Bring On the Back-Ups: Hawkeye and the Two-Gun Kid

T'wouldn't be right to follow up on a post about Bobbi (Mockingbird) Morse with anything but a post about her bow-slinging spouse, Hawkeye! Here's the closest he actually got to a solo-tale during the Groovy Age (whatever did happen to that much-rumored Marvel Spotlight story, anyway?)--a short-short co-featuring The Two-Gun Kid (who'd been brought to the present day near the end of Steve Englehart's Avengers run--see the footnote on page one for references). One thing about it, Marvel certainly assembled a top-notch team to create this mini-masterpiece: Scott Edelman, Mike Nasser (Michael Netzer), and Terry Austin. Scott seems to have written the majority Marvel's "back-up project" tales, while Michael and Terry had already shown us how cool a super-archer could look when they did the Green Arrow stories in the first three Dollar Size issues of DC's World's Finest--and Ol' Groove does believe they outdid themselves on our Avenging Archer's rootin', tootin' adventure.

How did these back-ups come to be? Why did this particular short wind up in the 100th anniversary issue of Marvel Tales--a Spider-Man reprint mag? For the answers to these questions, who better to answer than the editor of Marvel Tales #100 (November 1978), Roger Stern? (Lifted verbatim from Sterno's message board, natch!)

RS: Back around 1976, Marvel editorial started commissioning a number of short back-up-sized stories -- partly to audition new talent and partly to help ease some deadline crunches. Scott, Mike (Nasser), and Terry (Austin) had produced that Hawkeye and Two-Gun story and it was sitting on the shelf, when the decision came down in 1978 to make MARVEL TALES #100 a double-sized issue. I had more or less in been charge of the reprint line when I first came to work at Marvel, and at that time I was still overseeing MARVEL TALES.

Anyway, I decided to plug the story in there, before it became too dated. Plus, I really liked the idea of publishing a new story in what was otherwise a reprint comic. I remember it as being a nice little story, and placing it there helped make the hundredth issue of MARVEL TALES something special.

Cool, huh? What? Oh, ya wanna read the Hawkeye/Two-Gun Kid tale? Well, here ya go!