Baby, It's Cold Outside

cover artist unknown

When Ben Bowie got his own title in 1956 (starting with issue #7 because of a half-dozen appearances in Four Color), he and his partners were traveling West, well away from the colonies that had been their stomping grounds. Their intent was to establish a trading post and way station that could open up further exploration and settlement of the West.

So stories often featured encountering and hopefully befriending Indian tribes mixed in with a clash with Spaniards and a search for a source of salt. By Ben Bowie #8 (Feb-April 1957), they had hunkered down in their cabin to wait out the winter.

The writer of "The Wolfpack Trail" is unknown, but he knows his stuff. What makes the following story work is the facts that the dangers of traveling through a winter wilderness are presented realistically, without exaggeration, and that the protagonists deal with these dangers in an intelligent, knowledgable fashion.

The interior art, by the way, is by Albert Micale.

The tale begins when an exhausted and nearly frozen man arrives at the cabin. He is the leader of a band of sixteen settlers who were trapped in the snowstorm. Leaving the man in the cabin (with heat and food--so he'll be all right), Ben and his team set out to find the settlers.

But winter in the wilderness is a dangerous time. An avalanche nearly takes them out and young Jim falls into a crevasse that had been hidden by the snow. They press on, though, and eventually find the settlers by trailing a pack of hungry wolves.

In a battle between muskets and wolves, wolves never win. Ben wants to immediately lead the settlers to safety, but the problem now isn't so much the weather, but a guy named Gropper. He was left in charge when the leader went for help and, boy, does he take his responsibilities seriously!

That would be fine by itself, but Gropper is a self-assured jerk who is convinced he's right about everything, but is inevitably wrong. Even his name sounds obnoxious. Perhaps with a name like Gropper, he couldn't help but be a jerk.

Ben tries to respect Gropper's authority and work with him, but Gropper is always wrong and eventually tries to enforce his bad ideas at the point of a gun.

One can argue that Gropper as a character is too one-dimensional, existing purely for the purpose of being an impediment to the heroes. But I'm not bothered by it--Gropper's presence in the story makes sense in context and self-assured jerks to exist in real life.

Despite Gropper, Ben manages to contact a friendly tribe of Indians and eventually get everyone to safety.

You can read the story online HERE.

Next week, an M.P. in World War II is given the boring job of patrolling a bombed out town. What could possibly go wrong?