Yer darn tootin', ranny!

Apache Skies #4, December 2002

“Chapter 4: Straight to Hell”
John Ostrander, writer
Leonardo Manco, artist
Paul Tutrone, letterer



Summary:

Under the immediate circumstances, the slow-moving train is an easy target for Trask and his mounted squad. Rawhide takes to the roof of the train and Rosa heads to defend the kids and Grimes, well, Grimes is wounded by gunfire. One of Trask’s men gets on board, and nearly kills Rev. Phillips, but Rawhide shoots him down. Trask and co. retreat back to town to activate Plan B.

The Reverand’s argument that he’s doing God’s work doesn’t hold water with Rawhide, who mercifully boots him painfully but safely onto the tracks as the train picks up speed. Rosa has an awkward time justifying her actions to one of the Apache children:



She promises to fulfill her vow to her people, and take the children to the mountains.

In the engine, Grimes and Rawhide figure that Tyler will let Trask use the train transporting his son’s body to pursue our heroes. That train is top of the line equipment, and can catch up in less than two hours. Rawhide knows their only hope is to finish the conflict “out where no one sees”, and instructs Eustace to push this train as hard as he can for now.

Back in San Antonio, the Reverend has made his way back to join Trask in Tyler’s office. He wants to be brought along on the chase to retrieve the children, but that’s not in the plan: Trask’s goal is to kill Rawhide and Rosa and the young Apache children. The Reverend’s objections are answered with a bullet to the head, his death to be blamed on the fugitives.

On the run on the rails, Rawhide’s doing what he can to slow down the pursuit, shooting out telegraph lines and sabotaging the rails. Tyler’s men can easily repair those, but it buys them better than a day’s travel, allowing them to take a railroad spur into the Apache Mountains. At an abandoned miner’s camp, they stop to gather coal oil and gunpowder, then proceed to a wooden bridge, which they coat with the oil, after stopping on the far side of the bridge. Here comes Tyler—time to set the bridge afire!

The burning bridge doesn’t stop the pursuers, but Rawhide counted on that. His plan is to uncouple the last car, push it backwards down the track with Rawhide and powder kegs on board. He’ll stuff the explosives down their smokestack. If he fails, Eustace is to back up and ram Tyler’s train off the rails and off the bridge. It’s close to a suicide mission, but this is a cause that Rawhide’s willing to die for:



Even if he does make it, this will be the last Rosa will see of him. He’ll head to Mexico, in case any of Tyler’s people continue the manhunt, and suggests Rosa look to Reno Jones in Wonderment if she needs any help.

On board his train, Tyler’s viewing the body of his son in the coffin, reaffirming his orders: no one on the fugitives’ train is to be spared. But then he hears the sound of an approaching car—it’s Johnny Bart, the Rawhide Kid, on “a hard ride into hell”!



Rawhide successfully drops the explosives into the smokestacks and makes his way on to the passenger cars. He’s fighting off Col. Trask when the engine explodes, taking with it a good portion of the bridge, and the effects ripple toward them. Tyler gets one last gruesome chance to say goodbye to his son:



From the other side of what used to be a bridge, Rosa desperately seeks a sign of her ally’s survival, and finally sees it, the image of the Rawhide Kid "as if he were made of smoke himself. He looked at us for a long time. There was a desire to be with us in his eyes, but a restlessness also."

But when the smoke finally parts, Rawhide is nowhere to be seen. Was it man or ghost in the smoke? Our narrator, the Indian girl Migdalia (“Long Memory”) does not know. She does not ever see Rawhide again, although she hears stories, and adds him to the stories she tells of Dazii, the stories she keeps alive for her people, who went into the mountains in 1886.

Comments:

A nice finish to the miniseries and, if one wishes, to the story of the Rawhide Kid. A legend of the West should go out in a dramatically heroic final act, and “saving a bus load of kids” is just about the most respected way to go in our culture. That conflagration was, by all normal expectations, not survivable. But legends are beyond pure truth. Live or die, it’s inevitable that stories of his exploits, even new exploits, would live beyond his mortal span. The way I see it, that’s where this fits as the sequel to Blaze of Glory, with Rawhide Kid joining his departed compadres on the other side of myth, but always leaving room for yet another story to be told.

And for longer than Marvel retains a trademark to “Rawhide Kid” we in the real world know those stories will be told, somewhere. For the time being, the Western corner of the Marvel Universe quietly closed up shop. A Western Team-Up, which had come to be viewed as the most effective way to sell the genre in the superhero-dominated market of the day, but one that led a new “Apache Kid” to something of a dead end in potential for future adventures.

Yeah, penciling/inking versus painting. Prefer Manco pencil work. I liked this here "sequel" as it was more personal, a fitting solo go out for Rawhide who was always the major Western star for Marvel.

I'm of the opposite view; painted comics--in the right hands--are beautiful & powerful, bringing the comic story closer to reality. Aside from an obvious name such as Alex Ross, the late, great Fernando Fernandez (Bram Stoker's Dracula, etc.)consistently painted comics that were simply gorgeous and fully brought out all the writer was trying to present.

Strange Westerns starring the Black Rider

“Black Homecoming”, 26 pages
Steve Englehart, writer
Marshall Rogers, penciller and colorist
Al Vey, inker



Summary:

This “Western” opens in New York City, where Morris “Doc” Masters is arriving on his tired, lame horse “Ichabod” at Westcliff, home of his wealthy relatives, his aunt Helen and uncle George. He has arrived in the middle of a society soiree at their Westcliff mansion, which is decorated with the hunting trophies from his relatives’ safaris.
At dinner, talk turns to the days of Morris’s youth. His father had moved there when Morris’s mother died in childbirth, and they lived in a cabin in the town of Jezebel, named for his mother. The area was coveted by one Luke Davis, who killed his father in order to take the land.

Morris, then only ten, grew up as a wild hand on a series of ranches, perfecting his aim, eventually hunting down Luke Davis and killing him--and his men--in a saloon.
The lenient judge grants him probation, and Morris studies to become a doctor.

The dinner conversation gets chilly when Morris mentions that he studied medicine across the border in Mexico, because it brings to mind the family scandal: that following Morris’s father rejected an arranged marriage to an heiress in favor of wedding his Mexican housemaid. When the men retreat for brandy and a smoke, Morris excuses himself for a ride through New York, on the pretense of seeing a vet for his ailing horse. He ignores friendly police warnings to avoid Chinatown, which is precisely his intended destination. Via flashback, we see that he has been set on the trail of human traffickers transporting Chinese women through New York on to forced prostitution, his only clue a torn note about the police staking out the church of the headless angel, a note signed with only a partial Chinese character as a signature.

Morris suits up as the Black Rider and takes to the rooftops, finding the “headless angel”, but also witnessing the arrival of a new group of female Chinese victims. A sole Asian man is attempting to put a halt to this, but he is badly outnumbered. Still, he’s demonstrating a remarkable fighting skill, in a style of unarmed martial arts completely unfamiliar.

Into the fray comes the Black Rider, guns blazing, and whistling for his steed. He rescues the man and they flee on the fastest horse ever seen on New York City streets. Yes, Ichabod, a.k.a. Satan, feigns lameness as a ruse, one he has been trained to act out in order to deflect any suspicion that Masters is the Black Rider.



Once in safety, the Asian, Yao, helps Masters to identify the Chinese symbol on the letter, one he has seen in its complete form many times in his investigations. Chinese back in Texas had told Masters that the partial symbol could read “sun” or “mountain”, but Yao clarifies: the character depicts the sun setting beyond the mountain, and is translated…
“Western Cliff”!

With yet another flashback, we learn that as the Black Rider, Morris considers himself someone different than the man who swore the Hippocratic Oath, an avenger who is free to kill if he must.



Morris returns to confront his uncle at gunpoint, most certainly the leader of the prostitution ring, a business that would enrich him enough to purchase Westcliff. Almost, but not quite correct: it’s Aunt Helen who is the mastermind, and who is, herself, the daughter of the original gang-runner, a man who had adopted the Chinese signature, never suspecting it could be connected to the mansion.

The Black Rider disarms his relatives and knocks out his uncle, but then must pursue Aunt Helen, as the story of his past comes into focus: his mother had been taken to Texas as a prostitute, and Masters’ father had followed in pursuit, rescuing her, wedding her, and having a son with her.

Following an underground tunnel on horseback, he emerges in undeveloped wilderness behind the mansion. But this is familiar territory to Aunt Helen, who lies in wait with a rifle and shoots him off his horse. She keeps her aim steady, waiting for the fallen Black Rider to emerge from the brush into which he fell, shooting blindly at the area when no one appears.
But the Black Rider has managed to sneak up behind her to deliver final justice.

And observing from a distance is the Chinese man Yao, seeing at last the man he sensed behind the mask.
Yao? We know him better as “The Ancient One”, who, as the story closes, is meditating on the past while levitating in the home of his disciple, Dr. Strange.



Comments:


Although there were some other Western characters published before him, Marvel’s Black Rider first appeared in All (Western) Winners #2, Winter 1948. Hey, look, it’s another misleading implication of a Western Team-Up with three Western stars riding together on the cover:




The Black Rider got his own series starting with issue 8 in March 1950. Stan Lee himself depicted the hero in this debut issue’s photo cover:



In issue 10, Syd Shores, inked by Joe Maneely, illustrated Leon Lazarus’ story “The Legend of the Black Rider!”, an origin story according to which both of the parents of Mathew Masters were killed by Luke Davis, whose motives weren’t greed but mayhem and terror. Masters is known as the “Cactus Kid” when he avenges his parents, but the rest of the details are the same: the judge allows him to go free and become a doctor, and he adopts the black garb of the bloodthirsty Black Rider to separated himself into a Western Avenger as well as a man of healing. Even the bit with tame Ichabod having his own “secret identity” of Satan was there.

This solo series ran for 20 issues, with most featuring art by Syd Shores, whose later art I enjoyed so much on Red Wolf. Syd Shores was well-remembered by his fans for his work on the character. Here's a custom piece by him:



A couple of years after its cancellation, the series returned for a single issue in September 1957:



Under that nice John Severin cover, Jack Kirby gives us a retelling of the origin story, but in this more violence-averse publishing era, the Black Rider doesn’t slaughter most of his victims, but rather executes the old “shoot the guns out of their hands” trick that must have already seemed trite and unconvincing to the readers of the time.

Many of the old Black Rider stories were reprinted in various Marvel Westerns like Western Gunfighters during the 1970’s.



As I understand it, the Black Rider has appeared in print recently as Marvel has been promoting one of their--well, sort of "their"--other old Western characters, the Masked Raider/Masked Rider as a major element in their ongoing current event storyline.

Steve Englehart adds some more mature touches to the story in this Western set, unconventionally, back east, but the core material was already established, and looking through a few of those older Black Rider tales, this is one I’m going to sample quite a bit more of on my own.

As a Western Team-Up, it’s a flavor we haven’t seen yet: a pairing of two established Marvel characters, one known for adventuring in the 19th century, the other a supporting character in a superhero strip established in the 1960’s, meeting up through time-travel, but the everyday time travel we all experienced, thanks to the remarkable longevity of The Ancient One.

I always liked Marshall Rogers, but his finishing inks often struck me as less refined and less skilled than his compositions deserved. Al Vey improves the work, to my eye, at least.

In a text page, Steven Englehart is interviewed, and we learn that one of his first jobs in comics was coloring Black Rider reprints for Marvel in the early 1970’s, then scripting a Two-Gun Kid issue for which he credits the writing to the story’s artist, Ogden Whitney (issue 103). His previous dalliances with the Avengers having Western Team-Ups, which have been covered here already, are the subject of part of the interview, and Englehart also reveals that he had been working, in the early days of his career at Marvel, on a revival of his favorite Western character, the Ringo Kid! Dick Ayers had pencilled one issue, but the relaunch was shut down before the inking stage:



This issue's new backup story features our old friend The Gunhawk...or so it says, anyway. Same tie, same basic black fashion sense, but no scar?

“The Midnight Gun”, 8 pages
Joe R. Lansdale, writer
Rafael Garres, artist

(Partial) Summary:

Some snot-nose makes a deal with a sinister figure in the graveyard at night to become the fastest gun in the West. The cost is his soul, and for his part of the deal, he’s granted a six-shooter that never needs loading, and will always be the fastest draw...at night, that is. “Me and the other guy. We made a deal. Night is mine. And day is his.”
Next day, a kid spots the Gunhawk arriving in town (“It’s him, Daddy. The Gunhawk. I seen his picture on posters.”)
The Gunhawk has to put up with someone in the saloon trying to out-draw him. He’s justified in returning fire, but the sheriff wants him out of town. The plan is to leave the next morning, but Gunhawk has a sleepless night, waiting for the next challenger.

The devil-dealing fast draw is drinking in the saloon and hears that the Gunhawk is in town, and he’s ready to call him out and make a name for himself. The Gunhawk can’t resist the challenge and heads down from his hotel room to the street for a midnight showdown.



Comments:

I do love me a good “deal with the devil” story, but all they’ve usually got to hang on is the twist, so I’m not about to spoil that here.


Lansdale is a writer I’ve enjoyed often, and he tells a cool little supernatural fable, but he apparently didn’t do his research into this character. The “Gunhawk” here is not depicted as Marvel’s version of Paladin, nor as the later relentless and cold bounty hunter, but instead as the cliche of the legendary gunslinger, the kind of guy that punks want to out-draw to make their rep. Seems to me there must have been some more suitable choices in Marvel’s stable for a “Strange Western” that would have fit the depiction we see here a little better.

Love your dedication and scholarship, MWGallaher!

This is a "modern" Western that looks worth picking up. I'd never heard of it. There's more than a touch of the nostalgic, but realistic approach that Rogers and Engelhart brought to their first classic run on Detective.

Ichabod's not the first animal sidekick to have a secret identity (Bat Hound was Ace in his other life),but the lameness trick is a great twist. I do think that in one story or another Johnny Thunder's horse, Black Lightnin', was shown as belonging to his alter ego, schoolmaster John Tane, and "acting" old. But that may be memory playing a trick on me.