A Different Guy Named RIO.

This short masterpiece was drawn by Alex Toth. In this early example of his work, you can still see the influence of one of Toth's idols, Milt Caniff. In his later work, Toth would keep Caniff's strong pools of black, but drop more and more of the smaller details, eventually developing a stark, minimalist style all his own.

Apart from his comics work on Zorro and the Golden Age Green Lantern, Toth is best remembered today as the creator of Space Ghost. In fact, Toth designed most of Hannah-Barbera's action cartoons in the 1960's and 1970's.

This piece is from the 1950's, although the GCD can't seem to quite pin it down. It is tentatively credited to an undetermined issue of Billy the Kid Adventure Magazine.









On Page 4, Rio tells George he's going to rescue him by trying a "Comanche Pickup"... I assume that's some sort of maneuver based on the legendary horsemanship of the Comanche. A Comanche Pickup is also a discontinued model of light truck manufactured by Jeep from 1984-1992.


When Chrysler Corp. bought the Jeep line from AMC, they phased out the Comanche to eliminate a potential competitor for their extant Dodge Ram pickup trucks.