Review: Kid Colt, Outlaw #106, September 1962

I was feeling nostalgic, so I bought all the issues available on Kindle of KID COLT, OUTLAW, one of my favorite Western comic books when I was a kid. The first one I read, eager to see if it held up, was #106, with a cover date of September 1962. The cover art is by Jack Kirby with inks by Dick Ayers, a combination I always loved.

As usual, the Kid Colt story in this issue was written by Stan Lee with art by Jack Keller. In “The Circus of Crime!”, our hero Kid Colt (an outlaw unjustly accused of a crime and forced to go on the run) is being chased by a posse when he throws in with a traveling circus in order to elude pursuit. The owner of the circus seems a little too eager to shelter a wanted outlaw, but we quickly discover there’s a reason for that: the circus performers are all outlaws, too, and use their travels to cover up their bank robbing spree! Well, the Kid’s not going to put up with this, of course, so we get some nice scenes of him clashing with the strongman, the knife thrower, the acrobats, the tightrope walker, etc. In the end, he brings the owlhoots to justice and rides off before the local law can corral him. Lee’s script moves along nicely, as they always did, and other than constantly misspelling Abilene as Abiline, it comes across as reasonably authentic for a Western yarn. I always liked Jack Keller’s art when I was a kid, but it seems a little inconsistent to me now with some excellent panels and some that are rather crude and sketchy. But I still found it enjoyable.

The lead story has 13 pages, and it’s followed by a couple of 5-page backup stories. “The Black Mask”, again written by Lee but with art by Dick Ayers this time, is a pretty traditional tale about a lawman trying to track down a masked bandit. Even though it’s only 5 pages, it has a couple of minor plot twists in it. Ayers’ art is really good, too, reminding me of Joe Kubert in places. I don’t know what sort of reputation Ayers has these days as an artist, but I loved his long run on SGT. FURY AND HIS HOWLING COMMANDOS and consider him Kirby’s second-best inker from those days, behind Joe Sinnott.

The issue wraps up with a 5-page Kid Colt story, again by Lee and Keller, called “Fury at Fort Tioga”. The Kid is captured and winds up at a fort under attack by Apaches. He comes up with a novel way of ending the attack. This is kind of an oddball story and I’m not sure I buy the plot, but it’s the kind of ending you don’t see often in a Western comic book from those days.

Overall, I enjoyed this issue quite a bit. It’s nice to read a simple, well-told comic book story that has a beginning, middle, and end and no need to read the previous 400 issues to know what’s going on. If you’re hankerin’ to give the Kid a try, you can find the e-book edition on Amazon.

The Avengers: War Across Time - Paul Levitz and Alan Davis

One day in September 1964, I woke up too sick to go to school. I was in sixth grade, although that’s not really relevant to this post. But I started feeling better as the day went on, so by that afternoon when my mother announced that she was going to the drugstore, I asked if I could come along.

Well, of course, you know how she reacted. She glared at me and said, “If you were too sick to go to school, you’re too sick to go to the drugstore.” I explained that I was getting over whatever was bothering me and just wanted to get out for a little while. I didn’t mention what I actually wanted, which was to check the comic book and paperback spinner racks at Tompkins’ Pharmacy because I hadn’t been there in a while.

I talked her into it—I could be very persuasive where reading matter was concerned—and during our trip to the drugstore that afternoon I bought several comic books, one of which was THE AVENGERS #8 featuring the debut of a villain who would prove to be iconic, Kang the Conqueror. How do I know I picked up that particular comic on that particular day? I can’t explain it other than to say that I have a trick brain for some things, and knowing where and when I bought a certain book or comic book is one of those tricks.

Now, the point of all this reminiscing is that I recently read a collection of a new mini-series from Marvel Comics (the first thing I've read from Marvel in ages) called THE AVENGERS: WAR ACROSS TIME, which is set in the classic Marvel era (or as I call it, my childhood) and is a direct sequel to THE AVENGERS #11 and features Kang the Conqueror as the villain. It was written by Paul Levitz, his first script for Marvel after literal decades as a writer/editor for DC, and drawn by Alan Davis, one of the latter-day comics artists whose work I like quite a bit.

Levitz’s script hits all the right beats from that era: the Avengers battle their former member The Hulk, they encounter the menacing Lava Men (who first appeared in THE AVENGERS #5, bought by me off the spinner rack in Trammell’s Pak-a-Bag Grocery—there’s that trick brain again), and a king of the dwarves steals Thor’s hammer, which he can do because he helped forge it, causing Thor to turn back into Dr. Don Blake. Kang is behind all this, and in the course of their struggle against him, the Avengers see bizarre visions of their future, most of which will turn out to be true.

This is just great fun for an old comics codger like me. Thor spouts mock-Shakespearean dialogue. Captain America, who hasn’t been an Avenger for long after being thawed out from the ice, is brave and stalwart. The Wasp spends most of her time in flirtatious banter but is courageous and capable when she needs to be. Iron Man and Giant Man alternate between being science nerds and walloping bad guys. To be honest, Alan Davis’s artwork isn’t quite as good as I’ve seen it in the past, but it’s still worlds better than most of what you’ll find in modern comics, and he can draw a story so that you know what’s going on, again something that’s lacking in a lot of comics these days.

So, is THE AVENGERS: WAR ACROSS TIME as good as vintage Lee/Kirby? No, but I never expected it to be. For one thing, I’m not eleven years old anymore. The best modern comics can do is remind me of that time, not recreate it. But this one certainly does remind me of those days, and I had a fine time reading it. If you have good memories of that era, too, I give it a high recommendation. You can find it in trade paperback and digital forms on Amazon.

And hey, any excuse to wallow in nostalgia, right?

All of the Marvels - Douglas Wolk

Douglas Wolk had a really great idea for a book: read all of the superhero comics published by Marvel since FANTASTIC FOUR #1 was published in 1961 (approximately 27,000 comic books through 2017) and then write an overview of them, considering them all to form one single, self-contained story, the largest work of fiction ever published. It’s exactly the sort of thing that a long-time (since Christmas Day, 1963) Marvel Comics fan like me would find fascinating.

The execution of that really great idea? Well, that’s something else again.

Good news first. ALL OF THE MARVELS is about 90% of a great book. When he’s actually writing about the comics, Wolk is top-notch, summarizing them well and doing an excellent job of fitting everything together. He fills in the historical background well and is affectionate and even-handed in his treatment of the creators of those comics. It doesn’t hurt that he devotes an entire chapter, and a long one, at that, to MASTER OF KUNG FU, my favorite comic from the Seventies. He gives a lot of love to FANTASTIC FOUR, my all-time favorite comic book, and also to THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN, which is also very high on my list. Best of all, when he’s writing about the Sixties and Seventies, the book makes me feel like I’m there again, walking across the highway to Lester’s Drugstore to pick up the new issues every week.

Unfortunately, before he gets to that point, Wolk spends a lot of time early on lecturing the reader and making it clear that he dislikes long-time comics fans (you know, the ones who plunked down their nickels and dimes and quarters every week for years so that there would still be a Marvel Comics for him to write about) and considers any of us who don’t care for Marvel’s current comics to be horrible people. He comes across as smug, arrogant, and very morally superior to anybody who disagrees with him.

Luckily, as I said, most of this is very early on. If you’re a long-time fan and/or have no interest in what Marvel is publishing these days, I’d advise skimming the first two chapters and skipping Chapter 3 completely. Heck, if you’re a long-time fan, you can probably just start with Chapter 4, which focuses on, appropriately enough, the Fantastic Four. There are a few brief shots at older fans later on, but they’re easy enough to ignore.

Don’t get me wrong. Overall, I enjoyed ALL OF THE MARVELS quite a bit and consider it well worth reading. Yeah, there were a few times when I felt like throwing the book against the wall, but mostly I raced through it, flipping the pages eagerly, having a great time reliving some fifty- and sixty-year-old memories. Just know what you’re getting into if you were there at or near the beginning, like I was.