ALIENS AND COWBOYS REVISITED (sort of...)

Reading some commentators, you’d think that the concept for Aliens and Cowboys was new. Yet combining western and science fiction genres goes back to the 1950s, if not earlier.

Certainly, the pulps had fun with cross genre books, and comics tended to follow suit.

Here is an eye-catching cover of a DC Comics Special from 1970.

 

The Special is a crafty idea, as it repackages previously published tales about several DC frontier characters within a cross-genre story arc. There’s a book-end and linking storyline ‘Behold the Wild Frontier’ where the modern-day Gramps tells frontier tales to his two grandsons. This arc is drawn by Gil Kane, I reckon (author and artist credits were not given), and here’s the first page.

 

The rest of the stories are drawn by their respective illustrators of the time. There begins a Daniel Boone tale, ‘Son of Chief Black Fish!’ Then Gramps went on to relate the story of ‘The Junior Ghost Patrol!’ featuring Tomahawk. Next up was Davy Crocket with ‘War Stick of Chief Fighting Elk!’ This was followed by Kit Carson and ‘The Raiders of the Oregon Trail!’  We’re moving forward a little in time, I guess, and now meet Buffalo Bill in ‘Young Bill – of the Pony Express!’ No sooner is that story told than Gramps relates the story of Pow-Wow Smith, Indian Lawman. (The only story title that doesn’t boast an exclamation mark!) And the book-end/story arc concludes with Gramps meeting up with aliens. The comic is rounded off with a DPS text story, ‘Death Hunt’, uncredited.

 

[Eli Katz (April 6, 1926 – January 31, 2000) who worked under the name Gil Kane and less famously Scott Edward, Gil Stack and other pseudonyms, was a comic book artist whose career spanned the 1940s to 1990s and every major comics company and character. Kane co-created the modern-day version of the superhero Green Lantern.]

Ah, those were the days.

Go Green!

November 5, 1959. I was eleven and my mother said I could have some money to spend on fireworks for Bonfire Night. Mr Andrews, the newsagent, sold fireworks as well as periodicals, stationery and books. I gave it some thought and convinced her the money allocated would be better spent on a handful of comics. ‘All right, make your selection,’ she told me, and stipulated the amount I could spend.

I was spoilt for choice from the rack. I’d never read or bought any of the super-hero comics available, though I’d seen them in the rack. I’d encountered black and white reprints of Pecos Bill – one episode gave me nightmares, apparently; the monochrome Roy Rogers comic was a regular too, but hitherto I bought and read British comics – Eagle, Express, Lion, Hotspur, Tarzan adventures, Comet and so on. Full colour on every page was a new experience.

My handful consisted of Strange Adventures, Mystery in Space, My Greatest Adventure, World’s Finest, Brave and the Bold, Showcase and Our Army At War.

And that night I got to see rockets blazing in the sky from other people’s back gardens, too. Win-win.

So began a long – and doubtless costly – fascination with American comics. I had a number of favourites, inevitably. One of these was Green Lantern. The covers by Gil Kane were great. I was introduced to the silver age version, (not appreciating there’d been a golden age GL!), this one created by John Broome, in Showcase 22 – ‘Menace of the Runaway Missile’, Sep/Oct 1959. GL’s Showcase outing was obviously popular, because he subsequently featured in his own bi-monthly title. Odd, that #1 didn't have No.1 on the cover, though...

Over the years, I avidly collected as many titles from the DC universe as I could afford – and find. GL#5 proved elusive: I found one copy, but couldn’t buy it at the time as I needed that money for a Scouting event. Many years later, I read a reprint version.











In the 1970s, I sold quite a number of comics from my collection, including GL#1 for the sum of 8GBP, which was quite a lot then, since it cost me that to purchase a replacement car tyre after a puncture on the same day!

Now, at long last, the Emerald Gladiator is going to feature in a movie. The teasing trailer for next summer’s release suggests they might even do him justice.