Two Gun Kid #60
Two-Gun Kid #60 (November 1962) is one of the earliest and most deliberate attempts by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby to transplant the superhero formula — secret identity, masked vigilante persona, mentor origin — onto a Western genre title that had run for 59 issues under a completely different character. By retiring the original Two-Gun Kid, Clay Harder, in favor of lawyer-turned-gunfighter Matt Hawk, the issue effectively established the Matt Hawk version as Marvel's most enduring Western hero, one who would eventually cross into the mainstream Marvel Universe, join the Avengers, and remain in active continuity into the 2010s. The bold in-story conceit — Hawk dismisses the prior hero as a fictional dime-novel figure — was a retroactive continuity move that anticipated the kind of universe-building Marvel would become famous for. The issue also anticipates a recurring Marvel archetype: the attorney who fights injustice both in court and in costume, two years before Daredevil debuted with nearly the same premise.
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The Two-Gun Kid series had featured Clay Harder as its sole protagonist through 59 issues, spanning the Timely and Atlas eras; Joe Sinnott was the last regular artist on the Harder version. After a hiatus of roughly a year and a half following issue #59, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby relaunched the book at issue #60, applying the superhero-with-secret-identity template that had already proven successful with Fantastic Four and Spider-Man. Kirby handled pencils for only three issues of the new run before handing art duties to Dick Ayers, though Kirby continued contributing covers; interior art on this issue was shared with Don Heck. The issue was published with a cover date of November 1962 and carried the then-new cover price of twelve cents.
Trivia · 8 facts
- First appearance and origin of Matt Hawk as the Two-Gun Kid (Earth-616), the character who became Marvel's most prominent Western hero.
- First appearances of supporting cast members who defined the run: gunfighter mentor Ben Dancer, romantic interest Nancy Carter, antagonist/brother Clem Carter, and Matt's horse Thunder.
- Created by writer/editor Stan Lee and penciler Jack Kirby, with inks by Dick Ayers (and additional interior art by Don Heck); Kirby signed the cover work as 'J. Kirby.'
- The issue retconned the previous Two-Gun Kid, Clay Harder (who had starred in issues #1–59 since 1948), into a fictional dime-novel hero whose stories inspired Matt Hawk to adopt the alias.
- Matt Hawk is established as a Boston-trained lawyer who settles in Tombstone, Texas, giving him the dual identity of attorney and masked gunfighter — a structure deliberately mirroring Marvel's emerging superhero template.
- The title story 'The Beginning of the Two-Gun Kid' was later reprinted in Two-Gun Kid #120; a second story, 'The Outcast!', was reprinted in Western Gunfighters Vol. 2 #26; and the third story, 'I Hate the Two-Gun Kid!', was reprinted in Mighty Marvel Western #3 and #35.
- The issue was published after a roughly 18-month gap in the series, marking a clean creative reboot of an existing title rather than a brand-new launch.
- Matt Hawk's character was later retconned by the 1995 Sunset Riders miniseries to give him the birth surname Liebowicz, making him one of Marvel's few explicitly Jewish Western heroes.
Cast · 5 characters
Full credits
Full plot ⚠ may contain spoilers
▸ Reveal full plot — may contain spoilers
Matt Hawk arrives from the East. After helping Ben Dancer with two crooks, Ben teaches him all he knows and Matt becomes the Two-Gun Kid.
Plot details indexed by the Grand Comics Database (CC BY-SA).