Number 1523: No animals were harmed in the making of this comic book

Two stories from ME’s Ghost Rider #8 (1952). The longer story, featuring the Ghost Rider, has a panel where a dog gets killed. This is not to rile up any animal lovers who read this blog, but the dog is not real. Nor is his hunchback owner, nor the villain of the piece, nor the Ghost Rider. And while we’re at it, how can you be sure I’m real?

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For real, more Ghost Rider. Just click on the thumbnail.

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Number 1423: “A thirst for blood!”

On the occasions I’ve shown an original Ghost Rider — not the Marvel Comics motorcycle guy with the flaming skull, but the original Western character with reversible cloak, riding a horse — there has been a bit of grousing because the Ghost Rider stories usually turn out to be tricks that look like supernatural. So here you are, supernatural fans. A “Tales of the Ghost Rider” seven-pager from Ghost Rider #8 (1952) that features a “real” supernatural being, a vampire.

Art by Dick Ayers.

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Number 1130: The Talking Head

It’s an election year in America, and television is full of talking heads. Those are people who sit around a table and endlessly talk politics, political strategy, polls, statistics...blah, blah, blah, blah, BLAH! I’m a voter, and I know for whom I’m voting. I suspect many other citizens are the same, but we put up with these damn talking heads...I wish I had a job where I got paid a huge amount of money to be a gasbag. As it is, I'm doing my gasbagging right here for free.

On to today’s post, which, beyond the title, has nothing to do with my rant on television. “The Talking Head” is a Ghost Rider tale, drawn by Dick Ayers for Best Of the West #4. That title used the four Western stars of the ME Comics line: Durango Kid, Straight Arrow, Ghost Rider and Tim Holt. Best Of the West was a very nice comic book which had a run of twelve quarterly issues between 1951 and 1954.

The Indian babe, Fawn Woman, reminds me of what Harvey Kurtzman once said in Mad: “. . . if they'd had girls like this, the Wild West would have been a lot wilder!”

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