A Rough Edges Rerun Review: The Lone Ranger - Gaylord Dubois

I’m a big fan of the Lone Ranger and have been since childhood. I always watched the TV show and read many of the novels by Fran Striker that were published by Grosset & Dunlap. In fact, I remember visiting some relatives one summer when I was about ten years old and going with my cousins to the local public library, where I was thrilled to discover about half a dozen of the Lone Ranger novels that I hadn’t read. My cousins checked them out for me using their library cards, and I was able to read all of them before we had to go home. Along about the same time, I began listening to syndicated reruns of the Lone Ranger radio show (along with The Shadow, The Green Hornet, and Gangbusters) and enjoyed those, too.

Later on, when I was in high school and college, I started watching reruns of the TV series and discovered that I still liked it, maybe even more than when I was younger. I even sat down one summer and wrote more than 25,000 words of a Lone Ranger novel that I never finished. (Yes, I know, fanfic. That’s not the only one I wrote, either. I actually finished my Tarzan novel.) Sure, I can see some of the cheesiness in the show (like the giant plastic rock and the fake trees that are in so many of the supposedly exterior scenes that were really shot on a soundstage), but the series as a whole just works for me, for whatever reason. I can still sit down, watch an episode I’ve seen many times before, and thoroughly enjoy it.

I hadn’t revisited the novels in quite a while, though. For my birthday, Livia bought the entire set of novels from a collector friend of mine who was selling them and gave them to me for my birthday. That prompted me to reread the first one after more than forty years.

First of all, despite what the cover says, this book wasn’t written by Fran Striker, who was the primary scripter of the radio show. It’s actually by Gaylord Dubois, as the title page admits, adding that it’s “based on the famous radio adventures by Fran Striker”. Later printings attribute the book itself to Striker, “based on the famous Lone Ranger adventures created by Geo. W. Trendle”. Trendle was the radio executive who came up with the idea, but I think most of the actual creation of the character came from Striker. Regardless of all that, Dubois is the real author of this one.

So how does it hold up? Well . . . I’m not going to lie and pretend it’s a great book by modern standards. Dubois’s prose is long-winded and just plain slow in many places. The plot, which involves sabotaging the building of the transcontinental railroad, has more whiskers than Gabby Hayes. And the Lone Ranger himself is off-screen for long stretches of the book that concentrate on the rather vapid and not-too-bright proxy hero and heroine.

But there are moments . . . moments like the one where the Ranger is racing to catch a runaway train to prevent a head-on collision with another train . . . or when he breaks up a lynch mob about to hang an innocent man . . . or when he has a showdown with a gang of outlaws that involves dynamite, railroad flares, and a bow and arrows . . . well, let’s just say that at those moments, I can hear the William Tell Overture playing faintly in the back of my head. If you’ve ever had that experience, you know what I mean.

A couple more interesting things about this book. It was originally published in 1936, which means it’s based solely on the radio series. Clayton Moore, Jay Silverheels, and the TV version were still more than a dozen years in the future. So the characterization and descriptions of the two main characters are a little off from what you might expect if you grew up on the TV series, as I did. Even though this is the first novel in the series, it’s not an origin story at all, and there’s no mention of how the Lone Ranger came to be. It does, however, begin with a lengthy sequence about how the Ranger found his horse Silver, which is at odds with the TV continuity. Then it goes on to the main story about the railroad sabotage.

I remember that even when I read these books as a kid, I thought there was something not quite the same about the first one. The edition I read then was credited to Striker, but it just didn’t seem as good as the other books in the series, which I liked better. Later on, of course, I found out why. Gaylord Dubois was actually one of my favorite writers when I was a kid, although I never knew anything about him at the time. But he was the writer on long runs of the TARZAN comic book (with the Jesse Marsh art), and also wrote the back-up feature in TARZAN, “Brothers of the Spear”. In addition, he created and wrote the comic book TUROK, SON OF STONE, which I also read every time I could find an issue. Dubois wrote a bunch of other stuff, too: more than 3000 comic book stories, Big Little Books, juvenile novels based on other radio shows and comic strips, like DON WINSLOW OF THE NAVY, which Dubois ghosted for series creator Frank V. Martinek, and probably a lot of other things I’m not aware of. I have to wonder if he really wrote that TERRY AND THE PIRATES novel I read a couple of years ago. There’s even a blog devoted to him and his work that’s maintained by his granddaughter, and it’s well worth checking out if you’re a fan of Twentieth Century pop culture.

So, should you run right out and find a copy of this book? If you’re not already a Lone Ranger fan, probably not. But if you are and you’ve never read it, I think it’s worthwhile, as a piece of history if nothing else. I enjoyed it, and I’m sure some of you would, too.

Meanwhile, I have all the other books in the series, the ones actually written by Fran Striker, sitting right here on the shelf beside me, just waiting for me to get to them. The next one is THE LONE RANGER AND THE MYSTERY RANCH. All I have to do is look at it, and I hear the William Tell Overture again, playing its siren song . . .

(This post originally appeared in a somewhat different form on February 5, 2010. I'm still a big fan of The Lone Ranger but have read only one of those other books since then. I know right where they all are, though, and one of these days . . . I've also written two Lone Ranger novellas since then that were published by Moonstone Books, and getting the chance to write stories featuring one of my childhood heroes is one of the best things that's happened to me as a writer.)

Forgotten Books: The Lone Ranger: Snake of Iron - Chuck Dixon

A comic book mini-series about The Lone Ranger (one of my all-time favorite characters), written by Chuck Dixon (one of the best comic book scripters of the past thirty years), and somehow I missed it when it came out back in 2012? How is that possible? Well, thankfully I’ve remedied that oversight and have now read THE LONE RANGER: SNAKE OF IRON.

This isn’t a Weird Western or a Revisionist Western (although it does feature the current, more politically correct version of Tonto rather than the Jay Silverheels version, which I suspect is the way the license holder wants it based on my own experience writing a Lone Ranger story). It’s pure Traditional Western, with the Kiowa going on the warpath and trying to join forces with the Comanche, a train derailed and stranded in a snowy winter Texas landscape, a plucky female newspaper reporter, a little kid in danger, a cavalry patrol, and a touch of Indian mysticism (but not enough to make it a Weird Western). In a bit of a twist, The Lone Ranger and Tonto are apart for most of the series, although it’s inevitable that their storylines will come together in the end, which they do with quite satisfactory results.

Dixon’s script is top-notch, with plenty of action, good characters, the occasional poignant moment, and bits of humor here and there. His Lone Ranger absolutely rings true to the character, and his Tonto lacks the pretentiousness that shows up in some other authors’ versions. I also like the fact that the story takes place in the winter, with snow on the ground, instead of the hot summer like most Westerns set in Texas. The art by Esteve Polls, an artist I’m not familiar with, is good as well, with strong storytelling so I was always able to keep up with what was going on. That’s not always true with modern comics artists. I could quibble a little with some things. There are no towering, snow-capped peaks in the part of Texas where this story takes place, and frontier forts didn’t look like how Fort Griffin is depicted. But that’s just part of the mythology of the Western, and overall I was quite pleased with the art. (Hey, West Texas doesn’t look like Monument Valley, Utah, either, but that doesn’t make THE SEARCHERS any less of a classic film, does it?)

I’ll admit I’m a bit of a curmudgeon and a purist where The Lone Ranger is concerned, so I haven’t liked some of the modern tales featuring the character. But I really enjoyed SNAKE OF IRON and don’t hesitate to recommend it to any Lone Ranger fan. It’s a good yarn.

The Lone Ranger Chronicles

The past few days have been so busy that a box from Moonstone Books has been sitting on the table in our living room unopened for a while. Until this morning, when I opened it and found my author copies of the new anthology THE LONE RANGER CHRONICLES. (To be honest, I was pretty sure that was what was in the box.) This is a great collection, with stories by Paul Kupperberg, Matthew Baugh, Johnny D. Boggs, Kent Conwell, Denny O'Neil, Chuck Dixon, Tim Lasiuta, Richard Dean Starr and E.R. Bower, Troy D. Smith, Bill Crider, Joe Gentile, David McDonald, Howard Hopkins, Mel Odom, Thom Brannon, and yours truly. It's available in both trade paperback and a limited edition hardcover, and while they're both fine-looking books, I'm especially impressed by the hardcover. You can't go wrong either way with that line-up of authors and two of the most iconic characters in Western fiction in the Lone Ranger and Tonto. I haven't read all the stories yet, but the ones I have read are excellent. As a fan of the Lone Ranger for as far back as I can remember, it was a great honor and pleasure to contribute a story, and this book gets the highest recommendation from me. By the way, my entry is called "Hell on the Border" and features Judge Isaac Parker, the famous real-life Hanging Judge, with the Lone Ranger using his legal training to take part in a high-stakes murder trial. It was really fun to write, too.

Coming Next Year: The Lone Ranger Chronicles

Since this book has been announced officially, I might as well jump in and mention that I have a story in it. I've been a Lone Ranger fan literally as far back as I can remember. One of my first memories of television is watching the origin episodes of THE LONE RANGER. (They were in reruns, mind you; I'm not quite old enough to have seen them the first time around.) I also have very fond memories of listening to the Lone Ranger radio show when it was being broadcast in syndicated reruns in the early Sixties. And here's something I've probably mentioned before: the first novel I ever attempted to write was a Lone Ranger novel I started when I was in high school. (Never finished and long since lost.) So being asked to write a story for this anthology was really a dream come true, to fall back on a cliche. My story is called "Hell on the Border" and also features Judge Isaac Parker, the famous "Hanging Judge". I'm looking forward to seeing it in print and also to reading all the other stories by a great lineup of authors!

New Post on the Western Fictioneers Blog

My friend and fellow Western Fictioneers member Troy D. Smith has a fine post on the WF blog today entitled "Not Your Father's Lone Ranger".  As a Lone Ranger fan for as far back as I can remember, I thoroughly enjoyed it.  Check it out.

Forgotten Books: The Lone Ranger - Gaylord Dubois

David Cranmer and Richard Prosch had some posts on their blogs recently about the Lone Ranger. Well, as it so happens, I’m a big fan of the Lone Ranger and have been since childhood. I always watched the TV show and read many of the novels by Fran Striker that were published by Grosset & Dunlap. In fact, I remember visiting some relatives one summer when I was about ten years old and going with my cousins to the local public library, where I was thrilled to discover about half a dozen of the Lone Ranger novels that I hadn’t read. My cousins checked them out for me using their library cards, and I was able to read all of them before we had to go home. Along about the same time, I began listening to syndicated reruns of the Lone Ranger radio show (along with The Shadow, The Green Hornet, and Gangbusters) and enjoyed those, too.

Later on, when I was in high school and college, I started watching reruns of the TV series and discovered that I still liked it, maybe even more than when I was younger. I even sat down one summer and wrote more than 25,000 words of a Lone Ranger novel that I never finished. (Yes, I know, fanfic. That’s not the only one I wrote, either. I actually finished my Tarzan novel.) Sure, I can see some of the cheesiness in the show (like the giant plastic rock and the fake trees that are in so many of the supposedly exterior scenes that were really shot on a soundstage), but the series as a whole just works for me, for whatever reason. I can still sit down, watch an episode I’ve seen many times before, and thoroughly enjoy it.

I hadn’t revisited the novels in quite a while, though. Last year for my birthday, Livia bought the entire set of novels from a collector friend of mine who was selling them, and gave them to me for my birthday. Those recent posts by David and Richard prompted me to get out the first one and read it for the first time in more than forty years.

First of all, despite what the cover says, this book wasn’t written by Fran Striker, who was the primary scripter of the radio show. It’s actually by Gaylord Dubois, as the title page admits, adding that it’s “based on the famous radio adventures by Fran Striker”. Later printings attribute the book itself to Striker, “based on the famous Lone Ranger adventures created by Geo. W. Trendle”. Trendle was the radio executive who came up with the idea, but I think most of the actual creation of the character came from Striker. Regardless of all that, Dubois is the real author of this one.

So how does it hold up? Well . . . I’m not going to lie and pretend it’s a great book by modern standards. Dubois’s prose is long-winded and just plain slow in many places. The plot, which involves sabotaging the building of the transcontinental railroad, has more whiskers than Gabby Hayes. And the Lone Ranger himself is off-screen for long stretches of the book that concentrate on the rather vapid and not-too-bright proxy hero and heroine.

But there are moments . . . moments like the one where the Ranger is racing to catch a runaway train to prevent a head-on collision with another train . . . or when he breaks up a lynch mob about to hang an innocent man . . . or when he has a showdown with a gang of outlaws that involves dynamite, railroad flares, and a bow and arrows . . . well, let’s just say that at those moments, I can hear the William Tell Overture playing faintly in the back of my head. If you’ve ever had that experience, you know what I mean.

A couple more interesting things about this book. It was originally published in 1936, which means it’s based solely on the radio series. Clayton Moore, Jay Silverheels, and the TV version were still more than a dozen years in the future. So the characterization and descriptions of the two main characters are a little off from what you might expect if you grew up on the TV series, as I did. Even though this is the first novel in the series, it’s not an origin story at all, and there’s no mention of how the Lone Ranger came to be. It does, however, begin with a lengthy sequence about how the Ranger found his horse Silver, which is at odds with the TV continuity. Then it goes on to the main story about the railroad sabotage.

I remember that even when I read these books as a kid, I thought there was something not quite the same about the first one. The edition I read then was credited to Striker, but it just didn’t seem as good as the other books in the series, which I liked better. Later on, of course, I found out why. Gaylord Dubois was actually one of my favorite writers when I was a kid, although I never knew anything about him at the time. But he was the writer on long runs of the TARZAN comic book (with the Jesse Marsh art), and also wrote the back-up feature in TARZAN, “Brothers of the Spear”. In addition, he created and wrote the comic book TUROK, SON OF STONE, which I also read every time I could find an issue. Dubois wrote a bunch of other stuff, too: more than 3000 comic book stories, Big Little Books, juvenile novels based on other radio shows and comic strips, like DON WINSLOW OF THE NAVY, which Dubois ghosted for series creator Frank V. Martinek, and probably a lot of other things I’m not aware of. I have to wonder if he really wrote that TERRY AND THE PIRATES novel I read a couple of years ago. There’s even a blog devoted to him and his work that’s maintained by his granddaughter, and it’s well worth checking out if you’re a fan of Twentieth Century pop culture.

So, should you run right out and find a copy of this book? If you’re not already a Lone Ranger fan, probably not. But if you are and you’ve never read it, I think it’s worthwhile, as a piece of history if nothing else. I enjoyed it, and I’m sure some of you would, too.

Meanwhile, I have all the other books in the series, the ones actually written by Fran Striker, sitting right here on the shelf beside me, just waiting for me to get to them. The next one is THE LONE RANGER AND THE MYSTERY RANCH. All I have to do is look at it, and I hear the William Tell Overture again, playing its siren song . . .