Out In A Blaze Of Glory!

To be honest I almost forgot about this revisionist history of the Marvel wild west from the turn of the century. John Ostrander and Leonardo Manco came to the western heroes of Marvel and they found a story with some unusual depth. Blaze of Glory tells a tale of a tiny town named Wonderment which was the home for former slaves seeking to find some sort of life on the frontier.

The town is put upon by night riders, a gang of white racists who are not satisfied with the outcome of the Civil War.  To protect against these gangs, the people of Wonderment, one Reno Jones (of Gunhawks fame) in particular seek out gunslingers to help protect the people.

What they find are not the shining heroes we're familiar with from scores of Marvel Comics. Those adventures were apparently the stuff of dime novels. The real men known as Rawhide Kid, Two-Gun Kid, and Kid Colt are less heroic and more gritty and bit more murderous than the legends relate.

This stark presentation makes the story sting with a realistic violence that often the vintage Marvel westerns, limited by the rigors of the Comics Code could not indulge in.

These are not "good guys", only better guys than the villains who seek to pillage the homes of innocent folks and murder them to boot.

There are twists and turns and all kinds of doing, including the appearances of lots more vintage Marvel heroes as well as some real world variations of famous western names. It's a rousing tale of revisionist history, by the slippery standards of the 90's not bad at all.

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