Monday, March 25, 2013

"A Night's Wages"

Even in the Old West, things are not always what they seem...
...as demonstrated in this short tale from the back of Dell's Hugh O'Brian: Famous Marshal Wyatt Earp #13 (1961)
This tale could've fit into any of the extensive volume of Western comics that filled the newsstands right before superheroes returned to dominate the comic book field in 1962.
It just happened to go in between stories in this title based on the Hugh O'Brian-starring tv series because of it's odd length, 4 pages. (Most short stories were at least 6 pages.)

BTW, the reason the title of the comic is the unwieldy "Hugh O'Brian: Famous Marshal Wyatt Earp" is that there were already two other Wyatt Earp comic books on the racks, based historical character, not the TV series version!
(For the record, they were Wyatt Earp from Atlas/Marvel Comics and Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal from Charlton Comics!)
Since many of the TV Westerns were based on real-life personalities, as soon as a tv series went on the air, both a licensed comic and numerous "unofficial" (but perfectly legal) series would pop-up.

Illustrated by the incredibly-versatile Alex Toth, at about the time he was transitioning from comic books into television animation.

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