Western Kid Primer
Series Overview
What makes the Western Kid stand out from other western titles from the Atlas era of comics? The Western Kid had a horse and a dog. That’s pretty much it. The only notable thing about the character was that he was created by legendary Marvel Comics artist John Romita. After the series completed its run, the Western Kid was not seen for many years, at least not in original stories. Despite what both Fandom and Wikipedia state, Western Kid did not actually appear in Gunsmoke Western #51. Wikipedia cites Comics.org which actually does not list that information at all, and knowing the people at Fandom, someone copied that info from Wikipedia because nobody there actually does any real research. They’re too busy creating character pages for one-off man-on-the-street characters instead of adding an relevant information. Having actually looked at a copy of Gunsmoke Western #51, I can confirm that there are not a Western Kid story in that issue. Now that I’m done throwing shade at Fandom, the character isn’t actually seen again until the Atlas era stories were reprinted in Western Gunfighters (Vol. 2).
The character appeared in original stories, finally, in the early 2000s appearing in both the Apache Skies and Blaze of Glory limited series. Both of those series state that Timely/Atlas era comics were “dime novel” adaptations of “real” events. So the rather clean-cut stories in this series should be taken with a grain of salt. They are probably “based on true events” but not entirely “accurate”.
