Two Gun Kid #36
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeTwo-Gun Kid #36 (cover-dated April 1957) holds a specific structural importance in the Clay Harder era of the series: it presents the first dedicated flashback origin for the original Two-Gun Kid, explaining how young Clay watched the Corbett Brothers murder his father and resolved to ride and fight evil under that name. While the series had been running since 1948, no proper origin had been committed to in its pages until this point, making the issue a meaningful narrative milestone for Atlas-era Western storytelling. Notably, the origin introduced here would not hold — it was contradicted by yet another retelling in Two-Gun Kid #41 just two issues later, illustrating how loosely continuity was managed across Atlas's Western line in this period.
ComicBooks.com Value
This exact issue on ebay
Read it digitally
Sell my copy
Have this issue — or a whole collection? Get a fair offer from us, skip the marketplace fees and the hassle.
We Buy Collections ▸History
The issue was produced under Stan Lee's editorial supervision during Atlas Comics' prolific mid-1950s Western output, part of the long-running Two-Gun Kid series that had resumed from issue #11 in 1953 after a brief hiatus. The creative team drew on regular Atlas Western contributors, with Chuck Miller handling the bulk of the interior art and Joe Maneely — one of the most in-demand and talented artists at Atlas before his tragic death in 1958 — providing both the cover and interior pencil/ink work on at least one story. Reed Crandall, an EC Comics veteran known for precise, highly rendered linework, contributed art to a standalone backup script by Stan Lee, making this issue an unusually varied artistic showcase for what was otherwise a standard bi-monthly genre title.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Cover date: April 1957; on-sale/release date: December 13, 1956 — published bi-monthly by Atlas Comics (indicia publisher: Hercules Publishing Corp.).
- The lead story, titled 'The Saga of the Two-Gun Kid!', presents the first standalone origin flashback for Clay Harder (the original Two-Gun Kid), depicting how the murder of his father and mother by the Corbett Brothers drove him to take up twin pistols.
- Stan Lee served as writer (on at least one story) and editor-in-chief for the issue; Chuck Miller handled pencils and inks on the majority of the interior stories.
- Joe Maneely — Atlas's star Western artist, who died in June 1958 — drew and inked the cover and contributed interior art, with Stan Goldberg providing cover colors.
- The issue also features a backup story, 'The Stranger,' scripted by Stan Lee with art by Reed Crandall, an EC Comics alumnus whose highly detailed style was notably different from Atlas's house aesthetic.
- The Marvel Database flags that the origin presented in this issue directly contradicts earlier hints about the Kid's backstory given in Wild Western #34, and is itself contradicted by a different origin told in Two-Gun Kid #41, published the same year.
- The issue features the Corbett Brothers (Snake, Red, and Sam) as antagonists — the gang whose killing of the Kid's father provides the motivating trauma of the origin story.
- The series that contained this issue ran continuously from 1953 to 1977, eventually transitioning to a reprint format from issue #93 onward, with later reprints of Clay Harder stories sometimes redrawing the character to resemble the post-1962 Matt Hawk version of the Kid.
Full credits
Reprints
Reprinted in Two-Gun Kid #23 (1957), Kid Colt Outlaw #178 (1974), Atlas Artist Edition #1 (2023)
Key issues in Two Gun Kid
Reviews
Reader reviews
No reader reviews yet.