Cheyenne Kid #10 [1957]

Rodeo Haziran 07, 2022

Despite westerns being a major genre in comics throughout Ditko's earliest days in the industry, especially among his major publishers Charlton and Marvel, he only drew a handful of short western stories in his career, and many of those starred horses (Black Fury and Black Jack). I guess he just didn't have an affinity for that genre...

Wait, CHEYENNE KID #10 has a message on that topic from 1957, and that message is:

WRONG!

Ditko just drew the cover to this issue of one of Charlton's many western books of the era, but what a cover it is. Action-packed, very clearly composed and full of detail in every corner, almost a throw-back to Ditko's pre-code covers in that regard. This is right up there with some of the best western work I've seen from the era, like the Simon&Kirby BOYS' RANCH, and looks like it could be a movie poster (though that blurb on the cover is poorly placed and a bit annoying).

I'd wonder how anyone could look at this and not throw the artist as much western work as he could handle, except that I know Ditko was just as strong on the fantasy and sci-fi work (and would later go on to help reinvent the super-hero genre). So add westerns to something that Ditko does well, if not often.

It's kind of odd, you'd think that the black-and-white morality plays of the western genre would appeal to the later philosophical leanings of Ditko. I'm just imagining Mr. A done as a western. The A Kid? Two-Gun A? Shoot-out at the A-is-A Corral?