Wednesday, October 30, 2024

Weird West DURANGO KID "Curse of the Bakala!"

We Conclude Our Contribution to CountDown to Halloween 2024...
...with a with a never-reprinted story that may, or may not, have happened!
You be the judge!
Illustrated by Joe Certa, this tale from Magazine Enterprise's Charles Starrett as The Durango Kid (yes, that's the comic's full title) #15 (1952) was part of a brief trend at the publisher putting horror elements into all the non-humor/romance comics!
ME also published the original Ghost Rider, which had such aspects already included.
As to the ongoing movie character the comic adapted...
The Durango Kid (1940) was the already-existing identity of a famous vigilante assumed by Bill Lowry to track down a killer.
(We never saw the original user of the name.)
In the subsequent 65-film b-movie series, while actor Charles Starrett always played the character, the secret identity had various names including Bill Blayden, Kip Allen, Steve Lindsay, Steve Williams, Jeff Waring, Steve Ranson, and Steve Brand, among others.
By the time the comic adaptation started in 1949, the publisher decided to use "Steve Brand" as the character's secret identity, though the movies continued to change the secret identity to the end of the film series in 1952.
The comic continued to 1955, when the publisher began scaling back as comics entered a downturn due to the "Seduction of the Innocent" mania created by Dr Fredrik Wertham.
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