You Can't Copyright or Trademark a Historical Figure: WYATT EARP

Wyatt Earp

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Sheriff...Uh...What Was That Name Again?

THE SHERIFF/BLAZE CARSON

Blaze Carson :TGK 1-4, 7-9, Whip Wilson 11, KCO 1, 5, Tex Taylor 1,2, 4,5,6, Tex Morgan 1

The Sheriff: TGK 1 (3/48), 2 (6/48), 3 (8/48), Tex Morgan 1 (8/48), Kid Colt 1 (8/48), WW 3 (9/48), Texas Kid 6 (11/51) Al/ Speed Larson/Dave "Blaze" Carson

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Your Famous (?) Western Star, REX HART

REX HART appeared in three issues of his own comic, numbered 6-8, running bimonthly dated from August 1948 to February 1950. The series had assumed the numbering of BLAZE CARSON, in the well-known technique of launching a new series by changing its title and contents, thus sparing the publisher additional business expenses involved and giving the sheen of an established magazine to a newly-introduced product. 

A lot of the Atlas Western features struggled to find success on the stands. One approach that appeared to be working for other publishers was to get the rights to a famous star of Western film or television and cast them as the lead of your comic feature. Fawcett had the rights to publish the fictional Western adventures of Gabby Hayes, Lash Larue, Rocky Lane, Monte Hale, Tom Mix and Hopalong Cassidy, for example.  

Atlas opted to publish the comic book adventures of "Your Famous Western Star" Rex Hart. Hart was not nearly so well known as the round-up of riders Fawcett had licensed, or any of those Atlas's competitors had managed to snap up, like Dell's Gene Autry and Roy Rogers, or Magazine Enterprise's Tim Holt. Hart was best known for his appearance in...

Hmm, hold on a second, let me do some research...

OK, turns out there's a good reason I wasn't familiar with this "famous" Western star: there [i]was[/i] no such cowboy star. Atlas just used a few staged photo covers with the same model and tried to insinuate that he was a legitimate celebrity, rather than paying for rights to whatever bottom-tier cowboy actors were still available to make arrangements with. 

The first issue has the usual multiple short stories, the second two feature longer 18-page stories, with a few text stories and disposable back-up shorts in all three. 

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Twice As Much Tex: TEX TAYLOR and TEX MORGAN

 Tex Taylor: issues 1-9,Sept '48-Nov '49, fake cowboy star photo covers?

Sidekick Alkali Ike, discovery of dinosaurs

In WILD WESTERN 11-14, after his own comic was cancelled, Tex began going by the nickname "The Prairie Kid"

Tex Morgan: issues 1-9 Aug '48-Feb '50, WW 3, 4, 6, 7, 9, 11, 13, 14, AK 53, BC 2-3, KC 3

Debuted in his own comic, appeared in backups in almost all of Atlas's other Western comics, through WW 14, 02/51. 

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Annies Get Your Guns: ANNIE OAKLEY and Arizona Annie:

Annie Oakley: issue 1-11, WE 15, RK 10, WW 46, Millie 15, Tessie 19, Nellie 17, Millie 16

Arizona Annie: WW 1-4, TM 3-4, TGK 5, TT 3

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What if Daniel Boone Went West? BILLY BUCKSKIN

Billy Buckskin: BB1-3, Gunsmoke W 32-34, WW 48-49, Frontier W 3-4, 2-GW 4

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Why Don't We Play "Indians and Cowboys" For a Change? ARROWHEAD

Arrowhead : Ah 1-4, WW 34-39, RK 1, BR 24-25, 

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Before They Were Top Guns: The original TWO-GUN KID and RAWHIDE KID

Two-Gun Kid

Rawhide Kid

Yes you can!

All my meals I cook with orange
But for one that I abhor:
In jambalaya orange doesn't go with rice.


It'll make your tongue turn beige
And you will suffer mild aphasia
Next you'll cough and sneeze and hiccup once or twice.


I'll not eat it bribed with silver
Yet exist there always will
Voracious lovers of this dish who'll pay top price.


I'll resist 'til I turn purple.
Let them eat it while I slurp
A little orange juice and vodka over ice!

--Michael Gallaher

Don't Pop Bubble Wrap!

FDA WARNING: 

DO NOT POP BUBBLE WRAP!

(April 1, 2017, Washington D.C.)
The FDA has issued a warning urging consumers not to pop "bubble wrap" after detecting the presence of high levels of nitrogen peroxide in the "bubbles." Inhalation of even small amounts can lead to dizziness, disorientation, and unconsciousness.
Bubble wrap, commonly used in packaging to protect shipped items against damage, is typically found as a clear plastic sheet with a regular, closely spaced pattern of encapsulated gas. The capsules (or "bubbles") are easily burst with a pinch of the fingers, and many find the act pleasant and satisfying.
Gaseous nitrogen peroxide, generated as a byproduct of certain plastics manufacturing processes, has been used as an injected gas in bubble wrap manufactured in some plants in China, Pakistan, and Indonesia. Since the wrap is unmarked, consumers have no means of determining whether wrap that they encounter was manufactured in one of these facilities, or in a facility that uses ordinary air, which is more common. 

Dingbats

Close To You: A Warning!

Why do birds suddenly appear

Every time you are near ?

Just like me, they long to be

Close to you

While I applaud the singer’s admirable alertness to anomalous animal behavior, it is my understanding that significant deviations from established natural behavior is rarely a harbinger of good things to come. Consider, for example, the Colony Collapse Syndrome exhibited in recent years by bees, or the reports of animals fleeing for higher ground before the devastating 2004 tsunami on the coast of the Indian Ocean. Or, more saliently, Alfred Hitchcock’s (supposedly) fictional account of an avian attack on a small town on the California coast in The Birds (1963). When we catch these cues from our fellow creatures, let us not be so eager to assume they are displaying some sort of unusually strong affection! Rather, we should seek evidence of a supranormal or even supernatural influence!

Why do stars fall down from the sky

Every time you walk by?

Just like me, they long to be

Close to you

Surely this verse is not to be taken literally, as quite obviously, the approach of even a single star—even our own—would be an event so calamitous as to exceed “catastrophic”. It would cause the rapid disintegration of not only the Earth and all its inhabitants, but verily, the entire solar system would be sacrificed to the intense heat and massive gravitational forces of the rogue star.

Of other possible interpretations, perhaps the most benign is that this passage refers to the effect of a powerful hallucinogen such as LSD. Users commonly describe the illusion of strange changes in their perception of light, which may streak, blur, move, “bleed”, pulsate, alter intensity, and shift in apparent frequency (even to the point of triggering perceptions of “new” colors not typically registered by the human vision system).

Alternatively, perhaps the subject of the song generates a local distortion of spacetime, permitting those in his immediate vicinity to see through one or more of the eight other spatial dimensions implied by Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity (and modern physicists’ advances in that arena). Such a perception could allow a perspective through which the vast stellar march, normally invisible from our distant three-dimensional vantage point, projects as a rapid motion. From a naïve young woman unacquainted with cosmological physics, such an unfamiliar experience might well be described as the “falling” of the stars!

On the day that you were born, the angels got together

And decided to create a dream come true

I know not under what respected modern or ancient theosophical system angels might be granted the authority to “create” life, but the celestial conspiracy described here implies an even more despicable act. Note that their actions take place “on the day that you were born.” This child, then, has gestated in his mother’s womb for nine months, and immediately prior to birth, the angels interfere with his natural development. Have they overwritten the chromosomes bestowed upon him by his parents, whose hopes to further their genetic contribution to the race are now dashed? Or have they instead substituted a changeling, killing the babe and replacing him with another, as in the ancient European myths?

And how then does this band of body-swappers affect such a transformation? Through what manner of occult spell-casting or pagan sorcery have

they violated the laws of nature? The song outlines the heathen “recipe” that empowers their mystical manipulations of the flesh:

So they sprinkled moon dust in your hair

Of gold and starlight in your eyes of blue

This blond-haired, blue-eyed young man (and surely it is no coincidence that this description matches the Aryan ideal of Hitler’s Nazi regime!) has been polluted with lunar soil in his hair and cosmic radiation delivered to his brain through the immediacy of the optic nerves!

And that is why all the kids in town

Follow you all around

Just like me, they long to be

Close to you

And not unexpectedly, we see that the “angels” have produced the hypnotically charismatic leader common to every cult in our human history, one particularly appealing to our rebellious, susceptible youth. An abomination whose effects on nature, on the cosmos, and on the human spirit and free will are in clear view. The product of a cabal of supposedly superior beings meddling in the affairs of humanity.

A “dream come true?” Nay, a living nightmare! Beware, all, beware! Let not this thing be “close to you!”

Godzilla vs. Megalon

For lovers of obscure Kaiju artifacts, the Godzilla vs. Megalon giveaway comic!