Monte Hale Western #88

This Charlton release from 1956 brings real-life cowboy Monte Hale — whose photo portrait graces the upper left corner — to life in a cover by penciler Dick Giordano and inker Vince Alascia that crackles with Western tension. A figure in a yellow shirt grapples desperately with a rearing horse mid-river, while a gun-toting man on horseback looms threateningly from behind, lasso coiled at the ready against a vivid red sky. Promising "New Action Stories" and billing Monte Hale as "the Biggest and Boldest Real-Life Cowboy of Them All — 6 ft. 5 in. of Solid Muscle," this is frontier adventure with genuine Saturday-matinee energy.