Four Color #931
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeFour Color #931 is the first comic book incarnation of Have Gun, Will Travel, translating one of late-1950s television's most morally sophisticated Western heroes — the cultured, chess-knight-calling-card mercenary Paladin — into the medium of comics just one year after the show's CBS debut. The issue marks the first-ever printed appearance of Paladin and his supporting cast, making it the foundational document for the character outside of broadcast. At a moment when Dell's Four Color series functioned as a sprawling map of American pop culture, this issue captured a hero who pointedly subverted the clean-cut cowboy archetype, offering readers a gunfighter who quoted poetry and wrestled with ethical complexity. Dell internally designated it as issue #1 of the Have Gun, Will Travel run, a status the Grand Comics Database has formally preserved.
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Have Gun, Will Travel was created for CBS by Sam Rolfe and Herb Meadow, two former radio writers who had learned the network wanted a cowboy series with an unconventional twist; the show premiered September 14, 1957, with Richard Boone in the lead role after Western film icon Randolph Scott — the producers' first choice — proved unavailable. Dell, which routinely adapted top-rated TV properties through its Four Color anthology, moved quickly to capitalize on the show's immediate ratings success, with the series ranking number four in the Nielsen ratings across its entire first season. The comic's interior art has had a complicated attribution history: the Grand Comics Database originally credited stories to Don Heck and Mike Sekowsky before researcher Steinar Ådland revised those credits in December 2010 to Bob Correa, who is now the accepted artist for all stories in the issue. No writer credit for the comic's scripts has been firmly established in publicly available sources.
Trivia · 8 facts
- First comic book appearance of Paladin (Have Gun, Will Travel), the cultured CBS Western gunfighter-for-hire, published by Dell in 1958.
- Also contains the first comic book appearances of supporting characters Hey Boy, James, Felicia, and Chief Harry Blackfoot, per the Grand Comics Database.
- The TV series, created by Sam Rolfe and Herb Meadow, had premiered on CBS on September 14, 1957 — roughly one year before this issue's publication.
- Features a photo cover of actor Richard Boone, who played Paladin, consistent with Dell's standard practice for TV tie-in titles of the era.
- All interior stories were drawn by artist Bob Correa; earlier attributions to Don Heck and Mike Sekowsky were formally revised by the Grand Comics Database in December 2010.
- Dell internally treated Four Color #931, #983, and #1044 as the first three numbered issues of the Have Gun, Will Travel series before it graduated to its own standalone title in 1960.
- The standalone Dell series that followed (1960–1962) ran 14 issues, written chiefly by Paul S. Newman with art by Ray Bailey, Alberto Giolitti, and Giovanni Ticci — all featuring photo covers of Boone.
- The TV property was notable for attracting writers of future distinction, including Gene Roddenberry, who wrote 24 television episodes before going on to create Star Trek; the show ran 225 episodes across six seasons.
Full credits
Reprints
Reprinted in Aventura #143 (1960), A Movie Classic #58
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