CoronaVirus Cowboy Comics MONTE HALE WESTERN "Curse of Typhoid Valley"

Monte Hale, like Gene Autry, Tex Ritter, and Roy Rogers...

...was a "singing cowboy" who had his own comic during the 1940s and 50s.

(Ironically, Monte ended up as a co-founder and curator for the Gene Autry Museum in Los Angeles)

Oddly, in most of these actor-named comics, the protagonists were the actors themselves (not characters they played), even if the stories were set in the Old West!

When this tale from Fawcett's Monte Hale Western #74 (1952) was reprinted in Charlton's Monte Hale Western (1956), the newly-formed Comics Code Authority insisted on a major change...

...removing the figure of the Grim Reaper from the title page!

Charlton's editor did it on the black line plate, but didn't change the color separations, which still match the figure of the Reaper!

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Western Films of Monte Hale

STRANGE STORIES FROM ANOTHER WORLD "Phantom Riders in the Sky"

While Ghost Rider and Masked Marvel II were guys pretending to be avenging spirits...

...these specters were the real deal...as Ed Sharlin discovered...

This never-reprinted tale appeared in Fawcett's Strange Stories from Another World #4 (1952), illustrated by Ed Waldman.

The writer is unknown.

BTW, Fawcett had one of the biggest Western comics lines in the business, with over 1/4 of their 140 or so titles (including one-shots) being Westerns.

And that's not even including back-ups in non-Western comics (like movie actor Rod Cameron's strip in Captain Video)!

Be here next week when we continue our journey during October through the Weird West...

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BOB COLT "Flying Fists"

Many Western stars including John Wayne and Buster Crabbe had their own comics...

...so when a new Western star (and his horse, Buckskin) came along in 1950, Fawcett Comics immediately gave him his own title, complete with backstory...

Here's one of the tales from his first issue...

This never-reprinted tale from Fawcett's Bob Colt #1 (1950) was drawn by George Evans, but the writer is unknown.

Wanna know a secret?

Bob Colt didn't exist!

Well, the guy who portrayed him on the covers did exist, and if you've ever read "high adventure" paperbacks, you've seen him...

...on almost every Doc Savage book cover from1964 to 1972!

(Not to mention The Avenger, James Bond, two different incarnations of The Spider, even as puppet character Steve Zodiac from the 1960s tv series FireBall XL5...

...and, he was the second on-screen Flash Gordon [after Buster Crabbe], on a 1950s one-season TV series filmed in Europe!)

He's male model Steve Holland, who served as the visual template for Bob Colt, and posed for every cover during the book's run.

Fawcett was testing the waters with a plethora of new characters who were portrayed by actors/models on their covers including...

...Vic Torry...

and Bill Battle!

Perhaps they were hoping to sell the properties to tv production companies with the actors used on the covers as the series' stars?

None of them went beyond their comic book incarnations, but Bob Colt was the longest-lasting of the new characters, with a 10-issue run!