Christmas Comics: BULL'S-EYE BILL

Yes, they celebrated the Yuletide in the Old West...

...although technically, this was the contemporary (1940s) West!

Though the series started with a standard 1800s Old West setting, after creator Bill Everett left, the new writer, Bea Holmes, and artist L. Kennerly, began inserting contemporary references and technology.

By the time of this tale from Target Comics #12, the series was firmly-set in the present-day.

In fact, Bull's-Eye was recruited by the Army for special duty to prevent sabotage at Western bases in the very next issue!

We're taking next week off, so we'll see you in 2012!

Merry Christmas

and

Happy New Year!

"Billy the Kid"

There are many theories as to how the legendary gunfighter Billy the Kid died...

...but this one is probably the most outlandish!

Billy the Kid has been one of the most popular (and controversial) Real-Life Westerners ever to appear in the media.

Portrayed as everything from a psychopathic killer to a misunderstood teen-ager, he's been the subject of movies, radio and TV shows (both as the title character, and as a guest-star), theatre productions, novels, and no less than a half-dozen comic book titles as well as several hundred comic stories.

(He even fought Dracula in the 1966 b-movie Billy the Kid vs Dracula and traveled thru time in an episode of The Time Tunnel!)

This one-shot tale, illustrated by George Woodbridge appeared in Masked Ranger #6 (1955), and was Woodbridge's first published comics work!

He later became one of the mainstays of MAD Magazine, as well as a military history illustrator noted for his accuracy in rendering uniforms and weapons.

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CISCO KID "Gunwise Cowpoke"

From #2 of his own comic (which was actually the first issue)...

...comes the "Robin Hood of the Old West", as they said on his radio show!

Even though the last few b-movies had starred Duncan Renaldo and the tv series (also starring Renaldo) was about to begin airing when this issue came out, Cisco in this issue looks remarkably like Gilbert Roland, who played him in several b-movies in the mid-1940s, indicating that this story may have been created back then, but not published until 1951.

In the next issue, Cisco shaves off his mustache and begins to look more like Renaldo.

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