New (Two-Gun) Kid on the Block: Kirby Takes Over

AFTER A BREAK of eighteen months, Two-Gun Kid was revived by the new creative team of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, as a replacement for the cancelled Amazing Fantasy. But this version of the cowboy hero was informed by a different sensibility. Where the original Two-Gun Kid had been a straight-faced cowboy hero, riding the range and righting wrongs, this new Kid was not only a different person - a lawyer, rather than the farming son of a sheriff-turned-rancher - but he had a secret identity, as well.

The origin of the Two-Gun Kid - Stan doesn't mention in the script how long it takes retired gunslinger Ben Dancer to train tenderfoot Matt Hawk from dude to death-dealer, but we can presume it's several months, at least. The mask, alias and costume are also Ben's idea, making Matt a wild west superhero. Click to enlarge.

Even though superheroes were relatively new at Marvel Comics in 1962, Stan Lee figured that superhero trappings were ripe for a revival, because he gave the new Two-Gun Kid a mask, and similar motivations to the super-characters over in Journey into Mystery, The Incredible Hulk and the latest addition to the lineup, The Amazing Spider-Man.

"The Beginning of the Two-Gun Kid", in Two-Gun Kid 60 (Nov 1962, on sale 2nd Aug 1962) starts with a clean-cut young man - Matt Hawk, Attorney at Law - arriving in Tombstone, Texas and being taunted for his soft, city ways by a group of local thugs. He's saved by the arrival on the scene of the town's teacher, Nancy Carter. Turns out one of the thugs is her step-brother Clem, who's fallen in with a bad crowd.

A few days later, the same gang of toughs start on another victim, the elderly Ben Dancer. Hawk is the only one who steps forward to help Mr Dancer, though he needn't have bothered. Their new victim, a retired gunslinger, has more of a taste for fighting back. After sending the bullies on their way with a few carefully placed shots, Ben Dancer decides that Matt will have to learn to handle a gun to stay healthy. So (Uncle) Ben teaches Matt everything he knows over the next few months and at the end of the training, reveals his plan for Matt. He'll hide his identity behind a mask and costume so that he'll be safer from ambitious would-be gunslingers looking to make a reputation for themselves. He'll become ... The Two-Gun Kid.

The origin of the Two-Gun-Kid series is told in two separate stories in TGK 60. With Matt's romantic interest Nancy Carter believing The Kid to be responsible for the death of her no-good brother Clem, a situation is set-up where Nancy hates The Two-Gun Kid but loves Matt Hawk.

With his work done, Ben Dancer decides he'll retire back east, and takes the stagecoach out of town. But Clem and his thuggish friends are watching and plan to rob the stage and kill old Ben at the same time. However, Matt is alerted that something is wrong when he sees Ben's riderless horse gallop back into town and dashes to the rescue as Two-Gun Kid. As he arrives at the overturned stagecoach, Ben is staring down the barrel of a Colt, moments from death. But some sharp shooting and little help from Ben sees the bullies disarmed and down. Perhaps unwisely, Matt allows Clem Carter to go free before the law arrives to take over, setting up the final showdown for another time.

Readers wouldn't have to wait too long for that final confrontation for, after a five page Stan Lee/Don Heck tale, "The Outcast", Two-Gun Kid returns in the final five-pager in the book to tie up the loose ends from the original tale. "What happened to make Nancy Carter say ... I Hate the Two-Gun Kid" is written by Stan Lee and drawn by Jack Kirby and begins with Nancy discovering Matt Hawk tied and gagged in his own law office. Matt's been robbed by a group of masked men. Even worse, the money belongs to Nancy, held by Matt for investment for Nancy and her worthless brother Clem's futures.

Nancy runs out to alert the sheriff, while Matt puts on his mask and Two-Gun Kid costume. He has recognised one of the bandits as Clem, and knows just where to find him. With the tracking skills Ben taught him, Two-Gun Kid quickly trails the robbers to their remote prairie shack hideaway. As the kid peers through the window, the thugs are arguing among themselves about the split of the cash and one thug draws and shoots Clem. The Kid bursts in, surprising the thieves and a fight ensues. One of the thugs tosses an oil-lamp at The Kid and the shack catches fire.

By the time The Kid has carried Clem from the blazing cabin, the erstwhile bandit has died from his gunshot wound. The sheriff's posse, alerted by Nancy, chooses that moment to show up, and takes The Kid for one of the bandits. Matt escapes easily, but when he returns to town, the sheriff has told Nancy that it was The Two-Gun Kid that killed her brother. And that's why Nancy Carter hates the Two-Gun Kid.

When Bennett Brant got himself mixed up with gangster Blackie Glaxton, Dr Octopus and a jailbreak attempt, Betty tries to help but is kidnapped by the crooks. Spider-Man tracks her down to Philadelphia and tries to free the Brants from the gangster's clutches. In the struggle, Bennett Brant is hit by a stray bullet and killed. Betty, of course, blames Spider-Man.. 

Stan would use exactly the same plot device in Amazing Spider-Man 11 a little over a year later, when Betty Brant believes that Spider-Man had something to do with the death of her brother, Bennett Brant.

With cover and interior art by Jack Kirby and Dick Ayers, Two-Gun Kid 61 featured an interesting two-page recap for any readers arriving late. The clever format showed the parallel lives of the rough-and-tough Kid and the slightly too fey persona affected by Matt Hawk in his civilian identity.

Two-Gun Kid 61 was cover dated January 1963, and was on sale 2nd October 1963. This issue was the first Marvel western comic where the reader really needed to have read the previous issue to fully understand what was going on. Stan was developing the character, issue-by-issue, in much the same way he would with the later super-hero titles. Again there were two stories featured in the comic, along with a two-page introduction to the character by Lee and Kirby, highlighting the sharp differences between Matt Hawk's two identities, and a helpful pinup page that diagrammed The Kid's costume and abilities.

The whole of the first 10-page story in Two-Gun Kid 61 is focussed on setting up then resolving this issue's cover scene. When the chips are down and Nancy is pointing a rifle at The Kid, is she able to pull the trigger to avenge the death of her no-good brother last issue?

The first tale, "The Killer and the Kid", has the Matt Hawk investigating a bank robbery where the teller, Will Webb, has been framed by the bank owner Jeb Snark. It doesn't take long for sharp lawyer Hawk to figure out what's going on, and with Snark a bit too eager to host a neck-tie party, Matt switches to Two-Gun Kid to prevent a lynching. The Kid fights off the unofficial posse long enough for the Marshall to arrive, and Webb is taken into protective custody until the trial. Once the trial gets under way, Snark is no match for quick thinking lawyer Hawk, and is quickly trapped into incriminating himself. Realising he's finished, Snark manages to grab a gun and escape the courtroom, setting the scene for the final confrontation.Snark seeks to outwit his pursuers by doubling-back to the courtroom, intending to shoot Hawk, but instead finding Two-Gun Kid. Just as the two square off, Nancy Carter appears holding a Winchester on both men. Will she save the Two-Gun Kid or kill him in revenge for the death of her brother last issue?

Unusually, "When the Apaches Strike" has a group of native American warriors attack Matt and Nancy for no apparent reason. In a longer tale, I'm pretty sure Stan would have come up with some kind of justification for the Apaches' anger, but here they are little more than a plot device.

The second story in the issue is a bit of a filler, and doesn't progress the Matt-Nancy-Kid triangle. Out riding with Nancy, Matt is in a tough spot when they're attacked by Apaches. Matt sends Nancy off to alert the Sheriff while he changes to Two-Gun Kid and defeats the angry native Americans. I'm not really sure why he has to change costume. With no townsfolk as witnesses, he could have just battled the Apaches as Matt Hawk, relatively sure his identity would be safe.

Two-Gun Kid 62 starts with The Kid complaining that the region of Tombstone has become just too tame for him lately. But the town doesn't need gun-toting bank robbers to disrupt the peaceful lives on the townsfolks. A bullying homesteading can do that just as well, as The Kid will find out.

Issue 62 of Two-Gun Kid was cover dated March 1963, the same month as Amazing Spider-Man 1, and would have been on-sale just before Christmas 1962. In the lead story, "Moose Morgan, Gunman at Large", Stan tackles the issues of bullying and education. It begins with Two-Gun Kid musing that the area is so peaceful, there's not much call for his services. Changing to his Matt Hawk identity, he discovers Nancy Carter crying in the deserted schoolroom. It seems that the kids haven't shown up for their lessons in days. Bullying blowhard Moose Morgan has set up a homestead in the Tombstone, Texas region with his son, Cal, and the pair are deliberately frightening the other children away from school. First Matt and Nancy try legal means and approach the sheriff for help. But  the law can only help if someone makes a formal complaint - surely Matt would know that - and none of the townsfolk are brave enough.

One the way back to town, Matt and Nancy come across Cal Morgan slapping a smaller boy around. Matt intervenes to stop the bullying, just as Moose arrives. The brutish farmer pushes Matt - unable to fight back for fear of blowing his cover - around until Nancy threatens to make a formal complaint to the sheriff. Later, Nancy calls a meeting of the school council to see what's to be done, but no one can help until Moose Morgan actually breaks the law.

Jack Kirby's fight scene in TGK62 is every bit the equal of his superhero battles. The first page uses a four-panel page to maximise the impact. This is immediately followed by a tighter nine-page grid, detailing the tussle, blow-by-blow. The pay-off is that The Kid then administers a darn good hiding to Moose's "tough" son, Cal ... a pretty satisfying pay-off to the tale for any kid that's ever been bullied. Stan definitely knew what he was doing here.

With all legal avenues denied, it seems that the only choice is for Two-Gun Kid to take a hand. There's a spectacular three-page fight in which The Kid subdues Moose, then literally turns Cal over his knee and delivers a thorough spanking to the bullying kid. These were more innocent times ...

The Kid then makes Cal apologise to Nancy, then take his father home. He cautions Cal to show his father respect, as he'll need the support of his son, now. The tale ends with Nancy telling The Kid he was wonderful, and the Kid defending his actions to the Sheriff, but pointing out that Moose has learned today that brute strength isn't enough, as there's always someone stronger. Only through education can a man be superior to another. 

It's quite the morality play, and Stan is again showing his liberal credentials, even in a b-project like Two-Gun Kid. In it, Stan has demonstrated that bullies never win, that a kid needs a decent role model to succeed in life, that education trumps everything and, finally, that even those twisted by anger and revenge, like Nancy, can realise they were wrong. That's a lot of ground to cover in a "simple" 13-page cowboy story.

"The Man Who Changed" is just a quickfire summary of how the lawyer Matt Hawk operates in his secret identity of The Two-Gun Kid. No frills, no supporting characters, no named adversaries. Just the mechanics of how the outlaw hero helps the law maintain order in Tombstone, Texas. 

By contrast, the second Two-Gun Kid tale in the issue is a little more light-weight. It's little more than an incident really. Matt Hawk is pleading a case before the judge when he hears a ruckus coming from outside and, through the courtroom window, spots a bank robbery in progress. He requests an adjournment, which doesn't please the Judge very much. Rushing outside, Matt is able to change to his Two-Gun Kid costume in his practiced ten seconds, takes care of subduing the six bank robbers, changing back to Matt Hawk and returning to the courtroom inside fifteen minutes. The story is not really anything more than the slenderest of introductions to The Two-Gun Kid for any newcomer readers - Nancy Carter doesn't even make an appearance.

And that would be the last issue for which Jack Kirby would provide the interior pencilling ... the same month, Kirby had pencilled:

• Fantastic Four 12 (23 pages, plus cover)
• Love Romances 104 (7 pages, plus cover)

and covers for:

• Amazing Spider-Man 1
• Gunsmoke Western 75
• Journey into Mystery 90
• Kid Colt Outlaw 109
• Strange Tales 106
• Tales of Suspense 39
• Tales to Astonish 41

... a total of 39 pages of pencilling for the month. But, as I've mentioned before, Stan had Jack earmarked for other projects: the mammoth 57 pages (plus the cover) of new material for the first Fantastic Four Annual, another 18 pages (plus cover) in the second Strange Tales Annual, along with the first issue of The Avengers (22 pages plus cover) and the first issue of The X-Men (22 pages plus cover). Something had to give, so Stan took Jack off The Incredible Hulk, Strange Tales, Tales to Astonish and Two-Gun Kid to free up his time.

KIRBY OUT, AYERS IN

The May 1963 Two-Gun Kid, issue 63, had a Kirby cover, but the interior art was by Dick Ayers. Ayers had been inking the Kirby's pencils on the title from issue 58 (before the hiatus) to date. Stan probably figured that Ayers had a pretty good handle on the art by this point and had him take over the pencils.

Behind the unusual Jack Kirby comic strip type cover lurks 18 pages of Dick Ayers art. It's strong comic art, it looks quite similar to the art from the earlier issues and it tells the story well, but it's just not Kirby, is it?

While I have been a little skeptical of Kirby's claims around how much of the Marvel Universe he created on his own, it's impossible to fault his abilities as a storyteller. There's absolutely nothing wrong with Ayers artwork on Two-Gun Kid 63. You can analyse the pages from here to eternity, and it would be pretty much impossible to say why TGK 62 was so terrific and why TGK 63 is just a little ... well, flat.

In the back-up story, "The Bronco Buster" you can see that Ayers is trying to bring some Kirby-ness to the pencilling. The figure of Nancy in panel 5, page 2 in the above image might have been pencilled by Jack and there's a very Kirby-esque Kast of Kharacters in panel 5 of page 5, Click the image to enlarge.

I've looked over the art at length and I can see that Ayers is able, by this stage, to make a pretty good job of ghosting Kirby's style. He even uses some of Jack's trademark moves. But the storytelling just doesn't have the spark, the energy, of Kirby's work. I guess that's why Kirby is a legend and Dick Ayers is "just" a well-respected craftsman.

Kirby continued to supply the covers for Two Gun Kid until the middle of 1965. Fascinatingly, when Ayers took over, he had The Kid face a villain called The Panther ... in a black costume. I've included it above so you can compare for yourself. Look Familiar? Click the image to enlarge.

Stan would make sure that Kirby continued to pencil the covers for Two-Gun Kid (and the other western titles) for the next two years, and it wasn't until issue 77 (Sep 1965) that Ayers was allowed to begin pencilling covers for the title. And, like the interior art, they're okay and all ... but they're just not Kirby.

Is this just an odd coincidence? The panel on the left is taken from Two-Gun Kid 77 (Sep 1965), from a story called "The Panther Will Get You if You Don't Watch Out", scripted by Al Hartley and drawn by Dick Ayers. The panel on the right is from Fantastic Four 52 (Jul 1966) from a story called "The Black Panther", scripted by Stan Lee and drawn by Jack Kirby. So who actually created The Black Panther?

So while I may not have been the biggest fan of westerns back in 1965, when I was just beginning to come under the spell of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, perhaps if I'd read Two-Gun Kid, Rawhide Kid and Kid Colt, Outlaw I might've had a different view.

I'll take a look at Marvel's other early cowboy heroes another time, but I think it's time to get back to some Silver Age superhero shenanigans ...

Next: Man of Iron, Heart of Marshmallow

Meet the Kid: Marvel's First Cowboy Hero (almost)

THE EARLY 1960S WAS A WEIRD TIME for kids. The effects of the Second World War were all around us. Rationing had only ended a few years earlier, and life wasn't easy growing up in a single-parent family on a south-east London council estate. That said, Woolwich was a great playground, and I had plenty of other kids to play with. Our games were inspired by what we saw on television and at our beloved Saturday Morning Pictures. Chief among our pastimes were playing war, and cowboys and indians (we didn't call them "native Americans" back then).

Marvel Comics got into Westerns as the post-war superhero crash began to take hold. Stan Lee's characters, Two-Gun Kid, Kid Colt and the later Rawhide Kid would go on to be the longest running comic book cowboys of all.

That said, I was never much of a fan of the screen cowboys. A uniquely American institution (I can't think of a single British-made cowboy tv show or movie - Carry on Cowboy doesn't count!) the western drama - also known as "oaters" or "horse operas" - was a massively popular genre for much of the 20th century, with its heyday in the 1930s and 1940s. I know that our Saturday Morning matinees would have regularly shown Roy Rogers and Hopalong Cassidy movies, but I can't remember any of them. Neither do I remember seeing any of the huge number of comics that featured these stars during the 1960s, though Dell Comics published hundreds of them.

Roy Rogers and Hopalong Cassidy were staples of the Saturday Morning Matinees when I was a kid. But I couldn't for the life of me name one of their films that I saw at the time.

And the tv shows of my youth that featured cowboys - like Rawhide, Wagon Train and Bonanza - just weren't on my radar. Incredibly, these and other cowboy shows would dominate the airwaves until the end of the 1960s, including:

• Cheyenne 1955 - 1962
• Gunsmoke 1955 - 1975
• Wagon Train 1957 - 1965
• Maverick 1957 - 1962
• Have Gun Will Travel 1957 - 1963
• Rawhide 1959 - 1965
• Bonanza 1959 - 1972

Just about all of Dell/Gold Key's line of comics were based on existing tv or film properties in just about every conceivable genre. They especially focussed on tv shows they thought would appeal to younger readers, with varying degrees of success.

Just as I wasn't interested in the wall-to-wall cowboy tv shows, neither was I much interested in the comics that they spun off. Dell, who built their entire business around licensing tv and movie properties, were probably the biggest purveyors of western titles. Curiously, DC Comics seemed little interested in cowboys, though they maintained two long-running western comics - All Star Western (1951 - 1961) and Western Comics (1948 - 1961) as though just keeping a toe in the water.

I didn't care much for Charlton Comics in general - apart from the few superhero books drawn by Steve Ditko. Much of the Charlton art was by stalwarts like Rocke Mastroserio and Sal Trapani. Quite why a talented guy like Dick Giordano stayed with this poverty row comics producer for so long is a bit of a mystery.

On the other hand, Charlton produced masses of cowboy comics, their longest-running titles being Billy the Kid (1957–1983), Cheyenne Kid (1957–1973), Outlaws of the West (1957–1980) and Texas Rangers in Action (1956–1970).

But by far the biggest booster of western titles was Marvel Comics in all its guises ...

THE KID WITH TWO GUNS

Marvel's first cowboy hero was Two-Gun Kid, aka Clay Harder, who first appeared in his self-titled comic, cover-dated March 1948. There was an earlier Marvel cowboy, the Masked Raider (Jim Gardley), who appeared in Marvel Mystery Comics 1-12 (1939-1940), but I'm not really counting him as his series was so short-lived.

Two-Gun Kid appeared full-blown in his own title in 1948, but the run only lasted 10 issues. When the character got his own title again five years later starting with issue 11 (Dec 1953), readers had to wait until Two-Gun Kid 36 (Apr 1957) to find out how he became an outlaw.

Clay Harder grew up the son of a former sheriff turned farmer in Kansas. One day, young Clay found his father's old Colt and proved to be a natural marksman. But his father caught him and made his swear never to pick up a gun again. A few years later, Harder senior took a job as sheriff in the sleepy town where he lived. When the outlaw family, The Corbetts, start trouble in town, Sheriff Harder is shot. In the melee, Mrs Harder is thrown from a wagon, and also dies. The orphaned Clay promises his father that he will take up the guns and "use them to bring peace to this troubled land". He gained his nickname because of his skill with the two Colts he carried. At least that was the origin given in the much later Two-Gun Kid 36 (Apr 1957). There'd be another, different, origin a year later in issue 41 (Apr 1958).

The stories in these early issues are nothing special - just standard cowboy adventures with a Two-Gun Kid that seems to be able to outdraw anyone he comes up against. There's no sense that the writers - city boys to a man - had any knowledge of what life in the old West might have looked like. It seems certain that their experience of Western life was informed almost exclusively by the movies they saw in New York's picture houses. And there's no sense of continuity from story to story, no suggestion of any ongoing development of the character.

Two identical plots from TGK 3 & 11 - the artist on the first is Syd Shores, who'd earned his stripes at Timely inking Jack Kirby's pencils on Captain America. The artist in the second is Fred Kida, later penciller on Captain Britain in the 1970s. The unidentified writer on both, likely the same person, was saving themselves some effort by "recycling" the storyline.

The character couldn't have been a massive hit with readers, as his first series, Two-Gun Kid 1 - 10 (Mar 1948 - Nov 1949) lasted just over a year. Despite Stan's best efforts, featuring The Kid in just about every other Marvel western comic during that period, including:

• Wild West 1 - 2 (Spr - Jul 1948), becomes
• Wild Western 3 - 12, 32 - 37, 39 (Sep 1948 - Sep 1950, Feb 1954 - Dec 1954)
• All-Western Winners 2 - 4 (Win 1948 - Apr 1949), becomes
• Western Winners 5 - 6 (Jun 1949 - Aug 1949)
• Blaze Carson 4  (Mar 1949)
• Best Western 58 - 59  (Jun - Aug 1949)

... TGK was cancelled as of its tenth issue. The guest slots in the other titles ceased around the same time.

As I was reading through some of the early Two-Gun Kid stories, I found that certain plots would be re-used. For example, the old chestnut of someone impersonating the hero to frame him for a crime he didn't commit. Another curious example had Two-Gun Kid stepping into a boxing ring to substitute for a wounded boxer, which was the basis for the story "Death in the Ring" in Two Gun Kid 3 (Aug 1948) and the untitled but very similar tale in the revived Two Gun Kid title, issue 11 (Nov 1953).

Much of the art for the first run of Two-Gun Kid was by Syd Shores, with a few drawn by Russ Heath. For some reason, the whole of issue 9 (Aug 1949) was drawn by John Severin, which looks a lot like some kind of deadline foul-up. The identities of the writers have long been lost to history.

Atlas continued to publish cowboy comics through the late 1940s and into the early 1950s, yet there was no sign of the Two-Gun Kid. Then, with little fanfare, the character turned up in the Nov 1953 issue of The Black Rider, in a five-page story drawn by George Tuska. The following month, Two-Gun Kid's own title was restored to the Atlas schedule, with issue 11 (Dec 1953) and would continue for a further eight years until its second cancellation.

Though it's likely Stan would have been contributing scripts to the western titles long before this, Two-Gun Kid 40 has the earliest official credit I could find for Stan on the title. These earliest script is thankfully free of the terrible fake western slang that would litter the Marvel cowboy comics in the early 1960s.

Though Stan Lee had been signing the occasional back-up story in Two-Gun Kid, it wasn't until issue 40 (Feb 1958) that he began taking credit the Two-Gun Kid scripts. This would coincide with the first Marvel stories commissioned in the wake of the Great Atlas Implosion of 1957, when Martin Goodman was forced to cancel around 70% of the Atlas titles. In issue 41 (Apr 1958), Stan gave us a new, revised origin of the Two-Gun Kid, drawn by Joe Maneely. This time, The Kid returns to his hometown to visit his father. But the town's been taken over by rancher and thug Bull Yaeger. Harder Senior is killed when Yaeger tries to take over the Harder ranch. Released from his pacifist vow by his father's death, The Kid is freed to defeat Yaeger and turn him over to the sheriff. 

From this issue on it looked as though it would be pretty much Lee and his favoured artist Joe Maneely cranking out the Two-Gun Kid stories. But the untimely death of Maneely in June 1958 cut this plan short, and issue 44 was the last drawn by the artist.

In one of the last comics drawn before his tragic death, Joe Maneely's art for Two-Gun Kid looks a good deal looser than his earlier style. Did Stan have him stretched a bit thin, or was this a deliberate moved towards a more Alex Toth-like style? Included here is a scan of Maneely's 1955 Black Knight, for comparison.

WHO THE HECK IS JOE MANEELY?

Joe Maneely was born in Philadelphia, PA on 18 Feb 1926, to Robert and Gertrude Maneely. While at Northeast Catholic High School he created the school's mascot, The Red Falcon, and featured the character in a strip he drew for the school's newspaper. He dropped out of high school before graduating to join the US Navy. He served three years as a specialist, contributing cartoons to ships' newspapers.

Joe Maneely began at Street & Smith by drawing the feature "Tao Anwar" in Red Dragon Comics 5 (Oct 1948). Very soon after, Maneely joined Timely and began on western titles, drawing "The Kansas Massacre of 1864" in Western Outlaws and Sheriffs 60 (Dec 1949).

Once out of the Navy he trained at Hussain School of Art under a G.I. ticket, then entered the advertising department of the Philadelphia Bulletin. In 1948, he began freelancing for Street and Smith on the features Mario Nette and Red Dragon in Red Dragon Comics.

Towards the end of 1948, Maneely began freelancing for Timely, drawing the story "The Kansas Massacre of 1864" for Western Outlaws and Sheriffs 60 (Dec 1949).

Maneely's second job for Timely was in the first issue of Black Rider (Mar 1950). By 1958, he was drawing just about every kind of feature for Atlas, and he was Stan Lee's go-to artist for reviving the fortunes of Two-Gun Kid, drawing the revised origin of the character in issue 41 (Apr 1958).

Over the next couple of years, Maneely became a favourite of editor Stan Lee, because he could turn his hand to any style and deliver quality work very quickly - he was rumoured to be able to pencil and ink seven pages in a day - war, horror, romance, science fiction, Maneely could draw it all.

A sample of Joe Maneely's prodigious output of art - pencils and inks - created for the June 1955 cover-dated Atlas comics alone. Not pictured, a further 42 pages of comic strip material for Cowboy Action, Navy Action and Wild Western. Click on image to enlarge.

The same month that Maneely was drawing Black Knight 1 (Jun 1955), which contained three stories running to 23 comic strip pages, plus the cover, he also drew:

• Annie Oakley 5 - cover
• Apache Kid 14 - cover
• Battle Action 17 - cover
• Cowboy Action 6 - "No Law in Durado" (7pgs) + cover
• Jungle Action 5 - cover
• Lorna the Jungle Girl 13 - cover
• Marines in Action 1 - cover
• Navy Action 6 - "Battleship Burke" (6pgs) + cover
• Navy Combat 1 "Hit and Run" + cover
• Outlaw Kid 5 - cover
• Rawhide Kid 2 - cover
• Ringo Kid Western 6 - cover
• Rugged Action 4 - cover
• Strange Tales 36 - cover
• Western Kid 4 - cover
• Western Outlaws 4 - cover
• Wild Western 43 - Ringo Kid in "Hutch Hammer" (6pgs)

That's 18 covers, plus the 23 pages in Black Knight 1 and a further 19 pages of comic strip art for war and western titles - a total of 60 pages of drawing, surely some kind of record for comic art.

John Romita told Roy Thomas a story in an interview for Alter Ego magazine that indicates Stan Lee was getting Maneely to help other Atlas artists the way he would with Jack Kirby ten years later on the Marvel books. "Stan calls up Joe Maneely and tells him, 'I'm going to send this guy out to spend a day with you. Give him as many pointers as possible.' And the next day, I went out to Flushing, probably from 10:30 in the morning until about 4:30 in the afternoon. I watched Maneely; and while he's talking to me, giving me pointers, he turned out like two or three pages, one double-spread with an entire pioneer fort in Indian country with Indians attacking from the outside, and guys shooting from the inside.

An example of Maneely's finely detailed inking work, for Battle Action 23 (Jun 1956). Hard to believe he worked from the simplest of pencils. Click on the image to enlarge.

"Maneely is the first guy I realised could put in bone structure with a pen line," Romita continued. "In other words, he didn't make everything round. He had these nice bone structure prominences on people's faces and clothing. The word 'crisp' immediately popped into my mind. He would do the whole thing with a thin pen line; then he would take a big, bold brush and do all the blacks. And for years after that I worked that way. I was a brush man at heart, but I couldn't stop working the way he did for a while.

Marvel artist Herb Trimpe also reported that Marie Severin had described Maneely's pencil work as, "almost nonexistent; they were like rough, lightly done layouts with no features on the faces ... It was just like ovals and sticks and stuff, and he inked from that. He drew when he inked. That's when he did the work, in the inking!"

The Black Knight, co-created by Stan Lee and Maneely, took superhero tropes and transferred them to medieval England. Maneely's art had a classical quality, making it look like etchings rather than ink drawings. It was an interesting experiment, even though the title only lasted five issues.

Maneely is chiefly remembered for co-creating The Black Knight, with Stan Lee and The Yellow Claw, with writer Al Feldstein. He also created The Ringo Kid, and drew every issue from 1-21 (Aug 1954 - Sep 1957).

Interviewed in 2002, longtime Marvel colourist Stan Goldberg remembered Joe Maneely as, "the best artist that ever drew comics. Joe wasn't just a great craftsman; he worked so fast and he was one of the few artists who could go from drawing the Black Knight to drawing Petey the Pest, or a war story. He had an unbelievable knack and he was just one sweet, nice guy."

The Yellow Claw was created by Maneely and writer Al Feldstein of EC and Mad fame. A knock-off of Fu Manchu, the character was drawn by Maneely for just the first issue. Subsequent issues were pencilled by Jack Kirby and the title was cancelled with issue 4 (Apr 1957).

When the Great Atlas Crash of 1957 came along, Maneely along with the rest of the Atlas staff was let go. He'd continue to draw Mrs Lyons' Cubs for the Chicago Sun-Times Syndicate strip, along with some work for DC's House of Secrets and Tales of the Unexpected, as well as Charlton and Crestwood.

The original art for the 23 Mar 1958 Sunday page of Mrs Lyons' Cubs, a newspaper strip written by Stan Lee and drawn by Joe Maneely. After Maneely's death, the strip limped on with Al Hartley art, but without Maneely, the strip lasted only three more months.

On the night of 7 June 1958, Maneely had supper with fellow Atlas alumni John Severin and George Ward in Manhattan. Somewhere along the way, he'd lost his glasses and, while trying to move between moving railway carriages, slipped, fell and was killed on the tracks. 

"Joe [told] me that he'd been in the city the week before and had lost his glasses," recalled Stan Goldberg. "He didn't even know how he'd gotten home that day. So this day came and he went out drinking and went out to get some air between the trains, and he fell off the train. When they found him, he was still clutching his portfolio. I remember Danny Crespi calling me on Saturday morning to break the news. The family had a rough time after he died. The Maneelys had daughters and a lot of bills. They had just bought a big house, too, and didn't have any money put away."

His last published story was a five-page Ringo Kid story for Gunsmoke Western 53 (Jul 1959).

Joe Maneely: 18 Feb 1926 - 7 Jun 1958

Stan has been quoted many times as saying, "he would have been another Jack Kirby. He would have been the best you could imagine." I don't think it's too big a stretch to say that if Maneely hadn't died in 1958, there's every likelihood that Stan wouldn't have needed to hire Jack Kirby to take up the slack. And the course of Marvel Comics might have looked very different indeed.

BACK TO THE TWO-GUN KID

After Maneely's last issue, Two-Gun Kid 44 (Oct 1958), there were a couple of fill-in issues by Jack Davis, one by Matt Baker and another by Al Hartley, then John Severin took over as the regular penciller on the Two-Gun Kid stories, from issues 49 - 57 (Aug 1959 - Dec 1960), working from Stan Lee scripts.

John Severin, brother of famed EC colourist Marie, had enjoyed a stellar career in the mid-1950s as one of Harvey Kurtzman's go-to artists for his historical war comics Two Fisted Tales and Frontline Combat. With the collapse of EC, Severin found himself toiling for much lower page-rates at Atlas

There's no published sales figures for Two-Gun Kid, but I suspect readers were finding the title a bit stale, compared to stablemate Kid Colt Outlaw. Severin's art was very slick, if not quite up to the standard of his EC work. That Stan paid a good deal less than Bill Gaines might have been a factor. So, in an effort to goose the sales, Stan first took John Severin off the cover art chores and assigned Jack Kirby instead. And when this didn't seem to have the desired effect, Stan took the unprecedented step of firing Severin from the title entirely and replacing him with Kirby on the interior art as well. Severin wouldn't work for Marvel again for five years.

"Hey, Stan," said Marty Goodman. "Monsters are selling real well. Have Kirby do a monster story for Two-Gun Kid ... see if we can get that puppy back up on its feet." No wonder Stan was getting frustrated and dejected at Marvel by mid-1961 ...

Kirby had been providing covers for many of the fledgling Marvel's titles since he'd arrived at the company at the end of 1958, a few weeks after the death of Joe Maneely. Because of Marvel's lower rates, Kirby was drawing everything Stan offered him, sometimes just knocking out the art for the money. But not even Jack Kirby could save the title and Two-Gun Kid was cancelled just two issues later, with issue 59 (Apr 1961).

But that wasn't the end of The Two-Gun Kid, at least not of that nom-de-guerre. A year and a half later, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby would revive the character, though not the Clay Harder version, in the all-new Two-Gun Kid. But that's a story for next time ...

Next: The Return of the Two-Gun Kid