Snow Skates

 

Bonanza's TV run was fairly straightforward--14 seasons on NBC from 1959 through 1973. Its comic book history is a little less straightforward, but not that complicated. Dell Comics dedicated four issues of Four Color to Bonanza. In 1962, they put out two issues of a dedicated Bonanza series. 

Then Dell had a sort-of messy divorce with Western Publishing, the company that licensed shows and movies, then produced the comics. Dell then distributed the comics. When the two entities parted with one another, Western created its own distribution company they called Gold Key.  Under the Gold Key banner, Western put out their own Bonanza series. It ran for 37 issues, from 1962 to 1970.

We'll look at one of the stories from Four Color #1221 (Sept.-Nov. 1961). 

"The Snow Walkers" was written by Gaylord Du Bois and drawn by Tom Gill. Gill's clear and effective art is part of what makes this story great, bringing De Bois' excellent script to life. 

If I may pause from the story review for a moment, let's give a shout out to Dell/Gold Key writers De Bois and Paul S. Newman. Both men were incredibly prolific and both wrote strong script after strong script in numerous genres. That Dell/Gold Key consistently produced great comics is in large part because of those two men.

Anyway, "Snow Walkers" begins when a detachment of soldiers arrive at the Ponderosa, hoping to buy some horses. Ben Cartwright wants to sell those horses, but declines to take a bank draft in lieu of cash. Later on, he explains why to his three sons. There were a number of things that were off about the soldiers--details about their behavior that didn't line up with usual military behavior.

The soldiers stay the night in a nearby bunkhouse. A blizzard kicks up and a man named Rolf Thornsen arrives at the door to the ranch house, looking to also spend the night. He's an old friend who is taking mail from California to nearby Virginia City. He travels on what he calls "Snow Skates," which we would call skis.

This is the sort of detail that helps mark Du Bois as a great writer. He did his research. At the time of the Wild West, the term "skis" had not yet been coined. "Snow Skates" is in fact what they would have been called.

In the morning, they get proof that the "soldiers" were in fact deserters. They've murdered the man guarding the horse pen and stolen the horses. They've got quite the head start, but Rolf has an idea. He can help the Cartwrights quickly make their own snow skates and they can essentially cut the bad guys off at the pass.

They run the deserters down at a remote cabin used by an old Indian and his daughter. The Indian has been murdered, but his daughter Birdsong hid in the snow and escaped. So the Cartwrights and Rolf don't have to worry about a hostage situation, but the deserters are holed up in a defensible position.

What follows is a well-choreographed action scene, which includes rolling a large boulder into the cabin, Hoss briefly being taken hostage before a well-aimed rifle shot from Little Joe gives him a chance to beat down on the bad guys, and the eventual surrender of those bad guys. 

The story ends with Ben giving the recovered horses to Birdsong so that she'll have a good dowry for the future. 

It is simply a well-told story. If it suffers at all, it's that Adam, Hoss and Little Joe don't have a chance to show off their own unique personalities and are essentially interchangable. Well, Hoss gets to show off his strength, but a live-action episode would have allowed Pernell Roberts, Dan Blocker and Michael Landon to individualize the brothers through their performances. 

But it does show Ben as a smart guy and a strong leader. And Gill's art shows off the action in a way that allows us to always understand what's going on. And the panel showing a murdered man's hand sticking out of the snow is an effective way of showing violent death without being overly gruesome. 

Bonanza was an excellent TV series (well, except for those episodes where one of the brothers falls in love and reminds us of that annoying Cartwright Curse). That the comic book adaptation showed the same skill in telling good stories is very much appreciated by fans of classic TV. 

Next week, we'll check in with Spider-Man. And it's only as I write this sentence that I wonder if I was subconciously led by the release of the new Spider-Man movie to decide to look a Spidey comic. If so, it really doesn't matter. We'll be jumping back to the Bronze Age, not looking at anything new. 

Hoss and his Pet... Mountain Lion?

 

The Whitman TV-tie in books from the 1960s are nearly always worth reading. The publisher hired excellent authors who faithfully captured the characters and settings of the various TV series, then told a great story that did not write down to the young target audience.

Killer Lion is a great example of this. The author, Steve Frazee, was a superb Western wordslinger who could always be depended upon to tell a good story. In this case, he begins the novel with Hoss Cartwright staying at a remote line cabin, waiting out the tail end of winter while he watches over a new herd of cattle his Pa recently purchased.

Hoss shoots a mountain lion, then finds the lion's cub nearby. The practical thing to do is to shoot the cub as well, but Hoss is the Cartwright brother who tends to bond with animals.

So, even though he knows its a bad idea in the long term, Hoss begins to care for the cub, naming it Rimrock. Rimrock begins to grow, but also gets used to being cared for and refuses to learn to hunt anything larger than mice. Eventually, Hoss takes Rimrock far away from the cabin and releases him, figuring the young mountain lion will learn to fend for himself if left with no choice. But Rimrock keeps finding his way back to the cabin.

The humor of the story is great--funny and natural to the situation and characters without being forced. But there are also effective moments of drama and danger, such as when Hoss's horse breaks a leg, forcing him to shoot the animal but leaving him lost in the snow with his eyesight fading because of snow blindness.

Later, the action shifts to the Ponderosa. Rimrock has followed Hoss home, forcing him to try to hide the lion from his father and brother. This plan fails spectacularly before long. Then things get serious again when a traveler is apparently killed by a mountain lion. A hunting party is formed, but Hoss thinks the death might have been deliberate murder made to look like a lion attack. The only way to save Rimrock is to find the real killer.

Hoss is the perfect Cartwright brother to take the lead in this story, because he's the one who would give in to (arguably misplaced) compassion and get himself into this situation. And Frazee expertly mixes comedy with drama, introducing real moments of danger and giving the novel an appropriate bittersweet ending.

The Education of Ben Cartwright

 

In the early 1990s, twenty years after the TV series Bonanza had ended, a writer named Stephen Calder (well, actually that's a pen name for Frank Roderus and Preston Lewis) wrote a half-dozen novels set in the Bonanza universe. I've recently acquired three of them at used book stores, including The Pioneer Spirit--the first in the series.

This book picks up in the 1840s, with young Ben Cartwright serving as an officer on a merchant sailing ship. The first few chapters effectively introduce us to Ben, showing that he's already developed the rigid moral code he would have in later years and that he's already tough-as-nails. In fact, over the course of those introductory chapter, he deals with a sailor who murdered a shipmate and attempts to murder Ben. The ensuing brawl does not go well for the killer.

We learn that Ben has quite a reputation, becoming known as "The Devil of Boston" because of his accomplisments. I actually found myself wishing this book had been more focused on his career as a sailor, since some of the adventures that are merely mentioned in passing would have been pretty awesome to read about in detail. For instance, when the crew of a ship on which Ben was serving were arrested on trumped-up charges in a Central American port, Ben broke them out of jail and--to make sure the ship could escape the harbor--blew up the powder magazine in the local fort. THAT would have made a fun chapter in the book.

But the story moves on. Ben falls in love with the daughter of his captain and opens a chandler's shop in Boston. The story drags a bit while we learn how deliriously happy he is, especially after his son Adam is born. But this serves a purpose in highlighting the tragedy of his wife's death when Adam is still a toddler. Ben becomes so detached from life emotionally that he allows his business to fail and eventually decides to move west with Adam to start fresh.

The TV series covered much of this ground in a flashback episode early in its run. The details are different enough to place the events of the novel in an alternate Bonanza universe, but the author catches the strength of Ben's basic character and I can easily imagine the story of the novel as a legitimate path that eventually brings Ben to be the loving patriarch of his family and a successful rancher. He's got stuff to learn about life--particularly in dealing with loss. But he'll get there.

While heading west, he meets a Swedish woman named Inger, saving her from being beaten by her brother. They get married, though Ben does so at first to protect her and because Adam likes her. But eventually, he falls for her. Their relationship strengthens Ben to the point where, when Inger dies after the birth of Hoss, he's able to accept that life moves on after we mourn our dead. After Elizabeth died, he had allowed his sorrow to turn into self-pity. Now he has learned better.

But before he can move on with his life, he needs to survive a blizzard while alone in the mountains and separated from his sons. 

Once again, the details of his marriage to Inger are different from the two flashback episodes involving her, but the personalities are spot-on. I especially like the way Adam is portrayed. As an adult, he was the most thoughtful and well-educated of the three Cartwright brothers. So, when we see him as an intelligent and perpetually curious kid, it fits perfectly.

As I said, there are a few points in which the prose drags a little. And, of course, I'm not worried about giving away spoilers because if you are reading a Bonanza novels, you know what happens to his wives. It's the beginning of the Cartwright Curse, which was the one aspect of the TV show that annoyed me. The tragedy of losing (eventually) three wives was appropriate to Ben's background. But over the course of the 14 seasons the show was on, Adam, Hoss and Little Joe each seemed to fall in love about 12, 864, 937 times apiece and the girl ALWAYS ends up dead. If you turn on a Bonanza show and they are doing a Western drama, watch it because it will be at least good and quite likely excellent. If they are doing one of their occasional comedy episodes, watch it because it will be gut-bustingly funny. If one of the Cartwrights falls in love, turn the channel and find an episode of Gunsmoke or Maverick to watch instead. The flashback episodes about Ben are an exception to this rule--those are good. But if Adam, Hoss or Little Joe falls for a gal, give up on it. It'll be filled with manipulative, treacly emotion and you know that the girl might just as well have a target pinned to her back. She's doomed.

But I digress. The Pioneer Spirit is an excellent Bonanza novel and gives us a strong and appropriate-to-the-character version of Ben's early life. It's worth reading.