Yet more Marvel Cowboys - Ghost Rider: Part 2

THE GHOST RIDER HAD ENJOYED A LONG RUN at his original home, Vin Sullivan's Magazine Enterprises, from late 1949 right through to the spring of 1955, in a variety of titles: Tim Holt (which became Red Mask), Best of the West, Bobby Benson and, of course, his own title The Ghost Rider. Dick Ayers, later to be one of Jack Kirby's most important Marvel inkers during the early 1960s, was the artist on every single episode of the character. So when comics fan Roy Thomas landed a job at Marvel Comics in 1965 as Stan Lee's assistant, he brought with him a broad knowledge of characters from earlier periods of comics, some of which he'd revive over his first few years at Marvel.

Marvel version of The Ghost Rider was pretty much identical to the Magazine Enterprises original, including the artist Dick Ayers.

The Ghost Rider had been one of Thomas' favourite comics when he was a kid so, figuring that the character had fallen out of copyright, Thomas pitched the idea of a revival to Stan, with Dick Ayers as the artist. It was a bit of a no-brainer.

WHO THE HECK IS ROY THOMAS?

Roy William Thomas Jr was born in Jackson, Missouri on 22 November 1940. An enthusiastic comic fan from his earliest years, Thomas would write and drawn his own strips and circulate them to friends. While studying for his degree at Southeast Missouri State University, he became involved in organised comic fandom through pioneer fanzine publisher Jerry Bails. The burgeoning DC superhero revival of the early 1960s led to Bails' fanzine Alter Ego, which Thomas took over in 1964. During those first years of the 1960s, Thomas had letters published in Green Lantern 1 (Aug 1960), The Flash 116 (Nov 1960), Fantastic Four 5 (Jul 1962), Fantastic Four 15 (Jun 1963) and Fantastic Four 22 (Jan 1964).

Alter Ego, then and now: The first issue appeared in 1961, edited by Jerry Bails with cover art by Roy Thomas. The fanzine went through a few stops and starts, but is still published today.

In 1965, Roy Thomas was offered a trial position as editorial assistant to DC's Dark Overlord Mort Weisinger. It wasn't a happy experience. Weisinger was notorious for being rude and abrasive and, coming from a background in education, this wasn't what Thomas was expecting. After a day's haranguing from Weisinger, Thomas told The Comics Journal in 1981 that, "I actually remember going to my dingy little room at the George Washington Hotel in Manhattan, during that second week, and actually feeling tears well into my eyes, at the ripe old age of 24. I've never done that over a job, before or since, but Mort really got to me."

That same week, Thomas wrote a letter to Stan Lee at Marvel Comics. "Not applying for a job or anything ... I just said that I admired his work." Stan remembered Thomas from his work on the Alter Ego fanzine and called Roy the next day. "He just asked me - on the phone - if I'd be interested in trying a writers' test Marvel gave." So Thomas went up to the Marvel office and collected the test pages from Flo Steinberg. That evening "I returned to my hotel room and banged out a few pages of dialogue for some Fantastic Four pages - they were from the conclusion of Annual 2, as I recall - and turned them in the next day."

Thomas got a call from Flo asking him if he could stop by the Marvel offices and meet Stan. "The previous day or so, Mort had been in rare form, so I guess I was ripe without knowing it. Ten minutes after I met Stan, he asked me what he had to do to get me away from DC. I was surprised to find myself telling him that all he had to do was offer me the $110 a week Mort had offered me when I was back in Missouri, but which had dropped to $100 a week, mysteriously, when I actually showed up. I also told Stan I'd have to give Mort indefinite notice, since I didn't want to leave him in the lurch. As it turned out, that was beside the point, because the minute I told Mort he ordered me out of the DC offices. I was back at Marvel less than an hour after I first left, and had a Modelling with Millie assignment (44, Dec 1965) to do over the weekend. It was a Friday."

Though earlier, Stan Lee seemed reluctant to release Marvel staples like Millie (and the westerns) to other scripters, as he became more confident of the success of the superheroes he handed the teen titles over to other writers.

From there, Roy Thomas became a staff writer at Marvel, starting with a few issues of Millie the Model, Modelling with Millie and Patsy and Hedy. "I wasn't hired as an editor or assistant editor." Thomas wrote in Marvel Age of Comics, in 2022. "I was supposed to come in 40 hours a week and write scripts on staff. I sat at this corrugated metal desk with a typewriter in a small office with production manager Sol Brodsky and corresponding secretary Flo Steinberg. Everybody who came up to Marvel wound up there, and the phone was constantly ringing, with conversations going on all around me. Almost at once, even though Stan proofed all the finished stories, he and Sol started having me check the corrections before they went out, and that would break up my concentration still further [and] they kept asking me to do this or that, or questions like in which issue something happened, or Stan would come in to check something, because I knew a lot about Marvel continuity up to that time. It quickly became apparent to them, too, that the staff writer thing wasn't working, and Stan segued me over to being an editorial assistant, which immediately worked out better for all concerned."

Once Stan was confident that Thomas was able to mimic the Marvel style, he moved Thomas up to Sgt Fury, starting with issue 29 (Apr 1966), and X-Men from issue 20 (May 1966).

Thomas would script just a year's worth of issues of Sgt Fury, but he stuck with The X-Men for the rest of the run, and was instrumental in reviving the team as The New X-Men in 1975.

It wouldn't be long before Thomas started his legendary run scripting The Avengers, starting with issue 35 (Aug 1966), which would last till issue 104 (Oct 1972). During those six years, Thomas added Hercules to the lineup, created The Red Guardian (The Black Widow's husband), introduced a new Black Knight, revived the Golden Age hero The Vision, added the Black Panther to the lineup, and gave us the Kree-Skrull war. Artists that Thomas managed to attract to the title included John Buscema (notably the run between 55 and 62, with sublime inks from George Klein), Barry Smith and Neal Adams.

Though Thomas would work with many super-star artists during his run scripting The Avengers, I still have a real soft-spot for Don Heck's work on the title.

Back in 1966, Thomas had been scouting around, looking for other writers to bring in to Marvel. His first success was in getting Stan to hire Gary Friedrich. Thomas then went after Denny O'Neill, who had been writing a series on the burgeoning comics industry for a local Missouri newspaper. Roy pretty quickly handed Millie the Model off to Denny and Sgt Fury to Gary. And it was probably about this time that Thomas started pitching the idea of a Ghost Rider revival to Stan.

THE GHOST RIDER HAS RISEN FROM THE GRAVE

Fast forward ten years and with the co-creator of Ghost Rider, Dick Ayers, safely ensconced at Marvel Comics, Roy Thomas pitched his first revival idea at Stan Lee. The Magazine Enterprises character The Ghost Rider hadn't been maintained as property by ME owner Vin Sullivan and, legally at least, was up for grabs. With a green light from Stan. Roy got together with his own protege Gary Friedrich and concocted a revised version of the classic western hero.

By this point in his career, Dick Ayers had developed into a very slick artist, even if he wore his Kirby influences on his sleeve. Shame about the unsympathetic Vince Colletta inks, though.

This Ghost Rider starts out as teacher Carter Slade, who's been hired to educate the children of Pitchfork, Missouri. As he approaches the town he witnesses an attack on a homestead by "indians". He does his best to fight them off, managing to reveal them as white men in disguise, but is shot and left for dead by his attackers. However, the homesteaders' young son, Jamie Jacobs, has survived the attack and tries valiantly to get the injured Slade to the town doctor. On the point of collapse, Jamie is discovered by genuine Indians and taken back to their medicine man Flaming Star. Against all odds Slade survives and Flaming Star takes this as a sign that Slade has been spared by the spirits for some greater destiny as "He Who Rides the Night Winds".

In the space of a few pages, Carter Slade tames an untameable wild bronco, adopts Jamie and demonstrates his new glowing meteor dust ... which I suppose from a health and safety point of view is better than Rex Fury's phosphorous powder.

And with that, Flaming Star gives Carter Slade a Cloak of Brightest Night, some glowing meteor dust and then guides him to a wild white stallion that Carter must tame for himself. It just remains for Slade to deal with Jason Bartholomew, the illegal sponsor of the "indians" who are trying to drive the homesteaders away.

That's some wordy exposition page right there. I have to wonder how much cutting up of the art board did the Marvel production department have to do to fit in all that verbiage.

It's an okay origin story, which pretty much follows the debut of the 1950s version, land-grabbing ranch-owner, fake indians and all. It is a bit dialogue heavy, but this is right at the start of Thomas' and Friedrich's writing careers, so they can be cut some slack for that. The inclusion of the kid sidekick indicates to me that Marvel was still chasing the ten-year old audience, and the addition of a love interest in the shape of the lovely Natalie Brooks - coincidentally the sister of the socially hostile Ben Brooks - has Stan Lee's fingerprints all over it.

Ladies and gentlemen, the lovely Natalie Brooks.

The 17-page Ghost Rider story is topped up with a six-page reprint from Kid Colt Outlaw 105 (Jul 1962), and Stan takes a paragraph on the Bullpen age to plug Ghost Rider and the other three Marvel western titles.

The Bullpen Bulletin page for February 1967, with an illustrated plug for the first issue of Ghost Rider - click image to enlarge.

It does seem a bit cautious to invest in only 17 pages of new script and art in the debut issue as though Stan, or more likely publisher Martin Goodman, isn't confident the book will sell enough copies. Though the Ghost Rider page count would increase later, the caution wasn't altogether unfounded.

As if the concept of The Ghost Rider wasn't gimmicky enough in the first pace, Marvel decided to pit him against equally gimmicky villains. The Tarantula was the first in a line of several, and would even return in a later issue.

With the second issue, Ghost Rider began to feature costumed or super-powered foes. The story starts with the Ghost Rider running off a gang of cattle rustlers using his customary tactics of pretending to be a headless horseman, making spooky talk ("Begone, servants of evil, lest you taste the vengeance of he who rides the night winds.") then fading into the night. After that skelping, Bart and his gang of rustlers decide it's better to find another territory, where the pickings might be a little easier. As they're packing up, another mysterious figure, The Tarantula, appears and tells them that they are running from a fake ghost. If they join him, he'll finish The Ghost Rider and they can run the entire state. 

The next night, The Tarantula and his gang show up in the town of Bison Bend and demand $100 per family for his "protection". Only Natalie's brother Ben stands up to the gang and is knocked down by one of their horses for his trouble. But as The Tarantula and his gang ride off, The Ghost Rider appears and shoots the guns from their hands. And even though The Tarantula uses his whip to bring down a building on top of The Ghost Rider, our hero emerges unscathed. In desperation, The Tarantula grabs Natalie as a hostage, but The Ghost Rider frees her with his near-invisible Lariat of Darkness, making look like the girl is flying from the villain's grasp. With young Jamie projecting an image of The Ghost Rider from the shadows so GR appears to be in two places at once, The Tarantula finally admits defeat and flees.

There were a couple of other interesting details in the issue. We're briefly introduced to Clay Rider, Natalie's fiance. He pops up in one scene and then disappears from the story, leading me to suspect that he may be The Tarantula - or at least that Gary Friedrich wanted us to think he might be. Next, Friedrich lines up Ben Brooks - who we know is deeply sceptical of The Ghost Rider's motives - to be the new sheriff of Bison Bend, which could spell trouble for Carter Slade. And, of course, in the darkness The Tarantula gives The Ghost Rider the slip, teeing him up for a return match.

Calling the villain The Cougar is doubly misleading. For one thing, he's not a costumed villain in the traditional sense and, for another, he's not actually the bad guy ... his brother in law is.

The Ghost Rider 3 (Jun 1967) gave us a new novelty villain, The Cougar, in reality circus trainer Adano Adriani, who comes complete with a Chico Marx comedy Italian accent. Adriani is a reformed crook now working for Mr Barton the owner of the Barton Brothers Circus, though it's never made clear which Barton Brother he is. When Barton is killed and the box office takings pilfered, Adriani inevitably becomes the prime suspect. But The Ghost Rider doesn't believe the animal trainer to be guilty and breaks him out of jail to try to prove his innocence. It's not really clear why The Ghost Rider needs Adriani out of jail. He could quite as easily investigate the case with Adriani safe from harm in his jail cell. Anyway, Sheriff Ben Brooks believes the Ghost Rider to be involved, despite the compete lack of evidence. The real culprit turns out to be the no-good brother, Philip, of Adriani's adoring wife. Killer unmasked, The Ghost Rider fades into the night, leaving Sheriff Brooks gnashing his teeth and the lovely Natalie wishing her brother would go easier on The Ghost Rider.

We also get to see Natalie's sketchy fiance again in one scene, his name now mysteriously changed from Clay Rider to Clay Riley, though Friedrich doesn't give him anything to do apart from hang around and look smarmy. I sure hoped Gary was going somewhere with this ...

This issue gives us two costumed baddies for the price of one. Main villain The Stingray fought Rawhide Kid the previous month under the name The Scorpion ... then a old foe turns up to save The Ghost Rider from the Sheriff's gunfire.

The fourth (Aug 1967) issue of The Ghost Rider featured the return of The Scorpion, actually an old villain who had appeared the previous month in Rawhide Kid 57, but now under a new name, The Stingray.

Bison Bend teacher Carter Slade is hosting a dance to raise money for school textbooks, when The Stingray grabs the takings and flees, pursued by Sheriff Ben Brooks' posse. But instead of chasing the real thief, stubborn Brooks leads his deputies in pursuit of The Ghost Rider instead, letting The Scorpio get away. The next night, while the posse set out in search of the Ghost Rider (again), The Scorpion takes the lovely Natalie Brooks hostage (again). But The Ghost Rider has witnessed the abduction and captures The Stingray, unmasking him as the town druggist, Jim Evans (unnamed here, but I looked it up in Rawhide Kid 57). At that very moment, the Sheriff and his posse show up, forcing The Ghost Rider to flee. Then just as the Sheriff aims at the Ghost Rider's back, The Tarantula shows up and disarms Brooks, claiming to be protecting his "friend", further deepening Brooks' distrust of The Ghost Rider.

He's back ... the man with the fake Spanish accent. This time claiming that he and The Ghost Rider are partners. Just what is his game? Will we ever find out?

As readers might have suspected, the fifth issue (Sep 1967) of The Ghost Rider features the return of the whip-wielding Tarantula, still claiming to be the partner of GR. In the opening scene, The Tarantula robs the Bison Bend bank and rides off after shouting that he has to go and divide his take with his partner The Ghost Rider. The townsfolk, disappointed that Sheriff Brooks didn't stop the robbery decide to offer a reward for the capture of The Ghost Rider. For some reason this really upsets the lovely Natalie Brooks. Later that night, The Tarantula finally uncovers the location of The Ghost Cave, and ponders that it's only a matter of time before he figures out who The Ghost Rider really is.

Back at Bison Bend, Sheriff Brooks has a surprise visitor - Federal Marshall Lance Sterling, who says he's been sent to help track down The Ghost Rider ... and if you think Brooks is obsessed with catching The Ghost Rider, well you just haven't met Lance Sterling yet. Later that night, The Ghost Rider confronts Sheriff Brooks trying to convince him that they're on the same side. But the conversation is interrupted when The Tarantula sets fire to the town jail. The distraction allows Brook to draw on the Ghost Rider, but the lovely Natalie tries to protect The Ghost Rider and is shot by her own brother. 

Though this is a book-length story, I strongly suspect it was drawn first as a 17-pager and Stan just had Dick Ayers add these two pages to extend the story to full-length.

The showdown between The Tarantula and The Ghost Rider is a bit of a let down. Though The Tarantula defeats The Ghost Rider, he develops sudden amnesia and rides off without unmasking his fallen foe. We don't learn who The Tarantula really is, though some of the things he says indicate that he is a citizen of Bison Bend, and none of them in a Spanish accent.

The sixth issue of The Ghost Rider takes us back to the village where Carter Slade first received his mission from Indian medicine man, Flaming Star.

The Ghost Rider 6 (Oct 1967) is a bit of a change in direction. Summoned to the Indian village by his benefactor Flaming Star, the Ghost Rider is given a powerful amulet - The Spirit Stone, a piece of the meteor that foretold of his coming - which bestows great strength on the wearer. But as he leaves the village, The Ghost Rider is shot in the back by disgruntled brave, Towering Oak, who covets The Spirit Stone for himself. Towering Oak takes the Stone then, back at the Indian village, confronts Flaming Star and the other braves. Though he claims to be The Stone's rightful owner, Flaming Star tells him that the ownership can only be determined via trial by combat, setting the stage for a showdown.

Meanwhile, Carter Slade is riding to find out how the lovely Natalie Brooks is doing, after being accidentally shot by her brother in the last issue. But he's flagged down by one of the Indian braves with a summons from Flaming Star. Putting his visit to Natalie on hold, he changes to The Ghost Rider and heads for the Indian village and his showdown with Towering Oak. Of course Towering Oak is defeated when The Spirit Stone extracts its toll on his body and kills him mid-battle. The Stone will be interred with Towering Oak's remains, never to be used by mortal man again.

Thankfully, no Vince Colletta inking this issue but, to be fair, George Roussos isn't much of an improvement. I think I preferred this story over the costumed villain tales Gary Friedrich had been pitching us since issue 2. This explores the native American lore behind the Ghost Rider a bit more, even though it's not exactly The Teachings of Don Juan.

This was the last issue of The Ghost Rider, though the next story "Hurricane" was announced below the story's final panel. "Hurricane" would be published, two years later, and another Marvel western title.

The final issue, Ghost Rider 7 (Nov 1967), opens with the lovely Natalie Brooks making the perilous journey to Denver for the operation that might allow her to walk again, accompanied by two of the three men in the world who love her most - her brother Ben and her fiance Clay Rider/Riley. Even now, Ben is a bit twisted out of shape, blaming The Ghost Rider for Natalie's shooting. But, Ben mate ... you pulled the trigger. Take some accountability, for goodness sake.

Shadowing the covered wagon is Carter Slade, aka The Ghost Rider. Like Ben Brooks, he's also a bit confused about who's responsible for Natalie's condition. Suddenly, Slade is set upon by a crazed "Mountain Man", who doesn't care much for intruders, and is taken prisoner. Meanwhile, Ben and Clay decide to take shelter in a nearby cave against the gathering snowstorm. It's not long before Mountain Man arrives to take care of these intruders, too. But when he sees Natalie, he has a meltdown, mistaking her for his long-lost love, Melinda.

There's an unnecessary scene where The Ghost Rider tries to convince Ben to work with him against Mountain Man to save Natalie - it doesn't go well. The Ghost Rider returns to Mountain Man's shack, reveals the crazed hermit's real name - Zebediah Jones - and his back story. The old man's mind had become unhinged when his wife was killed in an Indian massacre years before. Zebediah dies saving Natalie when the roof of his cabin collapses. The Ghost Rider takes over the transporting of Natalie to Denver for her operation.

It's a very odd story, full of forced coincidences and random events that exist only to move the plot forward. The scene where The Ghost Rider tries to convince Ben to put their differences to one side for Natalie's sake seems awfully like padding to fill out the 17-page tale to length.

Not sure what's going on with Herb Trimpe's inking here, but it looks like he did it in the dark with a ballpoint pen.

The cancellation of the title must have been sudden, because not only does the final panel of the story trail the next adventure, "Hurricane", but there's also no mention that this is the last issue on the letters page, usually one of the last items to be prepared for press.

So, it's a mystery ... we can only guess that Ghost Rider was cancelled suddenly and because of poor sales, despite the claim in one of the replies that the title is a "smash sensation". Click image to expand.

While I loved the concept (pretty much identical to the original Magazine Enterprises series from the 1950s), I have to admit that the stories and scripting could have been a lot better. Gary Friedrich was very likely directed to pit The Ghost Rider against costumed villains to give the series a superhero slant, but I think that's at odds with the core premise of the character. I think it would have been more effective if at least some of the stories had used fake supernatural menaces, in the same way that the ME original did, so we could enjoy the spectacle of a fake supernatural character exposing other "supernatural" characters as fakes.

When The Ghost Rider returns, the lovely Natalie has been lying in a hospital bed for two years. A series of unlikely plot twists bring us to the point where The Ghost Rider unmasks an unconscious Tarantula, and ...

But what I didn't know, until I did the research for this blog entry, was that The Ghost Rider did rise from the grave one more time, in the Bronze Age title Western Gunfighters, with the advertised story "Hurricane" appearing in issue 3. Quite why editor Stan Lee decided not to pick up exactly where The Ghost Rider title had left off I couldn't say. Perhaps he thought the resolution of The Tarantula storyline was a bigger pull. Anyhow, the lovely Natalie Brooks is recovering in her hospital bed in Denver while brother Ben and fiance Clay stand anxiously by. A little later, in the shadows outside Natalie's room, lurks Carter Slade, and we're reminded that all three men blame themselves for Natalie's plight. Suddenly - everything seems to happen suddenly in this strip - The Tarantula appears, knocks Carter to the ground and then flees.

"An hour later" The Ghost Rider has tracked The Tarantula down to his hotel room - no explanation is given for how Carter found The Tarantula. There's a five page fight in which The Tarantula is knocked out and The Ghost Rider unmasks him to reveal ... well, we'll have to wait for the next issue to discover the identity of The Ghost Rider's only recurring villain. I mean, I guessed ages ago - did you?

The Great Unmasking is a bit of a damp squib. I'm pretty sure the readers were way ahead of the scripters in this case. Especially if they'd read Amazing Spider-Man 39 (Aug 1966).

The Ghost Rider story in Western Gunfighters 2 (Oct 1970) picks up a the exact moment where the last episode finished. The Ghost Rider is standing over the unconscious form of Clay Riley, who's just been unmasked as The Tarantula. Suddenly Sheriff Ben Brooks crashes through the door and ... refuses to believe the evidence of his own eyes. His friend Clay could never be a criminal. It must be some sort of frame-up ...

Realising his case is hopeless, The Ghost Rider shoots out the oil lamp in the room (again? He already did that last episode), loads Riley onto a horse and disappears into the night. Once clear of town, The Ghost Rider pauses to reflect on his best course of action. It'll be hard to prove to a Marshall that Riley is really the Tarantula. Momentarily distracted by his pondering The Ghost Rider fails to notice that Riley has recovered and is now springing at him, despite Clay's hands being tied behind his back. A tussle ensues.

Meanwhile back at the hospital, perhaps alerted by some sixth sense, the lovely Natalie Brooks awakes from her coma, calling Clay's name. The doctors confirm that not only is she awake but the operation to restore her ability to walk has been a success. Back at the fight, Clay doesn't fare so well. Knocked off a handy cliff by The Ghost Rider, Clay lands on his head and appears to forget that he is The Tarantula.

Though the artwork by Dick Ayers and Tom Sutton is a big improvement over the Ayers/Colletta combination seen in GR's own book, this scripting is tired, coincidence- driven stuff - Gary Friedrich is capable of much better work than this. It's as though his heart wasn't in it. Perhaps this was a filler mandated by Stan to bring readers up to speed before continuing with the actual next story in the series, "Hurricane", announced at the end of Ghost Rider 7.

Harry Kane the Hurricane, for all his speed, isn't much of a threat to the mighty Ghost Rider. In fact, you could say he's a bit of a pushover ...

It would have been scheduled for at least 17 pages if it had appeared as originally intended in The Ghost Rider 8, but in this incarnation, it ended up as a 10-pager. Consequently, Gary Friedrich gallops through the plot every bit as quickly as the story's villain Hurricane. Not that there's a great deal of plot to gallop through.

Stan doesn't seem to recall which issue of Two-Gun Kid that The Hurricane originally appeared in ... but we know, don't we, readers? It was issue 70 (Jul 1964).

While Harry Kane, aka The Hurricane, is trying out his powers in the desert, he's spotted by Carter Slade, who's taking the lovely Natalie Brooks to Denver for her operation (it's a flashback, you see). Kane doesn't want any witnesses to his powers so decides to find out how much Carter knows. There's a bit of pushing and shoving and Kane discovers the Ghost Rider costume hidden in Carter's wagon. No match for Kane's speed, Carter is trussed up with rope and hurled off a handy cliff. Kane then turns his murderous attention on the lovely Natalie Brooks. Just as he's about to shoot the helpless girl, The Ghost Rider appears (isn't his costume still hidden in the wagon?) ... Kane charges at The Ghost Rider at full speed and right over the cliff he'd chucked GR over just moments before.

I'd rather have seen Friedrich spend a little more time on this and perhaps present it as a two-parter. As it stands, The Hurricane has hardly made an appearance before he's despatched by The Ghost Rider, which gives the whole thing the feel of a filler.

The story's padded out with three splash pages, which leaves us just seven pages for actually telling the story. Nice image of The Ghost Rider by Ayers, though.

Western Gunfighters 4 (Feb 1971) pits The Ghost Rider again another of Marvel's b-western heroes, The Gunhawk. When a low-rent gunman tries to bushwhack The Gunhawk, The Ghost Rider intervenes and sends the ambusher packing. That takes up the first eight pages of the story. The Gunhawk isn't fooled by The Ghost Rider's spook act and announces that he's in the area to claim the bounty on The Ghost Rider's head. The final page shows us the return of Ben Brooks and the now-amnesiac Clay Riley (aka The Tarantula) to the small town of Bison Bend. Fortunately, this is a two-parter, so we should get some more story next time.

With art by a pre-Conan Barry Smith and a script by Steve Parkhouse (better known now as the artist on Resident Alien), Outcast is an intriguing concept that never got a second outing.

One interesting aside about Western Gunfighters 4 is the inventory story "Outcast"  drawn by Barry Smith back in 1968 and scripted by my old friend and collaborator Steve Parkhouse. It's an interesting premise about the nameless protagonist, raised by native Americans after his parents are killed during an Indian raid, searching for his identity.

The wind-up of the confrontation between The Ghost Rider and The Gunhawk ends as you might expect, with each man finding a level or respect for the other. At least The Gunhawk won't let Ben Brooks shoot The Ghost Rider in the back.

Marvel made us wait four months for the next instalment in the Ghost Rider/Gunhawk battle. But the Ghost Rider story in Western Gunfighters 5 (Jun 1971) wasn't written by Gary Friedrich. For some reason he left it to Len Wein to resolve the tale. Though it's not unsatisfying for that. The Gunhawk arrives in Bison Bend looking to collect the town's bounty on GR. Even so, Sheriff Ben Brooks doesn't want any gunplay in his town and warns The Gunhawk off the rough stuff. Inevitably, the two antagonists face off in the main street in the middle of the night. But before a shot can be fired, some crooks dynamite the town bank. The Ghost Rider is the first on the scene and exchanges gunfire with the bad guys. The Gunhawk and Sheriff Brooks arrive and join the battle. But after The Ghost Rider saves his life by shooting one of the bad guys, The Gunhawk decides that he'll leave GR be, as he appears to be not such a bad guy after all.

You don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out who's behind all the kidnappings of influential citizens in Bison Bend. Not with a character called Reverend Reaper around.

Len Wein continues as the script in Western Gunfighters 6 (Sep 1971). The plot is fairly straightforward. Someone is kidnapping the officials of Bison Bend. When they try to abduct Carter Slade, the attempt is foiled by the timely arrival of Carter's big brother Lincoln, now a federal marshal. The only one not kidnapped so far is the town pastor, Reverend Reaper. That name and the fact we've never seen him before should tip you off to who is behind the kidnappings. Lincoln keeps watch on the parson, until he sees him ride off with some rough-looking characters. He follows, reasoning that the kidnappers will lead him to the rest of the captives. Lincoln trails them to an abandoned mine and goes in for a rescue. The Ghost Rider also turns up (though it's not explained how he found the mine) and in the battle, Sheriff Ben Brooks leads the captives to safety while Lincoln and The Ghost Rider polish off the bad guys. With the parson revealed as the mastermind, he kicks away the timbers supporting the mine roof and The Ghost Rider is buried in the cave-in.

Not a dream, not a hoax, not an imaginary story. The Ghost Rider really is dead in this issue. Though there would be more Ghost Riders ...

In the normal course of things, we'd expect that somehow The Ghost Rider would survive and continue his battle against wrong-doers. But The Ghost Rider tale in Western Gunfighters 7 (Jan 1972) was more of an epilogue than a continuation. What we actually get is the funeral of Carter Slade (yes, he really is dead) and a bit of back story from Jamie Jacobs (I was wondering whatever happened to him).

There would be other versions of The Ghost Rider later, but for this incarnation, that was it. Overall I enjoyed the series, both now and then. Often the execution didn't live up to the concept and in that respect, the series was let down by the writing which swerved between adequate and sub-par. Perhaps if editor Stan Lee had spent a little more time nurturing his apprentice scripters we might have seen a better result.

But coming right at the start of Marvel expansionist phase of the late 1960s, it's likely that Stan just didn't have the time. So we can just file The Ghost Rider under "interesting curiosities" and move on.

Next: The Split Covers of Marvel Comics

Yet More Marvel Cowboys - Ghost Rider: Part 1

OLD-TIME FANS TEND TO THINK OF GHOST RIDER as an obscure, short-lived cowboy character from Marvel's late 1960s expansion period. Unless you were born ten years later and think of the character as a motorcyclist with his head on fire. But what might not be quite so well-known is that the character first appeared in the late 1940s as the creation of a completely different publisher.

Though Dick Ayers drew all the Ghost Rider stories, somehow ME managed to get Frank Frazetta to draw a few of their covers.

The first Ghost Rider began as a backup feature in ME's (Magazine Enterprises) Tim Holt comic, which was a licensed title starring then popular western movie actor Tim Holt. Initially the character US Marshal Rex Fury posed as the timid, cloth-peddling Calico Kid and did his best, along with his comedy Chinese sidekick Sing-Song, to disrupt the criminal elements in the old West. 

The first two pages of the first Calico Kid story from Tim Holt 6 (May 1949).

After running in Tim Holt for five issues, ME's publisher Vincent Sullivan told Ayers, "We’re gonna have him be a different character. You think up the costume. We wanna call him the Ghost Rider, and he’ll have clothes that glow in the dark and all that ..." Though some sources credit writer Ray Krank and Dick Ayers with creating the Ghost Rider identity, Ayers himself said that it was mostly Sullivan's idea. Ayers elaborated on the story in an interview with Roy Thomas for Alter Ego. "Vin would come in and sit down and describe what he wanted in The Ghost Rider. He told me to go see Disney's Sleepy Hollow - Ichabod Crane, the Headless Horseman - and then he told me to play the Vaughn Monroe record, 'Ghost Riders in the Sky'."

In his first appearance in Tim Holt 11 (Nov 1949), The Ghost Rider didn't sport his trademark blank white facemask ... no explanation was given for his change of character or the ghostly theme.

"And then he started talking about what he wanted the guy wearing." The white costume came from either Sullivan or Ray Crank. "I don't know which one it was, Vin or Ray, thought that one up," Ayers told Alter Ego, "but I know they thought of the white and also said it glows in the dark, so we had to think of what made it glow. All we could think of was phosphorescence or phosphorus. And even the horse, we had to have him painted with phosphorus." Don't try this at home, kids.

Rex Fury had a lot of fun scaring the chaps off cowboys all over the West. Especially effective was the "talking through a log" routine.

Pretty much from his first appearance in Tim Holt 11, The Ghost Rider started acting like a supernatural being, a schtick that was later adopted by DC's The Creeper. Using simple tricks, Rex Fury tried to make his enemies think he was an unstoppable spirit of vengeance. It seemed to work quite well for him.

Over the first few issues of the run in Tim Holt, The Ghost Rider fought rustlers, fake indians and a gang who'd installed a weak sheriff so there'd be no one to stop their robbing. As the series progressed, The Ghost Rider's opponents became spookier, as he battled (fake) supernatural menaces in stories like "The Screaming Skeleton" in Tim Holt 20 (Nov 1950), "The Haunted Hangman" (issue 27, Dec 1951) and "The Headless Horsemen" (issue 28, Feb 1952) - and even faced a fake Ghost Rider in Tim Holt 25 (Aug 1951).

Iron Mask in Tim Holt 32 (Oct 1952); Iron Mask in Kid Colt 110 (May 1963); The Brain in Tim Holt 32; The Brain in Kid Colt 7 (Nov 1949).

A little later, Both Tim Holt and The Ghost Rider battled some opponents who were a bit super-villainy, like Iron Mask and The Brain. Interestingly, villains with the same names would also show up in the Silver Age run of Kid Colt - Outlaw, covered in this blog last time. And in a further bit of synchronicity, Dick Ayers was the inker on the cover art for the Kid Colt Iron Mask issue. Coincidence? Perhaps ...

The last Ghost Rider story was in Red Mask 50 (reprinted from Ghost Rider 2) where, presumably to comply with the new Comics Code rules, a nose and mouth were added to the character's usually blank face.

The series continued through the rest of the Tim Holt run until ME changed the title of the book to Red Mask with issue 42 (Jun 1954). The last Ghost Rider story was in issue 50 (Jul 1955), though the Red Mask book continued until issue 54 (Sep 1957).

Ghost Rider 1 (Aug 1950), art by Dick Ayers.

Somewhere in the middle of all that, Ghost Rider got his own book. With the first issue cover-dated August 1950, concurrent with Tim Holt 19, the series lasted 14 issues, with the last dated around October 1954 (which may have been the same month that Red Mask 44 came out). Quite why ME decided to change the parent book's title from Tim Holt to Red Mask isn't known, but my best guess would be it was so they wouldn't have to pay the movie actor to use his name any more.

After starting out as a funny animal cartoonist for the Pines publishing house, fledgling artistic genius Frank Frazetta got some of his earliest dramatic work drawing Ghost Rider covers for maverick comics publisher Magazine Enterprises.

But with the solo series, editor Ray Krank was free to feature The Ghost Rider in increasingly macabre situations on the covers of the spin-off series. After a glorious run on issues 2 - 5 by a young artist called Frank Frazetta the subsequent cover art, by Ghost Rider regular Dick Ayers, became more and more outlandish.

The steadily spookier covers on Ghost Rider might have had something to do with the rise of EC Comics in the early 1950s. But it also sort of makes sense to have a character called Ghost Rider at least appear to battle supernatural menaces.

It started off with a bunch of guys in white sheets - more Klan than spooks - and a brainy midget, but by issue 7, we were getting giant winged snakes, zombies and murder in the wax museum. Issue 8 gave us a haunted hotel, a haunted girl and dope-smoking murderers. These all turned out to be fakes (except for the dope smokers), the sort of stuff that Scooby-Doo and the gang would be up against in the cartoon series of the 1960s.

How did Vin Sullivan not get sued by Universal Pictures for his Frankenstein rip-off in Ghost Rider 10? Maybe the top brass at Universal didn't read comic books.

Ghost Rider 9 (Oct 1952) gave us a flying vulture man, a walking dead man and a town that seemed to be possessed by demons. Issue 10 went all-out with The Frankenstein Monster, a giant lizard man and a tiger demon. Things calmed down a little in Ghost Rider 11 (Mar 1953) with just a beautiful witch, a haunted portrait and snoopy reporter to deal with.

Ghost Rider 12 (May 1953) was the last of the horror covers on the title. The last two issues - still a little edgy - were more traditional in their subject matter.

The last couple of issues toned down the horror elements on their covers. By this time the anti-horror movement, spurred by Frederic Wertham's campaign in the newspapers and magazines of the period, may well have made Vin Sullivan a little cautious. That said, the supernatural shenanigans continued inside the book, at least for issue 13, with talking skeletons and a native American demon. With Ghost Rider 14 (undated, but probably early 1954), the final issue, things took a slightly more sedate turn, as though Publisher Vincent Sullivan was thinking about a new, safer direction for the character ....

Nevertheless, even after the cancellation of The Ghost Rider's own title, the character continued to battle his way through a horde of fake supernatural menaces in the pages of Tim Holt (and its continuation Red Mask) right the way up to issue 49 (May 1955). Then, with the effects of the anti-comics campaign really beginning to bite, the last Magazine Enterprises title Red Mask was cancelled with issue 53 (May 1956).

It would be ten years before The Ghost Rider would once again rise from the grave to terrorise bad guys across the West, this time at Marvel Comics under the sponsorship of Stan Lee's assistant editor Roy Thomas.

Next: Marvel's Ghost Rider (no, the other, other one)

Iron Man: The Golden Years

IRON MAN WAS MARVEL'S SEVENTH superhero series, debuting in Tales of Suspense 39 (Mar 1963, on sale 10 Dec 1962). Editor Stan Lee had taken to introducing his new cast of costumed characters in the existing monster titles, after Publisher Martin Goodman had been burned by the failure of The Hulk's own title earlier that year. Given how averse Goodman was to spending money unnecessarily - new titles had to be registered with the US Postal Service and there was a cost attached - he'd decreed "no new titles" until Marvel's new characters proved themselves.

Iron Man was originally coloured grey, presumably to make it obvious his suit was made of iron, but it didn't take Stan long to figure out that this would make the comic a bit drab ... so he did something about it in the following issue.

So after The Fantastic Four and The Hulk, Stan's new creations were assigned to the fantasy books: Spider-Man in Amazing Fantasy and Thor in Journey into Mystery (both Aug 1962), then The Human Torch in Strange Tales 101 and Ant-Man in Tales to Astonish 35 (both Sep 1962). By the time 1963 rolled round, the sales were improving on all the Marvel books, so Goodman gave the green light to reinstate The Amazing Spider-Man (in his own title), then add Sgt Fury, The Avengers, The X-Men and Daredevil to the roster.

The original spidermen, perched high above the New York City streets. By adding the hyphen, Stan made the expression different from its common usage and in the process created a term that could be trademarked.

What I'd noticed, even back then, was that Stan was using familiar terms for the names of his new superheroes. The expression "spiderman" was in common use in New York - it was the name given to the guys who worked on the skyscrapers, precariously working hundreds of feet above the Manhattan sidewalks. Thor, of course was already familiar to any schoolkid as the Viking God of Thunder. Daredevil was also a term in common usage, and "iron man" was often used to describe a particularly strong or tough sportsman.

Was Stan being especially clever by choosing names that were already familiar to his youthful audience, or was he just reacting positively when a familiar term he could use as a superhero name popped into his head? I guess we'll never know for sure, but it occurs to me that there's a pattern here and patterns are usually deliberate.

What I do know is that Stan, like any other creator, wasn't creating in a vacuum. Let's not get dragged in to another discussion here about who did what back in the early 1960s Marvel offices and allow that Stan, as editor, got to make the decisions about what characters were called, what they looked like and whether they were published or not. Probably with a bit of interference from Goodman. So it's extremely likely that Stan was getting inspiration from what he saw going on around him in magazines, newspapers and in movies and on television. I'm pretty sure he's said as much in various interviews.

The other thing he was consciously doing was building a line of super-characters who each had some defining flaw. With the Fantastic Four it was that they argued with each other - and with Ben Grimm in particular, it was that he just wanted to be human and not a monster. Spider-Man had the worst luck ever in his private life, dealing with bullying at school and caring for his sickly aunt, whose poor health was likely a result of the murder of her husband, Ben Parker. The Hulk was a tragic combination of Frankenstein's monster and Jekyll-and-Hyde, Daredevil's blind ... well, you get the idea.

So when it came to Iron Man, Stan took the idea of a man with a broken heart and combined it with the technology of the day to come up with something unique ...

THE MAN IN THE IRON VEST

One of the big health scares when I was a kid in the 1960s was poliomyelitis, more commonly known as polio. I knew at least one kid on our council estate who'd had it. It wasn't that rare to see children around 1963 wearing leg calipers as a result of the paralysis caused by polio. It was common in the United States too, with no less than President Franklin Roosevelt confined to a wheelchair by the disease.

Stan would have certainly been aware of polio, as it was common in the States from the beginning of the 20th century up until the US polio epidemic of 1952, and beyond.

An unknown polio victim from the 1950s with the characteristic leg-strengthening calipers.

In extreme cases, victims would experience paralysis of the diaphragm and would be unable to breath unaided. This lead to many spending some time in an Emerson mechanical respirator, colloquially know as an Iron Lung. These were terrifying, bulky devices that used external air pressure to deflate and then inflate the sufferer's lungs. Some spent years in such devices and a few companies tried to create less-cumbersome, more portable versions.

Some polio sufferers spent years trapped inside these devices, while the compression machinery did their breathing for them. Though it may seem barbaric by today's standards, the iron lung saved thousands of lives.

I think it's against this background that Stan came up with the idea for Iron Man and handed it to his brother Larry Lieber to script. The idea of damage to the lungs evolved into damage to the heart - a far more dramatic device - but the concept of mechanical help to keep vital physical processes running remained at the core of the idea.

Here's an immensely telling photo I came across while researching this post ... some attempts were made during the 1950s to create a mechanical respirator that wouldn't trap the victim in a hospital room for months or years. Does it remind you of anything?

Once the Unique Selling Point of Iron Man became his broken heart, Stan was able to introduce clever elements that highlighted Tony Stark's plight. For example, Stark was a millionaire playboy who dated an endless string of actresses and super-models, yet became unable to let any of them get close due to his terrible secret. The idea that his precarious health prevented him from pursuing the woman he truly loved - Pepper Potts - added another layer of drama to the mix. So much so that while reading the Iron Man stories as a kid, I'd often skip over the superhero battle sections to find out what was going to happen in Stark's civilian life.

GOING FOR GOLD

For his first appearance, in Tales of Suspense, Iron Man was coloured grey. I'm guessing this was an attempt by Stan to make it clear to his young audience that the character was indeed literally made of iron. Why he didn't go with a "knight-in-armour" metallic sheen to the suit we'll never know, but it might have more sense to make Iron Man's costume look like shiny metal rather that grey cardboard. Maybe it was something to do with the makeshift nature of the prototype ... but more on that later.

It would have made the character visually more appealing and dynamic if the colourist - probably Stan Goldberg - had made an attempt to colour Iron Man's suit as shiny metal, perhaps white with blue and black highlights, like the later Silver Surfer.

The story opens with a glimpse of the lifestyle of the rich and successful munitions manufacturer Tony Stark. These days, of course, armaments manufacturers are hardly heroes, but in 1963, during the early stages of the United States' involvement in the Viet Nam war, this probably didn't seem such a terrible idea to Stan. I mean, who'd have thought we'd still be talking about this stuff more than fifty years on?

With scant regard for Newtonian physics, Stan has Tony Stark create a magnetic device that can rip the door from a steel safe. Of course the reality is that the table the magnet's attached to would simply fly across the room, drawn to the safe by the magnetic attraction ... but let's not allow the scientific facts to get in the way of a good story.

When we first see Stark, he's demonstrating a high-tech device - a transistor-powered magnet - powerful enough to tear a safe apart from a distance. Transistors were the electronic miracle of the 1950s and 1960s. By the time I was reading comics, transistor radios had all but made valve technology obsolete. I'd had a transistor radio of my own in 1964 that I'd listen to Radio Luxembourg on, with its non-stop pop hits, then Radio Caroline, three years before the launch of BBC's Radio One.

The chestplate created by Tony Stark and Yinsen contains a wealth of technology designed to keep Stark's heart beating. The only thing that bothered me is where did they get the advanced transistors from, in the middle of the Viet Nam jungles?

Once the origin story gets properly under way, we find Stark in the Viet Nam jungles, witnessing a demonstration of the miniature mortars he's created for the US-backed South Vietnamese Infantry. But he's separated from his escort, blunders into a Viet Cong booby trap and is captured, wounded with shrapnel near his heart. Forced to work for communist bully Wong Chu, Stark contrives to create a transistor-powered suit of armour, aided by kindly elderly scientist Professor Yinsen. Yinsen gives his life to keep the communists away from Stark until the suit is fully charged then, look out, Wong Chu ... The armour has the added bonus of keeping his heart beating despite the shrapnel lodged in his chest.

Iron Man's first adversary wasn't so much a villain, more a monster straight out of all those fantasy tales that had been running in Tales of Suspense around this time. It was as though Stan hadn't quite decided on how to run his b-team superhero line. Having it scripted by Robert Bernstein, an alumni of the Mort Weisinger Superman titles, wasn't helping to create a unique approach, either.

With the pesky origin story out of the way, Stan could focus on developing the supporting cast and gallery of villains for his new iron-clad hero. And all-in-all he'd do a better job with Iron Man than he did with Ant-Man. But it would take a few issues to get going. Tales of Suspense 40 (Apr 1963) was a bit of a damp squib as far as the menace Iron Man faced. It was the time-worn plot device of invading aliens using a robot avatar to scare/test the population of Earth before getting their talons dirty. The plotting is credited to Stan Lee and it does have a similar feel to the earlier fantasy tales in Suspense. I didn't think there was anything wrong with Don Heck's and Larry Leiber's work on Tales of Suspense 39, but Stan must have had misgivings, as he got Jack Kirby to lay out his plot with a script by "R.Berns" - in reality DC comics hack Robert Bernstein. This would account for the weak resolution to the story, though it is notable for having the scene in which Tony Stark changes the Iron Man suit from grey to gold - I'm betting money that was a Stan Lee directive.

I've condensed several pages in the image above to focus on the thought process behind Stark's changing the look of his armour. Bernstein assigns credit for the idea to Stark's date, Marion. 

The first action sequence in the short 13-page story shows Tony Stark taking a date to the circus. Even at the tender age of ten, I thought this was a pretty cheap move for a multimillionaire, but it's just the kind of scenario a DC writer would come up with. As luck would have it, all the lions escape during the performance and Stark has to transform to Iron Man to save the day. However, the bystanders are shaken by the sight of a grim, grey iron-clad man and Stark makes a note-to-self to do something about softening the armour's appearance. At the end of the scene, Stark's date Marion suggests that gold would be a better colour for the armour and so Stark paints the dull grey suit a sparkling metallic yellow.

It's a seminal moment ... and such a good idea that I now wonder whether Stan hadn't planned it this way all along ... create the character with a dull, monsterish appearance then refine the look really quickly.

The rest of the tale tells how Stark goes looking for Marion and discovers that her home town has been taken over by a monstrous "neanderthal" man called Gargantus. It turns out that Gargantus is a robot drone controlled by aliens orbiting high above Earth. Iron Man uses his physics-defying magnets to rip the robot apart (in reality, the magnets would just fly towards Gargantus and stick to him) and scares the aliens off with the same weapon. The aliens don't seem to know any more about physics than scripter Bernstein does.

The defeat of Gargantus and his alien controllers is a lame plot device. Shaky physics aside, it just feels a bit lazy. A clever idea for the resolution of the story would have made it far more memorable ... though, as I've said before here, Stan and the Bullpen weren't making history here, they were just filling pages.

Overall, it's not quite there yet. The gold armour is a big improvement over the dull grey ... but I still wonder why Stan didn't go with a silver or chrome look. It would have been more appropriate for a character called Iron Man. Maybe he just wanted the character to pop on the newsstands and logic took second priority to that. The next issue wasn't any major improvement.

As good as Kirby's composition is here, his version of Iron Man's armour is heavy-looking and clunky. It doesn't have the feel of up-to-the-minute technology, even by 1963 standards. And Dr Strange is a pretty forgettable villain. Iron Man wouldn't really get interesting until Kirby was no longer contributing.

The next Iron Man tale, in Tales of Suspense 41 (May 1963), gave us a villain called Dr Strange. But the first half of the story is taken up with establishing Tony Stark as a man who can never love, due to his (literally) broken heart and demonstrating Iron Man's powers and explaining how they work.

Another montage from the story, with Stan emphasising again that due to Stark's heart-condition and his dual identity as Iron Man, he can never enjoy a proper Personal Relationship ... which begs the question, Is Tony Stark the world's only platonic playboy?

The rogue scientist villain, Dr Strange, is pretty unmemorable, and the plot device used here is that of Iron Man being mind-controlled to do bad stuff by the villain. Iron Man eventually breaks the mind control but his electrical systems are compromised by Dr Strange and it's left to Strange's "ungrateful" daughter to save Iron Man with a handy flashlight battery.

Looking at this final scene in the story, you have to wonder where Stan Lee the Editor was. That's an awful lot of dialogue crowding the drawings out of the page. At least a third of the over-explanatory text could be cut to make this a more streamlined read.

The laborious scripting is still by Bernstein, the art is again by Jack Kirby, but this time inked by Dick Ayers. I don't think it's a good combination for Iron Man and Ayers' inking in particular seems heavy-handed on this issue. There's no real flair to this material yet and the revolving door of Stark's dates does not yet constitute a supporting cast. Something else needed to happen to get the series up on its feet. Fortunately, Don Heck would be back next issue.

Though it's still Jack Kirby pencils - or more likely layouts - here, it's the inks of Don Heck that are starting to shape Iron Man into the definitive version of the character. It's a real pity about the stock communist villain.

I've made no secret of the fact that I'm a big fan of Don Heck. For me, his version of Iron Man is the defining one. And though it would take him a couple of issues to properly find his feet, he'd go on to create some interesting villains, as well as designing the series' supporting cast of Pepper Potts and Happy Hogan. Tales of Suspense 42 (Jun 1963) gives us the first all Heck art job since issue 39. But sadly Bernstein's script, featuring yet another communist bully-boy, doesn't give Heck much to draw. The convoluted plot has an impersonator-type bad guy, The Actor - not a million miles away from Spider-Man's Chameleon foe - offer to steal important secrets for an unpleasant communist called The Red Barbarian. He'll achieve this by impersonating Tony Stark. During the course of stealing the plans, The Actor chances to discover that Stark is Iron Man. 

Given that The Actor hasn't told any of his henchmen that Iron Man is Tony Stark, why are they telling Iron Man that The Actor impersonated him? The Actor impersonated Tony Stark. Editor Stan ... are you even reading this stuff?

Iron Man doesn't even appear until page 10, too late to stop The Actor's getaway. There follows some shenanigans with Iron Man intercepting - then impersonating - The Actor, to what ends I'm still not quite sure. All in all, just another muddled script from Robert Bernstein, with not enough Iron Man action. It does get better, though, I promise ...

Jack Kirby's cover design here is as strong as ever, with a powerful image of Iron Man front and centre, though there's no great sense of menace. I found it interesting that Kirby's version of Iron Man had no chin, while inside, Don Heck was drawing Iron Man's headgear as curving in under his jaw and into his neck.

Tales of Suspense 43 (Jul 1963) featured another familiar Lee-style plot, re-used from Tales to Astonish 41 and 49. The ruler of a hidden realm is abducting scientists to work on a super-weapon. In this case it's the beautiful Kala, who rules an underground queendom and has designs of conquest on the surface world.

So, if the Netherworlders civilisation is superior to that of the surface dwellers, why would they want to live on the surface, with its terrible weather, pollution, wars and mankind? And if you Netherworlders are all so smart, what do you need Stark's technology for?

When you think about all those Silver Age Marvel stories, it must be pretty crowded down there beneath the Earth's surface, what with the Moleman (FF1, Nov 1961), Tyrannus (Hulk 5, Jan 1963), The Lava Men (Journey into Mystery 97, Oct 1963) and now Kala and her subterranean hordes.

It's pretty good going, even for Tony Stark, to be able to recreate Iron Man's armour overnight, right under the unsuspecting noses of the Netherworlders. If I'd been scripting it, I'd made sure Stark brought his attache case with him.

Needless to say, Tony Stark outwits the ambitious ruler by agreeing to create a weapon, but instead building another Iron Man suit overnight. He makes pretty short work of the queen's soldiers and grabs her, clippering (!) his way to the surface to give Kala a taste of what life on the surface would be like. It's not to her liking.

I think we can all agree that Tony Stark is an engineering genius, but atomic powered scissors? Really? Robert Bernstein was responsible for some complete nonsense in these early Marvels.

"Kala, Queen of the Netherworld" is another journeyman effort by Robert Bernstein. The biggest surprise about Stan's brief "writers for hire" period in 1962/3 was that he put up with obviously sub-standard writing for as long as he did. The story did benefit from Jack Kirby's pacing, as he supplied at least layouts for Don Heck's finished art, but it creaks pretty badly.

Straight out of the ending of Lost Horizon (1937). When Kala leaves her idyllic underground kingdom and is exposed to the nasty surface air, it does nothing for her complexion. (BTW - note how Don Heck's given Iron Man a chin here.)

Sadly we still had another few issues of this material to wade through before we got to the good stuff. In the meantime, it was the Bernstein business as usual ...

Even though Queen Cleopatra is being dragged up into the air by a metal demon, she seems to be quite happy at the prospect. The original art had Cleo looking alarmed but, for some reason, Stan had her expression altered to a smily one.

Tales of Suspense 44 (Aug 1963) pits Iron Man against another iron-willed female ruler, this time the legendary Cleopatra, in the story "The Mad Pharoah" ... the notorious mis-spelling of Pharaoh is Stan's. The story tells how Tony Stark is called in to help with an archeological dig in Egypt. He recommends Iron Man's services to help excavate the tomb of the "Mad Pharoah", Hatap. 

In Tales of Suspense 44, Iron Man (with a chin) has some more digging to do, but this time uses a diamond tipped drill, a big improvement over the atomic scissors. He then makes short work of defeating The Mad Pharoah's armies and still has time to make Cleopatra, convincingly beautiful in Don Heck's art, fall in love with him. All-in-all, a good day's work for Tony Stark.

However, during the night, the revived Hatap kidnaps Stark and transports him back to ancient Egypt to help Hatap usurp the throne of Queen Cleopatra. Of course, as Iron Man, Stark has no such intention and joins the battle on the side of Queen Cleo. With Hatap dispatched it only remains for Stark to return to his own era, which is pretty easy as Hatap's magic simply wears off and Iron Man fades away to the 20th Century.

Here's an unaltered version of the ToS 44 cover, published by Alan Class in the mid-1960s in the UK. You can see that Cleopatra looks more scared here, and the lettering in the jaggy box is different from the US version. Click on image to enlarge.

It is one of the better stories in Robert Bernstein's run, though not by much, and Don Heck was really beginning to find his rhythm with this tale, turning in the finest job of his run on the title so far.

This would have been the first all-Don Heck cover for an Iron Man Tales of Suspense, but something must have gone wrong, because Stan had the production department cut up a stat of the first page of the Kala story from Suspense 43 and paste that in to this cover art. I'd love to see what Heck's original art might look like, but I guess we'll never know. I've included the source Kirby artwork below.

The big change in Tales of Suspense 45 (Sep 1963) was that Stan - I presume - decided that Tony Stark need a supporting cast. This made a lot of sense from a story-telling point of view as now Stark would have someone to talk to. And by introducing a male and a female assistant for the millionaire munitions manufacturer, there would be fun to be had from the inevitable love triangle.

The first 12 pages of "The Icy Fingers of Jack Frost" were devoted to introducing and establishing the personalities of new supporting characters Happy Hogan - an ex-boxer hired as Stark's driver/bodyguard - and Pepper Potts, Stark's already in-post but unseen personal assistant.

However, the villain was very weak and ranked pretty low on the originality scale as well. Fortunately, he didn't show up till page 12 and as I've said before, at the time I had more interest in Stark's civilian life than in his battles as Iron Man, so spending the first two thirds of the page count introducing Happy Hogan and Petter Potts was fine with me.

Here's the source of the Iron Man figure for the cover of Suspense 45 ... and just for fun, I've mocked up what the original artwork for the cover might have looked like if Heck's Iron Man figure hadn't been edited out. I kind of like it better ... click on image to enlarge.

The other big change is that the Iron Man story has been expanded from the 13 pages of previous issues to a colossal 18 pages in this issue. So despite the workmanlike scripts by Robert Bernstein, the character must have been proving popular enough with the readers for Stan to scrap one of the fantasy back-up stories to make more room for Iron Man. It would drop back down to 13 pages for just the next issue, then go back to 18 pages with Tales of Suspense 47.

Tales of Suspense 46 was by far the best of the Robert Bernstein stories, featuring the villain who would become friend and ally to Tony Stark and Iron Man, The Crimson Dynamo. The Kirby version of the Dynamo on the cover doesn't do justice to the way Don Heck drew him inside.

Tales of Suspense 46 (Oct 1963) had Robert Bernstein's last Iron Man story, and, in all fairness, he goes out on a high note, with the introduction of a terrific villain, The Crimson Dynamo, a communist counterpart to Iron Man. It begins when Soviet scientist Anton Vanko builds an electrically-powered suit of armour with the aim of defeating Iron Man and in the process humiliating the United States. But Russian premiere Nikita Khrushchev plans to allow The Crimson Dynamo to liquidate Iron Man, then kill Vanko to prevent him taking over the USSR.

The best thing about this story was Don Heck's terrific design for The Crimson Dynamo, my favourite villain of The Golden Years, but also the fact that rather than being sent home defeated and in chains, Anton Vanko is recruited by Tony Stark as a valuable addition to the US research programme.

After a series of mysterious sabotage incidents at the Stark plant, Iron Man gets to confront the culprit - The Crimson Dynamo - and battle him one-on-one. It doesn't take Iron Man long, courtesy of his superior armour, to trap The Dynamo, and convince him that the Soviets will kill him the moment he returns to Russia. The story ends with Iron Man and The Dynamo friends and Khrushchev hopping mad that he's been outwitted ... again.

Iron Man 2's Ivan Vanko was an oddball hybrid of Ivan (The Crimson Dynamo) Vanko and the much later Whiplash character, who worked for The Maggia. I'd rather have seen one or the other ... but then, I'm a purist.

The Vanko character was later appropriated by the Marvel movie Iron Man 2 (2010), when he was synthesised into the Micky Rourke Whiplash character. The original Whiplash was a low-level Stark employee, Mark Scarlotti, who invented a super-strong metal whip and challenged Iron Man in Tales of Suspense 97 (Jan 1968). Combining him with Ivan Vanko, The Crimson Dynamo, resulted in an odd hybrid. I think I'd have preferred that they'd stuck to the original concept and used The Crimson Dynamo as presented in the comics, as he was more interesting character than what we were finally served up with.

WHO THE HECK IS ROBERT BERNSTEIN?

Robert Bernstein was born on 23 May 1919. Other than that, not much is known about the early life of this long-time comics writer. 

Robert Bernstein's earliest work in comics was sporadic to say the least. What he was doing for gainful employment between his text story for Fantastic Comics (1940) and his first comic script for Crime Does Not Pay (1946) is anyone's guess.

His earliest known work for a comics publisher was a two-page text story for Fox's Fantastic Comics 9 (Aug 1940), "Diamond Madness". Then after a six year gap, Bernstein scripted "Ghoul's Gold" which appeared in Lev Gleason's massively successful comic, Crime Does Not Pay 43 (Jan 1946). In the first half of 1946, Bernstein bounced around between comics companies like Fawcett and DC, picking up text story writing assignments wherever he could, then in the 1949, sold a string of comic scripts to St John's Hollywood Confessions and Teenage Romances comics.

Bernstein established himself as the main writer for the successful Marvel character The Black Rider at the beginning of the 1950s. So associated with the character was he, that even the Black Rider's appearances in other tiles, like Wild Western, were scripted by Bernstein.

By 1951, Bernstein was working regularly for Atlas, as lead scripter on Black Rider, and selling scripts to Spy Cases and Wild Western. In 1952, he began placing stories with the Quality Comics titles G.I. Combat and Ken Shannon, and Weird Thrillers, published by Ziff-Davis.

Bernstein began contributing scripts to Quality's Blackhawk title by the mid-1950s, then adding G. I. Combat and the EC title Psychoanalysis to his client list.

While Atlas' Spy Cases remained his main client, Bernstein landed some work with EC, writing for the New Direction title Psychoanalysis around 1955, and began contributing scripts to Quality's Blackhawk comic and to Robin Hood Tales. He stayed with Blackhawk when it transitioned to a DC title, and this gave him a foot in the door at the biggest and most successful comics company of the period. The other Quality comic that went over to DC G.I. Combat also used Bernstein's scripts, so pretty quickly, he was writing for Action Comics (Congo Bill/Congorilla), Adventure Comics (Aquaman and Green Arrow) and Lois Lane. He also wrote a couple of Superman stories, creating the villain Metallo, and a few tales for Superboy as well.

Few of Bernstein's stories were cover featured at DC in the late 1950s and early 1960s, but he did write one of my all-time favourite Superboy stories, "Superboy's Big Brother", which introduced Mon-El, drawn by George Papp in Superboy 89 (Jun 1961).

By the beginning of the 1960s, Bernstein was well entrenched at DC, but he still found time to moonlight for Archie Comics - writing scripts for The Fly and Adventures of the Jaguar.

Then at the beginning of 1963 Stan Lee, unhappy with the scripting work his brother Larry Lieber was doing on the Marvel b-titles, hired Bernstein to write Thor in Journey into Mystery 92 (May 1963), The Human Torch in Strange Tales 108 (May 1963) and Iron Man in Tales of Suspense 40 (Apr 1963). Bernstein's tenure lasted just eight months. The most amazing part is that it took Stan that long to realise that Bernstein (and Ernie Hart over on Tales to Astonish) were way worse than Larry could ever be. And it was at that point that Stan took over scripting the Marvel anthology titles himself.

Robert Bernstein contributed an incredible 14 scripts, most of them quite bland, to Marvel's second-tier titles during 1963. He was supposed to be a better option than Stan's brother Larry Lieber, but was unable to provide the spark that Stan was looking for. It's not as though Stan didn't give him ample opportunity, though. Finally, Stan bowed to the inevitable and took on the scripting job himself.

After Marvel, Bernstein would continue to work for Archie Comics and for DC until 1964 ... his last story was the King Superman tale for Action Comics 312 (May 1964), though a Jimmy Olsen story - possibly an inventory script - appeared in Jimmy Olsen 101 (Apr 1967).

Robert Bernstein's comics career stuttered to a halt around 1964. What he did after that is uncertain, but it's likely that his second career as a stager of classical music concerts was making him far more money than writing for comics ever could ... and he wouldn't have to put up with Mort Weisinger's abuse.

A keen fan of classical music, he founded the Roslyn Music Group, which offered soloist and chamber music recitals at Long Island University, giving Bernstein a second career as a music impressario.

Robert Bernstein (left) in 1965 with classical music cronies pianist Géza Anda (centre) and Jerry Schoenbaum (right), head of MGM's classical music division.

Robert Bernstein died of heart failure on 19 December 1988, at his winter home in Delray Beach, Florida, survived by wife Beverly and daughter Alison. He was 69.

THE END OF THE GOLDEN ERA

With the very next issue of Tales of Suspense, Robert Bernstein was out and Stan Lee took over the scripting of Iron Man himself. Lee also temporarily replaced Heck with Steve Ditko, in preparation for the sweeping changes he would be bringing to the series over the next couple of months ...

At the end of 1964, Stan moved some of his artists around, reassigning Don Heck to Thor for a few months and drafting in Steve Ditko to help with the changes Stan was envisaging for Iron Man. The character was to move into a very important revisionist period.

But all of that can wait till next time, when I take an in-depth look at Iron Man Phase Two.

Next: Red Metal, Yellow Metal ... Red Metal, Yellow Metal