Bank Robbers and Mountain Lions

The cover story for Rawhide Kid #25 (December 1961) is "The Bat Strikes," which provides us with evidence that there were masked villains using secret identities even back in the Old West. But then, in any Comic Book Universe worth its salt, there was probably cavemen villains who were using secret identities while employing trained sabertooth tigers to rob the local cave village bank of its deposits of shiny rocks.

In this particular story, the villain is "The Bat," who keeps robbing the local banks. So when Rawhide Kid shows up, wanting to deposit some money in a bank, everyone assumes he must be the Bat. His reputation as an outlaw and tough guy has proceeded him, even though he's not wanted in this county.

Everyone either treats him with contempt or is in object terror of him. He reacts to this with a mixture of anger and bitterness, but what can he do? Fear and false accusations follow him whereever he goes.

Well, when the Bat robs another bank, the Kid figures he can catch him and clear his name of at least one false accusation.

I like this short but well-constructed tale (written by Stan Lee) for telling a good story and providing us with some real emotional impact, but I have to say that the page just below--showing the Kid's pursuit of the Bat and then the Bat's unfortunate encounter with a mountain lion--is what sells the story for me. Jack Kirby's artwork provides a real sense of kinetic energy while unfolding the action in a clear, logical fashion. It's a model of effective visual storytelling:

Anyway, the Bat turns out to be the owner of a local bank, robbing the place to cover financial losses.

A local who had given the Kid a particularly hard time shows up in time to hear the banker's dying confession and has the grace to apologize to the Kid. Then, despite the bitterness he'd shown earlier, the Kid tells him to he'll take the blame for being the Bat rather than have to tell the banker's wife and daughter the truth. The banker can be portrayed as having died a hero while chasing a crook.

The story had done a very good job in highlighting the Kid's bitterness earlier in the story, so this act of nobility really does have some emotional bit to it. One can argue that before Lee and Kirby started added maturity to the portrayal of comic book characters with Fantastic Four #1, that such characters were usually one-dimensional. And this is often a fair point--probably even usually a fair point. But we can see there that there are stories out there that did give comic book characters some real depth.

We're due for another visit with Tragg and the Sky Gods, so we'll do that next week.