BOYS' LIFE, the publication of the
Boy Scouts of America, was first published in
March 1911. Their first "
Comics" section debuted in
July 1940, with reprints of then-popular newspaper strips, including "
Bringing Up Father", "
Felix", "
Tippy and Cap Stubbs", "
Krazy Kat" and "
Popeye". Although other features appeared from time to time, including the long-running "
Scouts In Action" (which made its debut in
January 1947) and many comics-style advertisements, it was only with the
September 1952 issue that a
COLOR comics section made its debut, the work of the
Johnstone & Cushing advertising agency.
However, a year-and-a-half before that, a bona fide
WESTERN series made its debut, in the form of "
Old Timer Tales Of KIT CARSON". The "
Old Timer" was apparently a character that popped up here and there in the magazine, as the "host" of various features.
KIT CARSON was a real-life figure, a "trailblazer" and Indian fighter, who lived from
1809-1868.
The
BOYS' LIFE series ran from
March 1951-May 1953. With the popularity of western series all through the 1950s, I find it very odd that the series ended only 8 months after the color comics section made its debut. I would have thought a western series would have fit easily side-by-side with the science-fiction of
Space Conquerors! and the historical mythology of
Stories From The Bible.
Far too typically with
BOYS' LIFE, credits are intermittent. Apparently the art was by
Lee Ames, most known for an entire series of "
DRAW 50..." books, but I've only found one installment that listed a writer-- "
S. Pashko". A Google search revelaed that
Stanley Pashko, later on, was listed as "Senior Editor, Special Features" for the magazine. I would figure these 2 guys did the entire run, except, the art in the first 2 episodes seems much simpler, cruder, and, the lettering & word balloons are completely different. If there were 2 different artists involved, it would seem whoever did the first
2 installments,
Lee Ames took over with the
3rd for
May 1951.
BOYS' LIFE / March 1951
Philmont Scout Ranch / photo by D.L. Richardson
Page 3 / "This month's cover"
Page 29 / "The Old Timer" logo
Episode 1 / "Trapping In Colorado"
story by Stanley Pashko / art by ??
This was originally formatted as a 2-page spread, with each "tier" read from the left page to the right page. To read correctly on this blog, I had to cut EACH segment and put them back together, in a sequence that would make sense on the computer screen.
Part 2
April 1951 / Episode 2 / "He Traps Fur Thieves"
May 1951 / Episode 3 / "Ambushed By Comanches"
story by Stanley Pashko / art by LEE AMES
Unlike Episode 1, this one was formatted to be read 1 page at a time,
which saved me a lot of trouble re-cutting it (apart from the title area).
Page 2
June 1951 / Episode 4 / "Duel With A Horse Thief"
From here on they started using 2-color printing instead of adding graytones.
After skipping
August, the feature returned with another
2-page installment...
September 1951 / Episode 6 / "Wounded In Action"
Page 2
October 1951 / Episode 7 / "A Blackfoot War"
Part 2
November 1951 / Episode 8 / "A Bully Learns A Lesson"
Artist Lee Ames began using 3 "tiers" instead of 4 with this episode, allowing the images to be bigger and more visually impressive. As far as I can tell, this is the only episode where the writer was credited. Also, this must be the unlikeliest "Christmas" story I ever read. Good grief!
December 1951 / Episode 9 / "Fighting Fire With Fire"
(Continued in
Kit Carson, 1952)
Copyright (C) 1952 by Boys' Life magazine
Raw scans from the
Boys' Life / Wayback Machine website
Restorations by Henry R. Kujawa
For more:
Read about
Kit Carson at the
Wikipedia site!
Read about
Lee Ames at the
Wikipedia site!
See the covers of
Avon's
KIT CARSON series at the
GCD site
Read
Avon's
KIT CARSON series at the
Comic Book Plus site!
Read more
KIT CARSON in
Avon's
BLAZING SIXGUNS
at the
Western Comics Adventures blog!
Read about the
CLASSIC ILLUSTRATED version at the
Comixology site
Read about the
KIT CARSON tv series at the
Google.com site!
Read
SPACE CONQUERORS! at this blog!
Read
STORIES FROM THE BIBLE at this blog!
Read
Old Timer Tales of KIT CARSON at this blog!
