Bobby Benson’s B-Bar-B Riders
Genres: Adventure, Drama, Western
Publisher: Magazine Enterprises
Vol 1: 1950
This comic, based loosely on a radio drama that ran from 1949 to 1955, had most of it’s art done by Bob Powell, with help from Dick Ayers and eventually Frank Frazetta, and all of the writing by Gardner Fox, tells the story of Bobby Benson a modern (1950) 12 year old boy who inherits a working ranch from his dead parents and not only runs it, but prospers, he then proceeds to forefeel his western movie fantasies.
He is aided in this by both the adult ranch hands and later his friends, before long they not only deal with the regular type western villains, outlaws and bandits, but also encounter spies, super villains, mad scientists, and communists.
The Bobby Benson remains for the whole run of the series while the backup features change with some being such characters as Magazine Enterprises’ Ghost Rider, and Red Eagle to the Lemonade Kid a masked western hero (though never depected with the mask on the covers) who in a slight twist is secretly Bobby’s foreman and guardian Tex Mason but only takes on the Lemonade Kid identity in separate stories, while appearing only as Tex in the main Bobby Benson stories.
