Christmas on the Prairie TARGET COMICS "Bull's Eye Bill"

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

...although technically, this tale's about the contemporary (1940s) West!

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

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

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

Merry Christmas

and

Happy New Year!

Baker's Western Tales COWGIRL ROMANCES "Stars Fell on Arizona" / MOVIE COMICS "Mitzi in Hollywood Meets Sonny Sagebrush"

You Didn't Think We Wouldn't Run a Romance Tale...

...with a Western theme like this one from Fiction House's CowGirl Romances #10 (1952) during our Matt Baker tribute, did you?

OK, pretty straightforward tale of a starry-eyed girl living near a movie location, getting to appear in the movie, meeting her screen idol, and not finding true love, right?

But, that's not how it started out!

This is actually a re-use of lovely Matt Baker art for an earlier ongoing series, Mitzi in Hollywood, about a struggling actress looking for her big break in Hollywood!

This particular episode from Fiction House's Movie Comics #4 (1947) was about working as an extra on a Western movie set...and though the art is the same, the original script was quite different...

Sadly, this was the final issue of Movie Comics, so no more Mitzi adventures ever appeared...except as heavily-modified reprints like our lead story!
Though Matt Baker is best-known as a cheesecake/glamour girl artist, he was, in fact, quite proficient in other genres, such as Westerns, as well as sci-fi, war, adventure, and even horror!

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Matt Baker

Art of Glamour

Baker's Western Tales QUICK-TRIGGER WESTERN "Trail of the Owlhoot!"

Here's Everything You Want in a Western Yarn...

...a stalwart hero, a sneering villain, a confused kid, and a beautiful woman caught in the middle, all illustrated by a guy noted for...wait for it...romance comics and cheesecake/good-girl art!

This never-reprinted rootin'-tootin' action-packed adventure from Atlas' Quick-Trigger Western #18 (1957) was penciled and inked by pioneering Black artist Matt Baker!

Though many associate him only with beautiful women like the voluptuous Phantom Lady

or the protagonists of love stories

...the guy could produce high-adventure, kick-butt material when given the chance!

And we're giving him the chance, this month!

Watch for it!

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Matt Baker

Art of Glamour

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Weird West MASKED MARVEL "Creeping Death!"

The colorful masked hero who looks like a Dia De Los Muertos Sugar Skull...

...returns in another never-reprinted adventure...this time in a ghost town!

The Masked Marvel appeared in the entire 16-issue run of GunSmoke, but never had the cover, except in the background of one cover as a "Wanted" poster on a wall!

This story is from Youthful's GunSmoke #10 (1950), and, like all the other Masked Marvel tales, we have no idea who the writer, artist, or writer-artist is!

Trivia: This Masked Marvel was the fourth hero to have the name, but only the third comic book character!

The first was a Golden Age masked mystery-man in Centaur's Keen Detective Funnies as well as his own short-lived title.

The second was another mystery-man who battled Prize Comics' Frankenstein Monster in several stories before disappearing.

The third was a Republic Pictures 1943 movie serial hero with the gimmick that the audience didn't know which of several good-guy detectives he was...though the audience knew from the beginning who the villain was.

(Usually, a serial audience had to figure out which of several potentially-evil suspects was the mystery villain!)

BTW, you can read the other Masked Marvel tales we've presented HERE.
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Original Ghost Rider

Volume 1

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Weird West BLACK DIAMOND WESTERN "Bingbang Buster and His Horse Hedy in "Swish!"

The Weird West Encompasses Many Strange Occurrences...

...not all of them supernatural (or even terrestrial) in origin!

This superb example of cross-genre lunacy from Lev Gleason's Black Diamond Western #21 (1950) is the work of legendary writer/artist Basil Wolverton, who never saw a concept he couldn't spoof.
Though better known for his serious sci-fi/horror work, Wolverton loved doing humor, with a lot of fun details and signage filling the panel with what fellow artist Jack Cole called "eyeball kicks", primarily in his long-running Powerhouse Pepper strip!
Interestingly, MAD comics, which really popularized this sort of wild storytelling, didn't debut until 1952, which indicates they imitated Basil, not the other way around!
He later did work for them both in their comic book and magazine incarnations!

The Bingbang Buster strip ran in from #16 to #28, and is Wolverton's only Western comics work!

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Christmas on the Prairie SUPER-STAR HOLIDAY SPECIAL Jonah Hex in "Fawn and the Star"

Unseen since publication in 1980...

...this over 40 year-old Yuletide tale offers us insight into how and why Jonah Hex turned into who he was!

Written by Michael Fleisher, penciled by Dick Ayers, and inked by Romeo Tanghal, this story appeared in DC Special #21 (1980): Super-Star Holiday Special, an anthology featuring all-new Xmas tales starring Batman, Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes, Sgt Rock, Jonah Hex, and the hosts/stars of DC's mystery comics.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Romance on the Range ROMANCES OF THE WEST "Cowboy or the Playboy?"

Did she want a man...or a real man?

This "modern" Western tale (set in the then-present day of 1949) has the answer!

This never-reprinted tale from Timely's Romances of the West #1 (1949) was one of Marvel mainstay John Buscema's earliest assignments, and only his second romance tale!