Western Action (Atlas/Seaboard, 1975)

Mini Post

Atlas/Seaboard, in my opinion, was one of the most promising publishers, with some very exciting talent and characters, to pop up in the seventies. Unfortunately, it was also very short lived, with none of it’s series running for more than four issues.

There are plenty of places to go to if you’d like to learn more about this short lived “New House of Ideas” but this is a good place to start: The Atlas Archives

But back to the issue at hand, Western Action Starring Kid Cody & The Comanche Kid. You’ll often see this comic described as a one-shot, but I don’t believe that that was the intention, more likely that it was an early casualty of the Atlas explosion, with the original intent for it to continue as a series.

The Kid Cody segment is a 10 page origin story written by Larry Lieber with art by Doug Wildey. The young Tom Corbett arrives at the small town of Cody with his mother and father. The property they are legally occupying is coveted by a local rancher and blackguard named Blackwell. Meanwhile, Tom has befriended an old and booze sodden ex gun for hire, Sam Logan. After several attempts at intimidating the Corbett’s, Blackwell takes matters further and this results in the death of Ma & Pa Corbett. Tom survives and insists on Logan training him as a gunfighter. The inevitable confrontation between Tom Corbett and Blackwell takes place, but with no hard evidence to justify his deeds, Tom Corbett becomes the Outlaw known as Kid Cody.

It’s a lot of story for 10 pages. If this were done today it would probably take at least three issues to tell this story, but even with the extra pages I’m not sure that a writer would manage to squeeze any more tension and angst from the script. Lieber does a great job of balancing story and character and whilst I’ll always wish that there were more issues, these few pages we do have are fantastic.

Oh…I almost forgot the Comanche Kid. Errm…Yeah, it’s OK. The problem with the Comanche Kid is that it’s straight in to an adventure, but it cuts to a flash back sequence to offer us an origin. Frankly, at 10 pages, it should have been one or the other, not both.

Most of the Atlas comics are available for next to nothing. This is one you really should read. It’s one of the best single comics I’ve read.

Mad Thinker.