A few years ago, I wrote a post about one of Max Brand's novels featuring Silvertip, a cowboy who (along with his exceptional horse and loyal wolf) gets into a series of adventures helping the innocent. I compared it to the comic book adaptation of the novel.
This time, I'm reviewing a comic book adaptation of a Silvertip novel without having read the actual novel yet. I'm actually a little sorry I did this now, because it is an awesome story and I will be reading the novel. I would have prefered it not have been spoiled for me.
Four Color #572 (July 1954) is an adaptation of the novel Silvertip's Search (which itself first appeared in the September 23, 1933 isse of Western Story Magazine). The writer and the cover artist are unknown. The interior art, as was usual with most of the Silvertip adaptations, was by Everett Raymond Kinstler.
Silvertip is asked by the father of a young man named Rap Brender to find Rap, who has taken a walk on the wildside and joined the gang of Bart Hawkins, an outlaw who has a large gang and maintains a tight control over the town he lives in.
(Interestingly, the summary of the book on Amazon gives the outlaw's name as Barry Christian. I guess the writer or editor of the comic wanted a name that sounded more "outlaw-y.")
Silvertip gets an example of how tightly Hawkins controls things when a man is shot just for speaking to Silvertip.
Silvertip is soon on Hawkins' hit list. Rap wanted excitement when he joined the outlaws, but shies away from murder and helps Silvertip get away. In return, Silvertip saves Rap a short time after that.
Rap, by the way, has fallen in love with Rose Cardigan, who is being held for ransom by Hawkins. This leads to the epically cool part of the story. Hawkins and a henchman are taking Rose to Mexico, to safely keep her a prisoner there until they get their ransom. They have to ride across the desert, but have extra horses and a large supply of water. Silvertip and Rap follow, but only have one horse each and only a little water. A large part of the comic covers this epic journey, in which Silvertip uses his survival and tracking skills to keep him and Rap alive as they stay on Hawkins' trail.
By the time they come to a mountain pass (which moves them from broiling heat into freezing snow), Rap is too exhausted to go on. Silvertip leaves Rap in a warm cave, then goes on alone. He manages to free Rose from her captors, but a chase through the snow (which at one point necessitates outrunning an avalanche) ends with the deaths of the villains.
The journey through the desert and the mountains really does have an epic feel to it. That's the main reason I'm tracking down the novel to read it. Max Brand is perhaps my favorite early 20th Century writer of Westerns and he's bound to make the prose version of this even more epic.
I do have one small complaint about Kinstler's otherwise excellent art. While traveling through the desert, Silvertip and Rap take off their shirts because of the heat. This is a huge no-no and Silvertip would have known better. In the desert, you do NOT allow yourself to become sunburned. Aside from the debilitating pain, it sucks moisture out of you even faster than would otherwise happen. If you are ever pursuing a villain across a scorching desert to rescue a girl, KEEP YOUR SHIRT ON!
Next week, we'll begin a two-week look at Marvel's last gasp attempt to publish anotholgy books that featured seperate stories about different and often very dissimilar characters.
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