User blog:Nausiated/1950 - Basically Done

So I'm just about done going through what I wanted to do with Atlas era comics that were published in the 1950s. What I've skipped over are romance titles, true crime titles, and western stories that are one-off tales, focusing on the "title" characters like Two-Gun Kid and the like.

1950 was mostly filled with canonical western tales, as that was what was popular at the time, super-heroes taking the back seat and basically faded from popularity. In fact Marvel's super-heroes took a hiatus between 1949-1954 when Atlas tried to briefly revive Captain America, Sub-Mariner and the Human Torch. Believe it or not, these revivals fell flat on their face and the revivals were soon canned due to lack of popularity.

However prior to 1954, there were still some super hero characters kicking around. 1950 saw the continuation of the Venus series, which featured Aphrodite in her role of Venus. The series went from a mostly-romance-sort-of-super-hero book (really just a Wonder Woman rip-off if you want to split hairs about it) to stuff that was more science fiction driven. The romance element was slowly starting to get phased out, but that does not come into full fruition until 1951, when science fiction stories were really starting to become popular. Another title was Marvel Boy, a Bill Everett creation. Many of you constant readers will probably note that this is the same Marvel Boy that is featured in Agents of Atlas. Marvel Boy actually ran for only two issues before being renamed to "Astonishing" which was more fitting since the Marvel Boy title also featured one-off sci-fi stories. Eventually Astonishing weened out Marvel Boy by issue #7 in 1951 to focus primarily on sci-fi and horror.

Western titles thrived, as I said, because they were popular at the time. The Black Rider got his own series, Kid Colt kept his own series. Oddly enough Two-Gun Kid's series was cancelled in 1949 and was not revived again until 1953. He made a few appearances in Wild Western before being phased out. When Two-Gun was revived (so far as I can tell, but I could be wrong) the phased out his annoying kid sidekick Rusty Randolph.

Other characters who were phased out were Blaze Carson, whose title was cancelled in 1949, and Tex Morgan and Tex Taylor. What's interesting about these characters is that there were still left over stories, and Timely/Atlas eventually printed them, but rennamed the characters to make them more interesting. Tex Morgan and Lobo got renamed "Red Hawkins" and "Little Feather", the characters were basically the same, rode horses with the same names but their outfits were coloured differently. Eventually Red Hawkins Native sidekick was phased out until the character vanished into obscurity as well.

Tex Taylor was renamed the Prairie Kid. What's interesting to point out is that the first Prairie Kid story from is clearly a retitled Tex Taylor story. Future stories, such as the one printed in is obviously a Two-Gun Kid story, only they changed his hair colour and called him Prairie Kid. They did not make an effort to call his horse Fury, they call it Cyclone. Dead give away.

The saddest one is Blaze Carson, who was given the weak named "Speed Larson" and appeared in an issue if Whip Wilson. Which I suppose is a slap in the face since Whip Wilson's title basically replaced and used the same numbering of the short lived Blaze Carson series...

Which brings me to another point, Rex Hart and Whip Wilson. These were two western titles that basically replaced Blaze Carson as a series. If you look around the internet some people have written profiles for these characters like they are Timely/Atlas era western characters. But they are not. If you do a bit more research on the characters Rex Hart and Whip Wilson were actually popular western actors that appeared in western films. These comics are commercially licensed characters. In fact the only stories in these books that are considered part of Marvel continuity is the aforementioned Speed Larson story, an back-up stories featuring Nimo the mountain lion. Nimo, is only really considered Marvel cannon because the Marvel Handbook guys were probably looking for filler to put into the Pet Avengers handbook.

One of the biggest western milestones in 1950 though was the introduction of the Apache Kid. At the time Atlas was expanding it's repetoir of western plots to expand from "outlaws try to steal ranch" and "outlaws try to rob bank" to "Native Americans go on war path". As the 50's western fad was in full boom, the stories were taking a page (pardon the pun) from western television shows, movies, and radio shows by having Native Americans appearing in the stories more frequently, both as enemies and allies. Apache Kid was an interesting character -- even when considering the "clean cut" western stories of the era -- in that he was a white settler who was taken in and raised by Apaches to be their spy. He eventually becomes a hero working to bring peace between white men and Native Americans. So he develops two identities one as the Apache Kid and the other as a roving cowboy.

Of course, in later years, Apache Kid's history has since been totally retconned, and reading these stories it's no wonder why.. While a remarkable idea, they certainly did not represent any sort of historical fact of the 1870s which saw Native Americans displaced form their land and various conflicts including railroad wars and other battles as the white settlers of the American Frontier pushed further across the country to link the west coast with the east. But I digress.

Anyway... 1950 was a cinch, there was a lot of stuff I didn't want to do and Timely was culling a lot of their titles (super-heroes and the like) so there was a gap to fill. 1951 has more westerns, more Marvel Boy, and more Venus up ahead. Also it features the beginning of Kent Blake of the Secret Service.

And I know what you're thinking: Kent who? How is this character part of Marvel continuity? Isn't this just another true-crime/spy comic that was popular at the time? The answer is no my friend. Pick up. First person who can tell me how Kent Blake is part of Marvel continuity wins a No Prize!