Number 370


"Dragged to your death!"


I'm not a big Western fan, not of movies, books or comics, but I do enjoy the occasional story if it's well done. Robert Kanigher, editor, scripted this story for Alex Toth, artist, and Frank Giacoia, inker. It appeared in All-American Western #107, April-May 1949. I love Toth's dynamic, action-filled artwork. Giacoia inked it in DC's late-1940s house style, borrowed from Milton Caniff.

The Indian characters are treated the same way they were treated in movies, as stereotypes.

I like Johnny Thunder's rock 'n' roll hairstyle, anticipating the look of a decade hence. Something that bugs me is how a white horse can be called Black Lightning. And wasn't Johnny Thunder a name borrowed from another DC character of a couple years earlier? And wasn't Black Lightning the name of a superhero two or three decades later? I guess comic books were the original recyclers: plots, art, names, everything used again and again!