Western Gunfighters (1970) # 1

Cover Art: Dick Ayers

Published: August 1970
Original Price: $.25

Title: "Return of the Tarantula"

Writer: Gary Friedrich
Artist: Dick Ayers
Inker: Tom Sutton
Letterer: Jean Simek
Colorist: None Credited
Editor: Stan Lee

SYNOPSIS

Natalie Brooks has received the surgery needed to save her life but has yet to regain consciousness.  Her brother, Ben Brooks, and fiance, Clay Riley, talk in their room about their dwindling money, which Riley angrily says he will do something about.  Meanwhile, at the hospital, Carter Slade stands outside Natalie's room blaming his identity as the Ghost Rider for her condition.  Suddenly, his enemy the Tarantula shoves past him into the girl's room, promising to find a cure for her.  Carter attempts to apprehend him, but is knocked unconscious by the masked villain, which allows him to escape.

Later, the Ghost Rider tracks the Tarantula to his room in the city and attacks, but is outfought by the villain.  Only when Ghost Rider shoots out the lantern, plunging the room into darkness, is he able to convince the Tarantula of his ghostly nature and knock the man unconscious.  Wanting to know the Tarantula's true identity, he removes his mask and gasps in surprise.

ANNOTATIONS 

Carter Slade made his last chronological appearance in Western Gunfighters (1970) # 3, which filled in the gap between The Ghost Rider (1967) # 7 and this issue.

The splash page image of the Ghost Rider is an homage to Frank Frazetta's cover to The Ghost Rider (1950) # 4.

Natalie Brooks was accidentally shot in The Ghost Rider (1967) # 6 and was taken to Denver for emergency surgical care in The Ghost Rider (1967) # 7.

The Tarantula last appeared in The Ghost Rider (1967) # 5 and will be revealed to be Clay Riley in Western Gunfighters (1970) # 2.

This issue of Western Gunfighters also contained stories featuring the Outlaw, Fort Rango, the Renegades, and Gunhawk.

REVIEW

Two years after the untimely cancellation of the western Ghost Rider series Carter Slade is resurrected for this anthology series.

The early Marvel Ghost Rider stories are honestly not much to write home about, they're formulaic and attempt to shoehorn in the standard Marvel tropes of the time (secret identity troubles, unrequited love triangles, dogged by the law) at the expense of what made the 50s incarnation so interesting, namely the horror and mystery element.  It's not much of a surprise that the series got canned in 1968, because outside of the striking costume design for the Ghost Rider there wasn't much else to make it unique.  Dick Ayers was always a consummate illustrator, but his work was frequently sapped of all life by finishers who failed to compliment his art, and Gary Friedrich's scripts did little to make Carter Slade very interesting.  So, with all that in mind, I wasn't too thrilled about the character's further adventures in Western Gunfighters.

Color me pleasantly surprised and optimistic about the direction that Friedrich and Ayers are taking the series.  It picks up immediately after the end of the original series, complete with subplots that are being picked up and tied off here, and normally that would be a questionable decision but it actually works to the story's strength.  It throws you in a reasonable recap about Natalie Brooks and the rest of the cast, but there's this sense of drama and immediacy that the series lacked before.  Everything is tense and appropriately moody, giving the story a dark cloud that makes it pretty thrilling.  The Tarantula had already been cemented as the Ghost Rider's nemesis simply by appearing more than once, but he's a loose end that Friedrich obviously enjoys picked up to twist into knots.  Carter Slade is still mopey but he's at least got more of a personality than before, which fluctuated between "milksop" and "do-gooder".

The best part of the story, however, has to be the Dick Ayers and Tom Sutton combo on art duties.  Ayers was what made the western Ghost Rider work visually, he was the artistic creator of the character and he is always welcome to make a return with this new serial.  Unlike his collaboration with Vince Colletta in the previous series, who made Ayers work look flat and rushed, his team-up with Sutton compliments him perfectly.  I've always had a lot of time for Tom Sutton, both as an inker and an artist in his own right as an artist on the Johnny Blaze series, and his work here allows Ayers to breathe some actual life into the story.  The confrontation with the Tarantula comes off extremely well, emphasizing the lantern light and the use of darkness as factors in the fight.

I'm honestly shocked by how much I enjoyed this story, and I'm actually eager to see what happens next. 

Grade: A

Western Gunfighters (1970) # 3

Cover Artist: Dick Ayers

Published: January 1971
Original Price: $.25

Title: "The Man Called Hurricane"
Writer: Gary Friedrich
Artist: Dick Ayers
Inker: Vince Colletta & Dick Ayers
Letterer: Artie Simek & Dick Ayers
Colorist: None Credited
Editor: Stan Lee

SYNOPSIS

Hurricane, a criminal gunfighter that possesses super-speed due to a potion he drank, trains in the desert to make sure he has recovered from a recent injury.  Nearby, Carter Slade passes by in his wagon, which is transporting the injured Natalie Brooks on their way to see a doctor in Denver.  Hurricane sees them pass and rushes forward to stop the wagon, finding Carter and the unconscious Natalie.  He also discovers Carter's mask and realizes that he's actually the Ghost Rider, who he decides to kill.  He ties Carter up and throws him off a nearby cliff.  Natalie awakens and screams, but before Hurricane can kill her the Ghost Rider arrives.  Hurricane finds that his speed is unable to overcome the Ghost Rider's "supernatural" powers, and rushes at the vigilante.  He passes straight through the Rider and goes sailing off the edge of the cliff, plummeting to his death.  The Ghost Rider is shocked, not realizing that his lantern projection would cause the villain to leap off the cliff by mistake.  Carter returns to the again-unconscious Natalie and continues on their way to Denver.

ANNOTATIONS 

Carter Slade made his last chronological appearance in The Ghost Rider (1967) # 7.  He makes his next appearance in Western Gunfighters (1970) # 1.  This story fills in the gap between those two issues.

The story in this issue was originally planned for The Ghost Rider (1967) # 8, but the series was cancelled halfway into the issue's completion.  Dick Ayers completed the story, including the inks and letters, and truncated it to 10 pages for its inclusion in this series.

This issue of Western Gunfighters also contained stories featuring the Apache Kid, Wyatt Earp, and Black Mask.

REVIEW

Ayers and Friedrich tie up their cliffhanger loose end with a bizarre villain and a fairly shocking ending.

When the original Ghost Rider series was cancelled after issue # 7, issue # 8 was already under production with half of the issue already drawn by Dick Ayers.  Western Gunfighters debuted a few years later, and with the Ghost Rider serial picking up from the end of the original series (with the same creative team, even), Marvel decided to dust off and complete the "Hurricane" story for use.  I'm not sure why they didn't just lead with this story in issue # 1, probably some behind-the-scenes reasoning, because it's not like Ayers wasn't still working on the character.  Maybe he completed this issue out of a love for the character after the anthology series started, since the second half of the story was inked and even lettered by him instead of by Colletta and Simek. 

Whatever the reason, the Hurricane story is pretty strange in its own right, mainly because the villain is ridiculously out of place.  Apparently, Hurricane first appeared as a villain for the Two-Gun Kid before he was brought back here, and I don't know if the super-speed aspect of his character was as prominent there as it is here.  Essentially, though, Carter Slade fights Wild West Flash in this story, and I really hate how the superhero stuff infected every other genre in comics during this era.  Instead of going the supernatural route, which would make the most sense if you're not wanting to do just straight cowboy stuff, we get superpowers and costumes to try and boost sales.  Instead, it just comes off as a clash of genres instead of a suitable mixture of the two.

The story was truncated down from 18 pages to 10, which is the length it would have been had it actually been published as Ghost Rider # 8.  I can't see how this would have possibly stretched out to fill an entire issue, because 10 pages is appropriately adequate for what happens.  Hurricane is such a one-note villain and the plot is so coincidental and simple, it works as an anthology inventory story but not as anything else.  There's no plot developments that necessitated the flashback, Western Gunfighters # 1 opened with Natalie having made it to Denver for the operation, so this story really serves  no purpose other than completion's sake.  The one positive thing I have to say about the story is that I did not see that ending coming, and having the guts to have the villain commit accidental suicide due to the hero's ghost gimmick was pretty inventive.

Ayers is of course the best artist for this material, but he does the art no favors by rushing through the comic to get it completed.  The first half, with inks by Colletta, are much more favorable to look at than what Ayers did in the second half, and that's a shame because Ayers inking himself usually leads to much better work than his collaborations.  Even with that, though, Ayers never produced anything other than a rock solid job on the artwork for the Ghost Rider and this story was no exception.

So this is a story that's not really necessary to the ongoing plot of the series, it doesn't explain what happened when Natalie and Carter got to Denver, it's just "oh yeah, this happened on the way".  Not very interesting, even for filler.

Grade: D