Tim Holt #17
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeTim Holt #17 (Magazine Enterprises, May 1950) holds a singular place in American comic art history as the first published comic book cover by Frank Frazetta, whose subsequent body of work would come to define heroic fantasy illustration for generations. The issue also continues the early career of the Golden Age Ghost Rider — a horror-tinged Western character created in Tim Holt #11 — at a pivotal moment when the Ghost Rider backup feature was growing popular enough to eventually carry its own title. That blend of supernatural atmosphere and Western action, vividly embodied on Frazetta's cover, captured exactly the genre-crossing energy that made early-1950s Western comics such a culturally distinct moment in the medium's history. The Ghost Rider concept proved durable enough that Marvel Comics later drew directly on it, first for a near-identical cowboy hero in 1967 and again, more loosely, for the motorcycle-riding supernatural anti-hero who became one of the company's most recognized characters.
# Tim Holt #17 This issue contains two stories featuring Tim Holt. In the main story, Tim and his companion Chito face a dangerous sea voyage involving a chain-laden lariat and must rescue crew members from a shipwreck near Baja California. The second story, "The Ghost Rider," involves Tim confronting the deadly "Yaller Killers" and gun-toting vigilantes in Warpipe Valley, culminating in a desperate mountainside chase where Tim must retrieve a stolen shroud while navigating an avalanche and indoor gunfire.
When Tim Holt boards a merchant clipper bound for a fateful rendezvous, he witnesses Captain Shores ruling his desperate crew with an iron fist and a loaded gun. But the headstrong captain harbors a darker scheme: a plot to abduct a wealthy young woman named Dolores Del Fuego Dio Bustamonte—who has already refused his advances. As Tim and his sidekick Chito work to thwart the captain's plans, they find themselves trapped aboard a ship caught in a raging typhoon, where authority and law mean nothing against the raw forces of nature and one man's obsession.
A mysterious killer stalks the trails of Bullet Basin, and when rancher Jim Trew turns up shot dead with only a tube of paint at the scene, suspicion falls on Hub Constable, the territory's only artist. Tim Holt senses the frame-up, but before he can prove Hub's innocence, he'll have to uncover who the real "Painted Killer" is—and why someone went to such lengths to steal a damning piece of evidence.
When lawyer Jeb Calvert confesses to murdering Sheriff Banner and hires two rough gunmen for protection, he doesn't count on the Ghost Rider—the spectral avenger who's sworn to bring the killer to justice. Using psychology, fear, and a few clever tricks, the Ghost Rider stalks Calvert relentlessly, wearing down the murderer's sanity until there's nowhere left to run. Justice closes in as Calvert learns that guilt itself may be the most inescapable enemy of all.
When masked bandits strike a stagecoach in Warpipe Valley, the townspeople's fear spirals into panic—and a trigger-happy vigilante code that shoots first and asks questions later. Tim Holt and Chito find themselves caught in the crossfire, hunted as outlaws by the very posse they need to help them track down the real culprits. It's a race against mounting suspicion and wild gunfire as our heroes work to prove their innocence and stop the robbery spree before the valley tears itself apart.
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We Buy Collections ▸History
Magazine Enterprises was founded in 1943 by Vincent (Vin) Sullivan, who had previously served as an early editor at DC Comics and was instrumental in signing Superman's creators, Siegel and Shuster. The Tim Holt series was a licensed Western title starring then-popular B-movie cowboy actor Tim Holt, and the Ghost Rider had been introduced as a backup feature by writer Ray Krank and artist Dick Ayers in issue #11 (November 1949), growing out of an earlier, lower-key masked identity called the Calico Kid. For issue #17, Sullivan brought in the young Frank Frazetta — whom he had already hired for interior work on other ME features — to paint the cover, reportedly directing Ayers on the Ghost Rider's visual design by referencing Disney's 'Sleepy Hollow' and the Vaughn Monroe song 'Ghost Riders in the Sky.' Frazetta, a noted admirer of actor Victor Mature, used Mature's likeness for the bound figure on the cover, and later recalled particular pride in his rendering of the horse's movement and the precision of his inking on this piece.
Trivia · 7 facts
- Carries Frank Frazetta's first published comic book cover — confirmed by the Frazetta family (Sara Frazetta's account on frazettagirls.com) and multiple key-issue databases — depicting the Ghost Rider on horseback.
- The Golden Age Ghost Rider (Federal Marshal Rex Fury) had his first appearance in Tim Holt #11 (November 1949), not this issue; #17 is notable for being among his earliest appearances under a Frazetta cover as the character's popularity was solidifying.
- Interior stories include the Ghost Rider backup 'Scourge of Guilt!' drawn by Dick Ayers, alongside Tim Holt lead stories written by Gardner Fox and drawn by Frank Bolle and Ayers.
- The Ghost Rider was created by writer/editor Ray Krank and artist Dick Ayers under the direction of publisher Vin Sullivan, who conceived the character's visual style and atmosphere.
- The series was licensed around real-life Western film actor Tim Holt, making it part of the Golden Age tradition of movie-star tie-in comics that bridged Hollywood and the newsstands.
- The Ghost Rider's popularity in Tim Holt eventually earned the character a solo anthology run through Magazine Enterprises' A-1 Comics line beginning in 1950, spanning 14 issues, before the Comics Code Authority effectively ended the horror-Western hybrid's run in 1955.
- After ME's trademark on the character lapsed, Dick Ayers himself went on to co-create Marvel's western Ghost Rider in 1967, directly continuing his connection to the concept he had illustrated in this very series.
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Reprints
Reprinted in Great Western #9 (1954), Best of the West #22 (2001), Best of the West #25 (2002), Best of the West Roundup #3 (2006), Golden-Age Greats Spotlight #17 (2015), Gwandanaland Comics #1685
Key issues in Tim Holt
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