When I was a kid, I thrilled to Marvel's trio of old Western heroes: The Two-Gun Kid, Kid Colt, and especially, the Rawhide Kid. He stood out from the others. He was smaller, younger, but deceptively strong and certainly the fastest draw of them all. The Kid was a basically decent sort who was falsely accused when shooting a man in self-defense, and became known as a legendary gunslinger ever after.

You can't say these stories are great literature. They're filled with Western cornpone and words like "owlhoot", "tinhorn" and "ranny". Most of them seem to have the Kid tiredly riding into another town, looking for a quiet rest, and being recognized and feared, and finally challenged by another hotshot looking for a quick rep by gunning down the Rawhide Kid. There are several in which the Kid fakes it as a cowardly bully, so that some admiring boy or lovestruck filly won't get hurt by becoming part of his life. But I found them great entertainment as a Kid myself, and they still hold up pretty well for me today. Stan Lee gets all the writing credits here, but I don't believe it. Some of the stories are illustrated by the great Jack Kirby, but the other artists wield a pretty mean pen themselves. ( )