The Pre-Lee K.C. Big Three

A month or so ago darkmark asked if I could put a name to the Kid Colt writer who used "I'll cut ya ta doll-rags" in a handful of stories--it's in the Kid's first appearance, in KC 1, as seen here. I couldn't then, but as I've pored over the early Kid Colt, I found that writer--he has a sneak along with artist Russ Heath in a newspaper in the story in Wild Western 7 (May/49). (WW and a number of other titles contain enough Kid Colt stories for yet another post after this one devoted to his own title.)

Ernie Hart (he signed himself E.H. Hart in the Forties) doesn't use the doll-rags expression in that particular story, but it matches up with the style I'd found for many of the early ones. There are a few stories in Kid Colt Outlaw that I can't convince myself yet are Hart's--for instance, "The Giant of the Badlands" in #4 is the only one to use "Sufferin' coyotes"; "Death Waits in the Shadows" in #8 is the only one to use past-tense captions throughout.

The next major writer on the character, Leon Lazarus, is easy to spot when he uses expressions like "By Judas" and "'Sta la vista" but when he doesn't, his style and Joe Gill's are rather similar. However, Lazarus tends to call Kid Colt "the outlaw" in captions whereas Gill generally calls him "the Kid."

As in Gunsmoke Western, when KCO returned after the Atlas Implosion there were enough Joe Gill stories on hand to fill two more issues (75 and 76) before Stan Lee had to take over writing the strip.

Carl Wessler is credited in the Who's Who with stories in 1957 for Kid Colt as well as The Kid from Dodge City, The Kid from Texas, Kid Slade, and the Outlaw Kid, but I believe his stories will turn out to be non-series Western backups in those characters' titles. UPDATE: Robin Snyder tells me that per Wessler's records, he had one story in this title: "This Man Is Wanted," the backup in #76 (Jan/58).

Kid Colt Outlaw writers

Aug/-Dec/48	1-3	all Kid Colt stories	E. H. Hart
Feb/49	4	Six-Gun Deadline	Hart
		Fight or Crawl, Outlaw	Hart
		Bushwhacker's Boomerang	Hart
May/-Nov/	5-7	all Kid Colt stories except text	Hart
Feb/50	8	Ambush in Lone Valley	Hart
May/	9	The Man from Nowhere	Leon Lazarus
		The Meanest Man in the World	Hart
		A Matter of Pride	Lazarus
		Secret of the Hidden Mine	Lazarus
		The Gun-Shy Sheriff	Lazarus
July/	10	all Kid Colt stories	Lazarus
Oct/	11	Captured by Comanches	Lazarus
Jan/51-Aug/53	12-29	all Kid Colt stories	Lazarus
Sep/	30	[The Young Outlaw]	Joe Gill
		[Mission of Vengeance]	Lazarus
		[The Sword of Vengeance]	Lazarus
Oct/	31	all Kid Colt stories	Lazarus
Dec/	32	[A Dangerous Woman]	Gill
		[Peaceful Valley]	Gill
		Death Rides the Stage	Lazarus
Jan/54–Jan/58	33-76	all Kid Colt stories	Gill

Coming On Like Police

This Gangbusters penciller is familiar enough, but the inker isn't anyone I've seen on the title.

And for good reason. "The Cop They Couldn't Lick" isn't from DC's Gangbusters at all but from Quality's Police Comics #102, October 1950. (The last Plastic Man/Spirit issue; this first in a series of miscellaneous police backups got a jump on the switchover in #103 to Ken Shannon, T-Man, and other non-superhero police-type features.)

I actually couldn't tell you who's inking Curt Swan here (or in fact many of the Quality inkers of the period apart from Chuck Cuidera). The writer is Joe Millard. Like Swan's single story (seen so far!) for Atlas, this is the only piece I've found of his at Quality. By the way, compare the date of that Atlas story ("Killer at Large" in Crime Cases #25): November 1950.