Greetings, Groove-ophiles, between the time Bat Lash's mag rode off into the sunset and Jonah Hex mosied into town, DC tried a few more western comics. One of them, which Ol' Groove still digs to this very day (mainly for the cool concept and amazing art) is Outlaw, which ran in All-Star Western issues 2-5 (August 1970-February 1971). Created by Bob Kanigher, Rick Wilson, The Outlaw, was the son of a Texas Ranger. Rick wanted to follow in his "ramrod" father's footsteps, but made some extremely bad decisions as a young man. Getting with the "wrong crowd", his dreams of becoming a Texas Ranger were shattered--and he became The Outlaw--hunted by his own father! The stories were fun, and the son-hunted-by-his-father is a different twist for a comicbook western, but it was the art that stole the show with this series. Tony DeZuniga in ish 2, Gil Kane for issues 3 and 4, and Jim Aparo in ish 5. Oh, and of course, the selling-point-of-all-selling-points, Neal Adams on the covers! Here's the debut from ish #2 by Kanigher and DeZuniga..."Draw Death!"
Did you catch El Diablo's cameo? How weird is it to see a character make his debut as a cameo in the lead feature--in the same comic his first solo story appears? Talk about your cross-overs!
Love these little glimpses into the brief but varied DC output of the time. These Outlaw stories got reprinted in the back of the first Jonah Hex Showcase volume, which was the first time I'd read some of them.
ReplyDeleteRip Off
DC really went out of their way to produce a quality comic here. Marvel at the time was flooding the market with mostly reprint Westerns. I remember the Outlaw series having one beautiful story by Gil Kane and Tony DeZuniga producing increasingly richer art on the odd transgender Billy the Kid stories. By the time Jonah Hex came along he was so good, he became the go-to finisher for Westerns, inking Marvel's Caleb Hammer and working over Dick Ayers on Hex.
ReplyDeleteFantastic artwork, I always had to strap on my trusty cap gun six shooters when reading the western comics. Then I had to go outside and chase down some owlhoots and fill them with cap gun lead.
ReplyDeleteThanks for posting this! Fantastic art!! Now, I could definitely be mistaken, but it looks like either Tony DeZuniga was purposely channeling Neal Adams, or working from rough layouts provided by Neal. Love that panel on the bottom left of page 12! Thoughts anyone?
ReplyDelete