Rebel Glory

Lee Hunter and Reb Stuart returned to the pages of Four Color in issue #904 (May 1958)--a tad more than a year after their premiere adventures. I assume that means their first appearance had gotten strong enough sales and/or favorable reader response to justify a sequel. But, unlike other original Western titles such as Ben Bowie or Indian Chief, Lee never spun off into his own book. Did sales slump with the second FC issue? Was their simply no room on Dell's very busy publication schedule?

Whatever the reason for these being the last two Lee Hunter adventures, they are pretty good stories. The first is titled "Rebel Glory," which has an uncredited writer and art credited to Ray Bailey in the Grand Comics Database. This one begins with Reb Stuart combining business with pleasure as he travels to a nearby ranch to both buy some horses for the army and woo the rancher's pretty daughter.

His romantic interlude is spoiled when some Indians raid the ranch and make off with the horses. Reb reports the theft and soon he and some troopers are off in pursuit, with Lee Hunter scouting for them. Lee and Reb continue to snipe at each other--it seems Lee had an interest in the girl as well--but neither allows their rivalry to get in the way to doing their jobs.

They soon run into some Sioux who are trailing a buffalo herd. This creates a bit of a conundrum. The Sioux demand the pony soldiers pause in their hunt for the stolen horses, saying that they don't want the herd stampeded. This seems reasonable, but it's also possible that the Sioux are the horse thieves and want to keep the soldiers from finding this out. (Remember that Reb is relatively new to the West and didn't know what tribe the horse thieves were from.)

Lee decides to wait and Reb decides not to wait. The former Confederate continues to search on his own. He does stampede the horses, forcing the soldiers to work frantically to contain them on Sioux land, but he also finds the horses in the Sioux camp.

The Sioux then ambush the soldiers. Lee figures he can force the Indians to retreat by stampeding the buffalo herd they had just worked to hard to keep from stampeding. Reb provides a distraction for Lee by breaking out an old Confederate flag and launching a one-man charge.

The plan works. Lee, Reb and the soldiers not only get away with their lives, they also recover the stolen horses. But Lee and Reb still have to have a... "discussion" over who should get to woo the rancher's daughter.

This is another good story, though Reb's constant "I'm mad at all Yankees" schtick does start to wear a bit thin. But I do enjoy that the story leaves it open for us to decide about whether Reb was right to keep looking for the horses after it had been decided to stop. On the one hand, he did stampede the buffalo herd just as everyone feared. On the other hand,though, the Sioux did turn out to be the horse thieves, so he was right to be suspicious.

Well, there's one more Lee Hunter story to go before he retreats into Comic Book Limbo. Before we get to that, though, we'll look at an early team-up of DC's World War II characters.