John Wayne Adventure Comics #18

John Wayne faces off against a mysterious killer stalking the frontier—a madman who wears the claws of a legendary black panther called "Long Claw," dead for seventy-five years, and uses them to hunt cowboys across Pool Table Mesa. When the creature captures Wayne and gives him a deadly head start, the resourceful gunslinger must outwit a killer who's part animal cunning, part human rage. It's a pulse-pounding test of wits and survival as Wayne tries to turn the hunter into the hunted.

When rancher Bill Keels asks John Wayne to meet his son at the depot, a simple errand becomes a nightmare of mistaken identity—a young man lies dead, and the townspeople are convinced Wayne is the killer. Trapped between an angry mob hungry for justice and a father consumed by grief, Wayne must uncover the truth before the lynch rope tightens around his neck.

When an orphan boy scarred by a branding accident grows into the feared outlaw known as the Ugly Duckling Bandit, his desperate flight into the desert after being unmasked forces him to confront what he's truly been searching for all along. John Wayne Adventure Comics presents a tale of how a life of crime born from rejection and cruelty can be transformed by an unexpected act of kindness in the most unlikely of places.