After the peak sales period of the war years, the postwar period saw the changing tastes of returning G.I.s and the public at large impact on what was available at the Newsstand. Costumed super heroes had lost a lot of their popularity with the general public, no longer having a colorful, unifying enemy like the Nazis to kick around. At the same time, readers were looking for slightly more sophisticated fare. Crime, Horror and Romance all became dominant genres in the field. But the one that had real staying power across the next decade-and-a half was Westerns.
Timely Comics, home to Captain America, wasted no time in jumping on board the Western bandwagon. In 1948 they launched a title and a character that would continue to be published in one form or another into the late 1970s, and who turns up in the Marvel line even today every once in a while. That character was the Two-Gun Kid.
Unlike his later incarnation, the original version of the Two-Gun Kid didn’t wear a mask or keep a secret identity. Rather, he was Clay Harder, a two-fisted do-gooder who roamed the west and got into scrapes that his marksmanship skills would often get him out of. He was also a singing cowboy, and typically performed his own theme song at the opening or the close of many of his stories. There wasn’t a whole lot of depth to the Two-Gun Kid, he didn’t have a lot of personality to him. But he fit the basic mold of the heroic, capable cowboy, and so readers really never minded. In fact, he’s so generic that he isn’t even given a name in this first story, apart from the captions calling him the Two-Gun Kid. That would come later.
The Two-Gun Kid debuted in his own self-named title in 1948. The writer of his first story has been forgotten over the years, but the artwork was provided by Syd Shores and Vince Alascia, two of the Timely Bullpen’s most accomplished illustrators. The plot is pretty basic and would have been very familiar to the readers of its time, when similar fare was filling up B-pictures released on a weekly basis.
The Tom Brevoort Experience 
I barely bought any Western comics, so I didn’t even know of this version of Two Gun Kid before the Marvel Universe guides came out. I did love his successor being brought forward in time and still feel disappointment that it was undone after barely using him in the new setting.
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Of all the pop culture trends in American history the one I understand the least is the stranglehold that Westerns had for almost two decades. I find it to be a one note black and white genre of zero depth and less attraction. I have very clear memories of the dullness of Gunsmoke and Bonanza which my parents & grandparents watched to the bitter end.
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Like any genre, there’s good stuff to be found, and it’s often not the most popular stuff.
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True, but IMHO it is buried dark and deep in Westerns and mostly came very late in its heyday. It is also very telling that there is currently no deader genre today.
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There are a lot of deader genres.
Northerns. Lost heir. Nurse novels. Jungle hero.
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Odd that you mention “Nurse novels” as being a deader genre than Westerns. Max Brand, mostly remembered as a Western Novelist today (if remembered at all), was also the creator of Dr. Kildare, if not a “Nurse novel” than a Medical Romance character . . . .
Martin Goodman was not the only one to “genre surf . . . .”
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In one respect it’s odd that it took so long for Westerns to take off in comic books. The same era of the very late thirties, when comic books took off because of Superman. is also the period when the big Hollywood studios began investing heavily in the genre, one of the earliest being Fox’s JESSE JAMES in January 1939. Before that, for most of the sound era Western films were dominated by low-budget oaters, ostensibly aimed at kids. That seems to be the approach most publishers took, tossing cowboy characters into anthology titles on the chance that they’d grab a few extra kid-readers. I’m sure the main thought of comics-people was to emulate the success of Superman throughout the early forties, and unlike the film studios, the comics publishers didn’t have famous stars to promote their titles (unless they cared to pay for the use of actors’ images). There was no great reason to experiment with the western genre in comics as there was in films, and even when superheroes lost popularity in the late forties, we saw more western titles, but almost all of them in comic books still followed the pattern of the unambitious oater. As a sixties kid I bought a lot of Westerns in addition to other genres, though it might have helped that Marvel in particular worked in superhero elements with their cowpoke action. Just as comic books were finally becoming more venturesome with Westerns in the 1960s, American film studios were turning out fewer ambitious frontier movies, and the genre was for a time more or less usurped by the spawn of Sergio Leone.
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The issue with movies was mostly cost and tech after talkies came in.
A lot of big silent films were Westerns (The Covered Wagon, The Iron Horse, 3 Bad Men, etc.).
Talkies made it harder and more expensive to do “A” sound Westerns until In Old Arizona (1928) and The Virginian (1929). The Failure of The Big Trail (1930) was also factor.
But, the Band C outfits could still do simplier (less dialogue Westerns in Griffith Park . .
Jack Ford, a master of the genre in the Silent Era, did not do a sound Western until Stage Coach in 1929.. .
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Western comics followed the trend of Western movies and TV. Why? Because they were cheap to make in Southern California.
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I don’t have any of Marvel’s Western comics ( I do like watching Western movies ). The closest I come to owning Marvel western comics is – [ Thor#370 ( August 1986 — Thor & Loki in the old west ) Golden Apples stolen by Loki ], [ The Incredible Hulk#268 ( February 1982 ) – Pariah ], [ Daredevil#215 ( February 1985 ) a case started by Two-Gun Kid ( Matt Hawk ) 100 years ago ] and [ The Avengers#142-143 ( December-January 1975-1976 ) Thor, Moondragon & Hawkeye in the old west — Two-Gun Kid, Kid Colt, Night Rider ( Ghost Rider/Phantom Rider – Lincoln Slade ), Rawhide Kid & Ringo Kid vs. Kang ( dies ). Also Immortus ]. TRVIVIA: Two-Gun Kid#10 ( November 1949 ) Kid Colt story – “The Hunter and the Hunted!” – has a Marshal Carlos Grimm in it ( Possible Ben Grimm relative? comics.org ).
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Forgot a Marvel western I have, a Canadian one — [ Alpha Flight#19 ( February 1985 ) 100 years in the past vs. the Great Beast Ranaq — first appearance of Talisman ].
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Then there is Marvel Westerns: Kid Colt and the Arizona Girl#1 ( September 2006 ) vs. Skrulls / The Philadelphia Filly & Spencer ], Marvel Westerns: The Two-Gun Kid#1 ( August 2006 ) Kid Clayton ( dies ) & Nantan ( Lone Ranger & Tonto ) vs. werewolf ], Marvel Westerns: Strange Westerns Starring the Black Rider#1 ( October 2006 ) Yao ( The Ancient One ) ], Marvel Westerns: Western Legends#1 ( September 2006 ) Hurricane ( Harold Kane ) & Little Cloud/ The Man from Fort Rango – Major Brett Sabre, Cap’n Jack ( death )/Red Wolf ].
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