Lee and Kirby's first new Silver Age hero: the RAWHIDE KID
Lee and Kirby's first new Silver Age Hero- THE RAWHIDE KID
Yep. A year before before THE FANTASTIC FOUR# 1, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby came out with the Kid in RAWHIDE KID# 17 August 1960. Like DC's Flash and Green Lantern, he was a new character with the name and abilities of an older one; the original tall blond Rawhide Kid had run for sixteen issues from 1955. The new one, short redhead Johnny Bart, was a basically decent guy who had been unjustly outlawed. He wandered the Old West aimlessly, always trying to do the right thing but getting into one fight after another (like the long-running Kid Colt, who had been appearing in stories since 1948).
Johnny was visually a striking creation in his all-black outfit with the jacket that buttoned up with a front flap, and he looked different from other comics cowboys. He was little, for one thing, described as only five foot two in one story, and still a teenager (so, "Kid" made sense for him as a handle). Many stories had huge beefy cowboys picking fights with him exactly because he was so unimposing. ("Ain't you sort of a puny runt to be carrying around those man-sized guns, squirt?"). They found out, though, that Johnny was a wildcat in a fight. Like Doc Savage's aide Long Tom, the Kid was quick and aggressive and regularly beat the tar out of men a foot taller and a hundred pounds heavier than he was. (Kirby at his best choreography.) And that was before the guns came out.
The Comics Code was in full vigilant force in 1960, the main reason why the Silver Age had such oddly bloodless action. Adecade earlier, Kid Colt would shoot dead three or four bad guys per page but by this time he (and now the Rawhide Kid) was using the unlikely tactic of shooting the gun out of their opponent's hand without hurting them. Seriously. And they would do this while on a galloping horse against another mounted man. This is so close to impossible as to be fantasy. Inflicting flesh wounds was also common, we would see the bad guys clutching a shoulder but there was never any blood shown or screams of pain. Catching a .45 slug in a shoulder could be fatal in itself from shock and bleeding, but the victims just grunted and acted annoyed. It all seemed weirdly harmless.
Johnny Bart was an orphan raised by his Uncle Ben on a ranch near Rawhide, Texas, taught all the usual cowpunching skills as well as the science and/or art of quick-draw gunfighting. Ben is killed by owlhoots, and Johnny goes after them. (Wait.. a teenager avenging his murdered Uncle Ben..?! Have we seen this used later somewhere, maybe? Sounds familiar.) With the bad guys captured and turned over to the sheriff, Johnny declares he'll never go back home again. His life will be spent bringing other bad guys to justice. He became a vigilante roaming the land, protecting the innocent citizens from predatory villains, basically a super-hero before the word was coined. Through a misunderstanding soon after, Johnny accepts becoming an outlaw rather than try to clear himself and he would sure come to regret that juvenile decision.
The stories covered a wide range of mood and themes. There were little five-page morality tales in the back, while the longer stories were action-packed melodramas. Sometimes, things were deadly serious as when the Kid was suffering from exposure and dehydration out in the desert, only to be robbed by a brutal thug and left to die. There might be some slapstick as the action veered off into the completely ridiculous (the Kid shooting off a man's boot heels while- wait for it- standing on his head). After a while, what can only be described as super-villains started turning up, including my personal favorite, the Living Totem. Like the modern-day super-heroes that soon followed, with Marvel's Westerns you never knew what you were going to find when you picked up a new issue.
There was also a great deal of emotional agita for teenage Johnny to deal with. He was sick and tired of living on the run, getting chased out of every town, hiding from the law. He could never settle down under a false name for too long, because some injustice would force him to reveal himself and then he would have to move on. Everywhere he went, he was regarded with fear and distrust because of his reputation ("Get inside quick! With the Kid around, there's bound to be a showdown!") There was some elements of James Dean in the characterization, the dejected outsider standing away from the crowd. The unhappy alienated hero was in full force with the Rawhide Kid long before Spider-Man or the X-Men.
Kirby left the title after a few years, and the Rawhide Kid was handled by other artists (the great Jack Davis did some fine work) until Larry Lieber became identified with the book as writer and artist. RAWHIDE KID lasted until May 1979, a hundred and fifty issues, which was a decent run any way you look at it. Since then, he has been resurrected a few times, usually toned down into a more realistic but less mythic form. There was that one infamous mini-series in 2003, SLAP LEATHER, that seemed determined to insult gay people and annoy readers in general. Once or twice, through time travel, Johnny (along with Kid Colt and Two-Gun Kid) even met modern super-heroes like the Avengers. And his saga may not be over yet. You never know with comic books, especially since trademarks have to be protected. The Kid might someday ride again in exciting, larger-than-life tales from the mythical Old West that never really was, any more than the realms of Arthur's Round Table or Robin Hood's Merry Men were.
