Two Gun Kid #31

History

By the time issue #31 arrived with a June 1956 cover date (released February 20, 1956), the Two-Gun Kid series was in its second continuous run, having been revived by Atlas from issue #11 onward after a gap following the original Timely run. Stan Lee served as both writer and editor-in-chief on the title throughout this period, working in his customary dual role at Atlas. Interior art duties for this issue fell primarily to Chuck Miller (also known as C. F. Miller), a reliable Atlas Western workhorse, while cover art was provided by John Severin — one of the premier Western comics draftsmen then working steadily across Lee's Atlas line. The talent pool Lee had assembled for the Atlas Westerns during this era also included figures like Russ Heath, Joe Maneely, and Dick Ayers, giving the line an unusually high craft level for genre comics of the time.

Trivia · 8 facts

• Cover date: June 1956; on-sale date: February 20, 1956 — published by Atlas Comics (Marvel's 1950s imprint) under editor Stan Lee.
• Cover art by John Severin (with coloring credited to Stan Goldberg), with interior pencils and inks by Chuck Miller (signed as C. F. Miller) and one story scripted/drawn by Robert Q. Sale.
• The lead story, 'Flames of Violence,' features Clay Harder — the original Two-Gun Kid — suspected of arson by ranch hands, a classic wrongly-accused plot structure common to the character's Timely/Atlas run.
• A second interior strip, 'The Gunfighter,' introduces a villain called the Gunslinger — a young masked outlaw who has been terrorizing Western towns. Clay Harder tracks him down, defeats him in a draw, and takes a mentorship role rather than turning him in, illustrating the moral complexity Atlas Westerns occasionally brought to the genre.
• A third strip, 'Ghost Gold' (scripted by Stan Lee), involves a blizzard, a bear attack, and a man wanted for his twin brother's murder — the anthology format typical of Atlas Western issues of the period, also including a prose text story ('Range Mystery').
• Stories from this issue were reprinted almost immediately by licensed international publishers: L. Miller & Son (UK) reprinted material in their own Two-Gun Kid series #18 (1956), and Horwitz Publications (Australia) reprinted content in Kid Valour #2 (July 1957) — evidence of the global appetite for Atlas Western material.
• The Clay Harder version of Two-Gun Kid, starring in this issue, was later retroactively written out of continuity: Two-Gun Kid #60 (November 1962) retconned him as a dime-novel fictional character, replacing him with the Silver Age iteration Matt Hawk, created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.
• The Two-Gun Kid title ran continuously from 1953 through April 1977, making it one of Marvel/Atlas's longest-running single-character series; issue #31 falls squarely in the middle of the Atlas era portion of that run.

Full credits

Key issues in Two Gun Kid

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#60 1st appearance — Matt Hawk