FESS PARKER: DANIEL BOONE "Murderer's Cave"

Yes, the cover title actually was Fess Parker: Daniel Boone...

...because, by the time this TV show debuted in 1964, there had been several other comic book series about the legendary frontiersman and the comic's publishers wanted readers to know this comic was based on the TV series starring the guy who previously-played Davy Crockett!

As this never-reprinted tale from Gold Key's Fess Parker: Daniel Boone #2 (1965) demonstrates, racism was a part of the fabric of America from the very beginning!

Admittedly, the authorities are British, since the story takes place before the American Revolution, but even our Declaration of Independence calls Native Americans “the merciless Indian savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions.”
So it's not surprising the judges take the word of disreputable, uneducated White settlers instead of the sworn testimony of an Oxford University graduate who was half-Cherokee/half-British!
It's rumored that this story, written and illustrated by Fred Fredricks, was based on an unused TV series plot.
It certainly reads as more sophisticated than the usual comic based on a movie or TV show.
Note: writer-artist Fredricks had produced all the stories in issues 1 and 2 (including this one).
Issue #3 had one story by him...which was partially-redrawn, and then he was gone from the series which ran another twelve issues.

Coincidence?

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50th Anniversary Complete Series

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Do You Know About LOBO...the FIRST Black Character to Star in His Own Mainstream Comic?

In 1966, the year The Black Panther debuted in Marvel's Fantastic Four #52...

...Dell Comics went them one better, introducing the first Black hero to get his own comic!

Other Black characters had their own series (one one-shot features) in anthology titles, but Lobo was the first to have his name AS the comic's title!

Lobo combined a couple of popular plot concepts...

Man on the Run for a Crime He Did NOT Commit

Exemplified by then-hit tv series The Fugitive, Lobo was framed, but couldn't prove his innocence.

Lone Western Hero

A loner wandering the Old West, righting wrongs was an especially popular genre in tv Westerns.

Variations on the theme included gamblers (Maverick) and martial-arts experts (Kung Fu)

Note: the tv series Branded also combined both the Loner and Man Framed themes!

...as well as a new concept:

Prominent Black character

Black characters (except for sterotypes like Amos 'n Andy) were few and far between on tv until the mid-1960s, and even then only as supporting characters (usually servants).

1960s urban dramas like Naked City and East Side, West Side, which dealt with current social themes had Black guest stars including James Earl Jones and Diana Sands, but no Black regulars.

Star Trek (1966) had both a Black regular (Lt. Nyota Uhura) and Black actors in prominent roles as scientists and high-placed officers/officials (admirals, etc,).

But, at that point, there were no tv series with a Black lead or Black title character!

(Diahann Carroll's groundbreaking series Julia didn't debut until 1968, two years later!)

So, Lobo was, to say the least, a daring experiment, albeit one with as many popular themes as possible to maximize sales potential!

Dell writer/editor Don (DJ) Arneson and artist Tony Tallarico felt the time was right, and managed to convince their publisher to take a chance.

You can read Arneson's tale of Lobo's creation HERE.

Unfortunately, it didn't work.

Many vendors refused to put a comic with a Black hero on their racks, and the book had an almost 90% return rate.

Lobo the comic ran only two issues.

It's rumored that a script and unfinished art exist for a third issue, but that's never been confirmed.

You can read both issues of Lobo 

#1

and 

#2

Confederate Comics THE REBEL "Bad Medicine" Part 2

We Have Already Seen...

...returning to his home town after the end of the Civil War and avenging the death of his father, former Confederate soldier Johnny Yuma feels there's no reason to stay...

Will Johnny Yuma rescue Dr Holcomb?
Will Little Buffalo Calf foul up the attempt?
Find Out...
...FRIDAY
at 
Secret Sanctum of Captain Video

Written by Gardner DuBois, penciled by Mike Sekowsky, and inked by Mike Peppe, this section of this never-reprinted tale from Dell's Four Color Comics #1076 (1960) shows Johnny Yuma as a rather typical noble hero wandering the Old West, without any reference to his Confederate past, an element usually played up in the live-action series!

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CoronaVirus Cowboy Comics TOMAHAWK "Village of Death!"

Lethal epidemics are not a new phenomenon!

 In fact, they used to be fairly common until the mid-20th Century!

Westerns featured a number of pandemic/epidemic tales involving both Indians and settlers, but rarely one detailing whites deliberately exposing Native Americans to things like smallpox which occurred in real life!

This never-reprinted tale from DC's Tomahawk #125 (1969) is technically not a Western!

His series was set in the period during and after the American Revolution but before the Louisiana Purchase, so Americans had no access to land west of the Mississippi.

However, it featured Indians and, what is now the MidWest was the wild frontier at that point, so series like this and ones involving real-live personalities like Davy Crocket, Daniel Boone, et al, are at least related to Westerns, if not exactly being Westerns!

(For the last year of its' existence, the book changed to Son of Tomahawk and detailed the adult adventures of his offspring in the early Old West!)

Artist Frank (Red Sonja) Thorne is known to most comics aficionados, but writer Howard Liss is another matter entirely.

During his too-brief 1966-1970 sojurn into comics, Howard worked almost-exclusively on DC's military and Western comics!

Outside of comics, he'd written several dozen books about athletics with the best-known and best-selling being Giant Book of Strange but True Sports Stories.

(Oddly, he never worked on any of the sports one-shots like Strange Sports Stories that DC did from time to time in the Silver Age!)

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Tomahawk

50 Years Ago: LOBO, the FIRST Black Character to Star in His Own Comic!

In 1966, the year the Black Panther debuted in Marvel's Fantastic Four...

...Dell Comics went them one better, introducing the first Black hero to get his own comic!

Other Black characters had their own series in anthology titles, but Lobo was the first to have his name AS the comic's title!Lobo combined a couple of popular plot concepts...
Man on the Run for a Crime He Did NOT Commit
Exemplified by then-hit tv series The Fugitive, Lobo was framed, but couldn't prove his innocence.
Lone Western Hero
A loner wandering the Old West, righting wrongs was an especially popular genre in tv Westerns.
Variations on the theme included gamblers (Maverick) and martial-arts experts (Kung Fu)
Note: the tv series Branded also combined both the Loner and Man Framed themes!
...as well as a new concept:
Prominent Black character
Black characters (except for sterotypes like Amos 'n Andy) were few and far between on tv until the mid-1960s, and even then only as supporting characters (usually servants).
1960s urban dramas like Naked City and East Side, West Side, which dealt with current social themes had Black guest stars including James Earl Jones and Diana Sands, but no Black regulars.
Star Trek (1966) had both a Black regular character (Lt. Nyota Uhura) and Black actors in prominent roles as scientists and high-placed officers (admirals, etc,).
But, at that point, there were no tv series with a Black lead or Black title character!
(Diahann Carroll's groundbreaking series Julia didn't debut until 1968, two years later!)
So, Lobo was, to say the least, a daring experiment, albeit one with as many popular themes as possible to maximize sales potential!
Dell writer/editor Don (DJ) Arneson and artist Tony Tallarico felt the time was right, and managed to convince their publisher to take a chance.
You can read Arneson's tale of Lobo's creation HERE.
Unfortunately, it didn't work.
Many vendors refused to put a comic with a Black hero on their racks, and the book had an almost 90% return rate.
Lobo the comic only ran two issues.
It's rumored that a script and unfinished art exist for a third issue, but that's never been confirmed.
You can read both issues of Lobo HERE and HERE.

"Calculating Killer"

Here's a short tale that redefines "armed and dangerous"...

...originally presented in Dell's Wagon Train #5 (1960), but not using any of the characters from the tv series!

Illustrator Alex Toth did a number of these 4-page "fillers" for Dell's Western comics, which were used whenever the page count for a book came up short.

You can see other examples HERE and HERE.

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Western Comics online store...

 ...for duds and provisions!