about the joy of seeing Perez’s artwork, but at the time none of us knew who he was, so that’s definitely a “20/20 hindsight” thrill we couldn’t have taken advantage of in ’75. Still, you can see the greatness that was to come underneath all those heavy Coletta inks, and it’s good to finally be getting into the “Perez phase” of the Silver Age.
Englehart was obviously having fun with all of his western heroes here and it’s nice to see Hawkeye get to shine for a change, when all he does in modern day is mope and whine. As for Kang returning as villain, Kang was to Marvel and the Avengers in the 70’s like Lex Luthor is to Superman and the DCU today. The ONLY villain. There are other villains for the Avengers to fight and I, for one, will be glad when Englehart picks one.
Thanks for the rundown, Alan! Yippee Kai Ay!
In my case, having read the Avengers fairly regularly since issue 107, only missing a couple of issues here and there afterwards for the next 10 years, upon reading Perez’s first few issues of the Avengers, it felt like a massive and necessary blast of fresh air after so many issues wherein to my tastes the art seemed sub par. Sure, Don Heck, Bob Brown, Sal Buscema and George Tuska were far more experienced professionals, but their recent runs on the mag during the previous 3 years just seemed off to me, generally lacking much visual excitement and too many cliched poses and facial expressions. It wasn’t all bad by any means, but too often the art wasn’t all that compelling, IMO. Perez’s art, even with Colletta’s inks, IMO, just sparkled with greater life and a sense of joy, as if Perez was actually having a good time creating visuals for these stories. At least that was the sense I recall my 13-year-old self feeling as a I was reading these comics for the first time in 1975, As I didn’t get any of the pricier magazines at the time and hadn’t collected any of the Man-Wolf tales, I wasn’t familiar with Perez’s previous work for Marvel, but I loved what he was doing on the Avengers.
Absolute agreement.
On the last page when Thor and Moondragon are flying off it says that “another legend of the west has been birthed this summer’s eve”. I have no idea if that is supposed to mean something that went over my head or not. Can you explain?
By that time, I had picked up a few random issues of Rawhide, Two-gun, and Kid Colt and a few issues of Western Gunfighters with Ghost Rider and the reprint Night Rider series so I knew a bit about them, but not Ringo.
Nice touch where Rawhide is confused by Moondragon saying she can’t fly and then looking up and seeing Thor and being just bewildered.
I took it to mean this story will become one of the tall tales nobody quite believes (“Pardner, you ever heard about the night the Two-Gun Kid and the Phantom Rider stood side by side with a gunslinger called Thor Thunder?”).
When Englehart did that sequel in WCA, Two-Gun mentions that Iron Mask’s team of outlaws were inspired by the stories of the battle at Castle Kang (though Iron Mask had recruited a villain team once before (http://www.marvunapp.com/Appendix/irnmsk.htm)
I assumed pretty much the same thing — eyewitnesses reported seeing a flying man in the vicinity of the train robbery, and it became a matter of legend in the Earth-616 version of the Old West.
Thanks. I thought that maybe Englehart was referencing some real Old West story.
Lots of responses here regarding a lack of familiarity with the Marvel westerns, so here I am to redress the balance.
For various obscure reasons, I’m a huge fan of these characters. I have all the new material issues from circa 1962 to their last gasp in 1974, including such obscurities as Gunhawks, Western Team-Up, and the Renegades.
Thus, I was beyond thrilled when this issue of Avengers came along and brought these characters into the mainstream Marvel continuity.
BTW, that Kid Colt 201 you mention, Alan, uses up an inventory story originally intended for the cancelled Giant-Size Kid Colt 4. That title featured the last new western material, having a new lead story in each issue that teamed up Colt with the other heroes.
I am very fond of the westerns produced by the team of Lee & Kirby, and indeed of the Mighty Marvel Western comic then being put out, with reprints by Kirby, Morrow, Williamson and J Severin, and keen covers by Kane. Man of Bronze calls out the Rio and Blueberry series, which I thoroughly recommend to anyone who has not come across these. I would add of course Boys’ Ranch from the early 50’s. Of its time, but still a worthwhile read.
Of the actual comic in review: Englehart has become adept at moving many varied elements of the story along, understanding his characters and their motivations, bringing in new angles, and putting it all together in a complex jigsaw puzzle. His 80s work became overly convoluted, but here everything works to perfection.
The art: Perez is just starting out, but the work comes across with sincerity and appliance. It looks like the guy was approaching the work with the joie de vivre of the Beast! With apologies to Jack, Don, John, Gene, Barry, Sal, Neal, Rich, Bob, Dave ( and later John B, Don and Steve E) but George is my all time favourite Avengers artist.
Howdy, Pardners! (sorry…)
I remember thinking at the time how interesting it was that only a few months prior to this, Gerber (my OTHER favorite Marvel writer at the time named Steve) over in DEFENDERS had written a story that incorporated both Deathlok and Killraven into the future of the contemporary Marvel Universe. And now here’s my main man Englehart going in the other direction with the Western heroes forming the foundation of said Universe.
This points to one of the reason why I was gradually feeling that the DC Universe – despite having such iconic heroes – felt really shallow. At the time I was really getting into American history and seeing how different strands came together to where we are now and in turn point the way to where we are (or at least might be) going.
Couple that with Englehart’s deft characterization and witty scripting throughout, and this was just a joy to revisit.
By the way, correct me if I’m wrong, but I seem to remember reading that Englehart’s original plan was that the story in this issue and #143 were originally intended to make up GIANT-SIZE AVENGERS #6, which would have gone on sale the same month as #141 of the regular book. (GIANT-SIZE AVENGERS #5 was to be a fill-in by Tony Isabella and Don Heck – but I guess we’ll be talking about that in a few months.) However, by this time, the GIANT-SIZE books were done and Marvel was about to revive their ANNUALS.
The only thing I want to add to the chorus about George Perez is to comment on how cool the two-page interlude in the present is. The perspective of the full-page splash of the heroes in the cage is so well done (and the “MEANWHILE” in large letters on the top bar is a great touch). And Perez shows how you can convey tension in the scene with Patsy and Buzz.
Another great moment is the “Mix well!” panel and the silhouette of the train in the binoculars. It almost reminded me of the spectacular shot of a train in silhouette over a trestle in the movie DAYS OF HEAVEN.
I’m tempering my joy at rereading some beloved stories with the knowledge that it will all come to an end in a few short months – not that we knew it at the time. I would like to go to the alternate universe where Englehart got to write issues of MARVEL SPOTLIGHT with Hawkeye and Two-Gun Kid that he had planned to do. Sigh…
Same here. At the time of this Avengers story it seemed to me that Englehart was gearing up for a Hawkeye and the Two-Gun Kid series and I was waiting for it to appear. I recall there was a new material back-up featuring the duo in Marvel Tales 100 but that was the closest they came to their own feature. Does anyone know if a series was planned at the time?
In a Two-Gun Kid retrospective published in Back Issue #42, Englehart discusses how he had a whole series of stories planned with the Kid in modern times, attempting (with Hawkeye’s help) to be a hero in a world where his six-shooting and horseback riding skills are anachronistic, but couldn’t get around to it before his 1976 exit from Marvel. It’s not entirely clear that he was thinking about a separate series for the characters versus a subplot in Avengers, but that’s the implication.
I maybe wrong, but I’m pretty sure it would not have been in the pages of THE AVENGERS.
Hmmm I wonder whether Englehart was planning his own version of the O’Neil/ Adams GL/ GA, with two-Gun and Hawk travelling across the US; Two-Gun standing in for the upright GL, and Hawk as the uptight, knee-jerk, but liberal GL?
In 1975, the idea of a miniseries wasn’t really a thing. It would take the success of first the WORLD OF KRYPTON three-parter and then the UNTOLD TALES OF THE BATMAN mini to spark the movement to limited series.
However, I could swear that I read in a letter column or elsewhere (THE COMIC READER, perhaps?) that Englehart was going to write a few issues of MARVEL SPOTLIGHT to focus on solo adventures of the Avengers who didn’t have their own books. There would a Vision story, maybe also a Vision and Wanda story, and I definitely remember reading about a Hawkeye/Two-Gun Kid story. I’m not sure if those stories were supposed to run later in 1976 or in 1977, but I doubt they were in anything more than a nebulous planning stage by the time of the return of – well, let’s not get into that now…
It’s too bad, because 1976 was shaping up to be a busy year for Englehart. DR. STRANGE would soon go monthly (with the potential return of Frank Brunner for an arc), there was going to be the color comic of THE PRISONER, the black-and-white STAR-LORD series of stories, and then these MARVEL SPOTLIGHT stories.
Thank you, gents.
So frustrating. What could have been if Englehart, McGregor, Gerber, Starlin had not been lost to Marvel by the company’s short-sighted editorial policies. It was a glorious time for a while there.
I’m with you. I like to think we didn’t take those days for granted – which is why Alan’s blog is such a pleasure.
This was such a fun and nostalgic read! It brought back memories of those classic Western comics and how cool it was to see them interact with the Avengers. The detailed history and art analysis were spot on. A great piece!
This story was fondly remembered enough that the Justice League Cartoon did a version of this story in the 2000s using DC Western characters. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0618162/
I was, perhaps, a bit less of a fan of Marvel’s Western heroes than DC’s.. (A lot of that is down to Julius Schwartz’s work on Western Comics and All-Star Western in the 1950s and early 1960s. As well as Giordano and Orlando’s work on a revived All-Star Western in the early 1970s (. . . and the Kubert/Kanigher/Thorne Tomahawk of the same period, as absurd as its chronology, and arms, were).
There’s a great bit in that JLU story where Jonah Hex asks Batman “You fellers are time travelers, right?” “How’d you guess that?” “I’ve lived an interesting life.”
Gerry Conway and Don Heck did a version of this story in JLA # 198-199, with the JLA teaming up with Jonah Hex, Bat Lash, Cinnamon and Scalphunter in the old West facing off against the Lord of Time.
Nineteen Seventy-Five Takes that didn’t stand the test of time: “George Perez is REALLY derivative of Rich Buckler . . . .”
A couple of thoughts: I believe Englehart established this Phantom Rider was indeed the same one Hawkeye and company encountered later in WCA.
Hawkeye and the Two-Gun Kid did have a short adventure chronicled in Marvel Tales 100 by Scott Edelman, Mike Netzer (then going as Mike Nasser) and Terry Austin. It was one of those 6 page deadline safeguards Marvel did for a while.
Thanks for this!!! I read some of the follow-up issues of Avengers way back when but hadn’t gotten into them in time for the Kang and the Kids of the West sequence. Wonderfully told and illustrated!!!
I suppose, this being time travel and all, that it could be said it was Carter Slade who had the encounters with time travelling Avengers, etc., then he was replaced by Lincoln Slade in the last new material issue of Western Gunfighters, i.e. we can fit a lot of story between the last two Ghost Rider stories from 1971 without violating continuity.
Of course, as I’m totally unfamiliar with Marvel continuity of the last 45 years, I could be completely talking out of my arse here.