The Rawhide Kid #17
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeThe Rawhide Kid #17 marks the first appearance and complete origin of Johnny Clay (alias Johnny Bart), an entirely new character who replaced the original, unnamed Atlas-era Rawhide Kid — making this a genuine character debut rather than a simple continuation. Stan Lee himself wrote in the Marvel Masterworks: Rawhide Kid Vol. 1 introduction that this was likely his and Kirby's first deliberate attempt to build a recurring heroic series after years of one-shot monster and crime anthologies, calling the Kid a forerunner of the Fantastic Four, the Hulk, and Spider-Man. The issue also established the quintessential Lee-era character archetype — a small, morally principled outsider unjustly branded a fugitive — roughly eighteen months before that template was applied to superhero comics. Some historians have proposed that the on-sale date of March 28, 1960 makes this, rather than Fantastic Four #1, the true starting pistol of the Marvel Age of comics.
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After the original Rawhide Kid title folded with issue #16 in September 1957, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby — who had spent the intervening years grinding out anthology horror and monster strips with no serialized heroes — revived the franchise in 1960, continuing the Atlas numbering at #17 rather than relaunching with a new #1. The revival was at least partly spurred by the then-popular CBS television series Rawhide. Lee scripted all stories in the issue, Kirby penciled four of the five stories with Dick Ayers inking, colorist Stan Goldberg and letterer Artie Simek completing the production team; a fifth standalone story, 'With Gun in Hand,' was penciled and inked by Don Heck, and a two-page text piece reprinted Joe Maneely art from Western Kid #4. The indicia added 'The' to the title with this new run, a small but deliberate rebranding.
Trivia · 8 facts
- First appearance and complete origin of Johnny Clay (aka Johnny Bart), the second and definitive Rawhide Kid of Earth-616 — a wholly distinct character from the unnamed blonde gunslinger of issues #1–16.
- Cover-dated August 1960; on-sale date March 28, 1960, per the Library of Congress Periodicals copyright record.
- Creative credits: script by Stan Lee, pencils by Jack Kirby, inks by Dick Ayers (on four stories); Don Heck penciled and inked the fifth story 'With Gun in Hand'; colors by Stan Goldberg; letters by Artie Simek; edited by Stan Lee.
- The issue contains four distinct Rawhide Kid stories plus a text piece: 'Beware! The Rawhide Kid!!' (origin, 7 pages), 'Stagecoach to Shotgun Gap!' (6 pages), 'With Gun in Hand' (Don Heck, 5 pages), and 'When the Rawhide Kid Turned…Outlaw!' (5 pages) — the final story establishing his life as a wanted man.
- First appearances also include: Ben Bart (the Kid's adoptive uncle, killed in his debut), Hawk Brown and Spade (the villains who murder Ben), and Nightwind (the Kid's horse), all introduced in the origin story.
- The Kid's character was deliberately designed as a diminutive, soft-spoken teenager constantly underestimated by larger antagonists — a personality-driven outsider archetype that Lee and Kirby would refine for the Marvel superhero line starting with Fantastic Four #1 in November 1961.
- Kirby continued as interior penciler on the series through issue #32 (February 1963) before transitioning to covers only through #47, simultaneously launching the Fantastic Four, the Hulk, and other Marvel Universe cornerstones.
- The issue has been extensively reprinted: the origin story alone appeared in Rawhide Kid #86 (1971), The Mighty Marvel Western #46 (1976), Marvel Visionaries: Jack Kirby (2004), Marvel Milestones: Rawhide Kid & Two-Gun Kid (2006), Marvel Masterworks: Rawhide Kid Vol. 1 (2006, 2014), and Essential Rawhide Kid Vol. 1 (2011), and was also included in King-Size Kirby (2015) and Marvel Visionaries: Jack Kirby (2019).
Full credits
Reprints
↩ Reprints Western Kid #4 (1955)
Reprinted in Kid Colt Outlaw #126 (1962), The Rawhide Kid #55 (1966), Sheriff Classics #9116 (1968), Ranchserien #7 (1968), Ranchserien #8 (1968), The Rawhide Kid #86 (1971), Ranchserien #74 (1971), The Mighty Marvel Western #46 (1976), The Rawhide Kid #137 (1977), Western Gunfighters Summer Special #1980 (1980), Marvel Visionaries: Jack Kirby #1 (2004), Marvel Milestones: Rawhide Kid & Two-Gun Kid #[nn] (2006), Marvel Milestones: Black Panther, Storm & Ka-Zar #[nn] (2006), Marvel Masterworks: Rawhide Kid #1 (2006), Marvel Westerns: Kid Colt and the Arizona Girl #1 (2006), Marvel Firsts: The 1960s #[nn] (2011), Essential Rawhide Kid #1 (2011), Marvel Masterworks: Rawhide Kid #1 (2014), Marvel Masterworks: Rawhide Kid #1 (63) (2014), King-Size Kirby #[nn] (2015), Marvel Visionaries: Jack Kirby #[nn] (2019), Sheriff Klassiker #115, Sheriff Klassiker #116, Sheriff Klassiker #182 + 1 more
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