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Previously: Ace and his partner Strongarm are on their way to rescue a town from the deadly Faro Kid. As they travel, Ace tells his companions about a dream he had, in which his hat told him how the Faro Kid may be a key to Ace's past. To read from the beginning, click here.



I must apologize, dear reader, that this page was a bit late (although it was still Friday when I posted it).

As you can tell, in the original story they just gloss over the whole "massacre of everyone in the wagon train" and you can barely tell that the main character was hit by the shovel. In the final panel of the original, I should add, that the bandits then talk about taking scalps to make it look like Indians killed everyone. It's pretty morbid.

~ Ben

“Ace” of Diamonds, Remix Comix, Whisperingloon Studios, and the other stuff I made up for this webcomic are TM and (C) Ben Avery, 2009. While the original Black Diamond Western is in public domain, “Ace” of Diamonds (the story and the artwork) and the contents of this page are NOT public domain.

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And so it begins. The dream!

And yes, in the Black Diamond Western comic there was actually a small run of stories that were narrated by hats! One of the others that I will be using soon was narrated by a sombrero! Granted, the hat was actually an avatar for the true narrator. But still, it feels like the hat is talking . . .

So where, dear reader, is the line drawn between clever and ridiculous?

Of course, maybe I've crossed that line, since instead of using the hat as an avatar I'm using the hat as an actual character! At least it's a dream character . . .

~ Ben

“Ace” of Diamonds, Remix Comix, Whisperingloon Studios, and the other stuff I made up for this webcomic are TM and (C) Ben Avery, 2009. While the original Black Diamond Western is in public domain, “Ace” of Diamonds (the story and the artwork) and the contents of this page are NOT public domain.

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More History

Continuing with Maurice Horn's Comics of the American West, I found this interesting little tidbit:

The masked Western hero . . . derives from literary precedent (in this instance the Zorro novels). In the comics The Lone Ranger was undoubtedly the first protagonist to wear a mask, a convention not conspicuously picked up by other newspaper strips. It is an altogether different matter in the comic books where the trend towards masked and, when at all possible, costumed Western heroes has been overwhelming from the start. There have been Durango Kid, the Outlaw Kid, the Masked Raider, Nighthawk, the Ghost Rider, and countless other who have donned mask or disguise for the most arbitrary (and often the most laughable) of reasons. The real motivation, of course, has always been crassly commercial: to try and relate the Western tradition to the vastly more popular (to the comic book audience) concept of the superhero. Only in Red Wolf was an intelligent attempt made at organically incorporating elements of the super-hero ethos into the Western mythos; because of its very sophisticate and intricate weaving together of two distinct traditions, the experiment unfortunately failed, and it is not likely yo be tried again in the foreseeable future. (203, 205)
I find this interesting mainly because of what Black Diamond Western was in its time: a crass attempt at creating yet another masked cowboy. But that becomes the challenge for Ace of Diamonds: to rise above the cliche. I don't know if I will actually rise above the cliche . . . but I have every intention of trying. The mask and why Ace wears it will be a mystery for much of the time I spend with this project. Indeed, for the time being, it is Ace's driving force. He does not know why he wears it, but he knows that he DOES wear it. And that's all he needs to know.

So, how much of the story his hat is about to tell him (and us, gentle readers) is true? Time will tell . . .

Speaking of masked cowboys . . . on Tuesday, my local comic shop put on a party for Marvel's 70th anniversary and had local comic creators draw sketches on the special "sketch variant" cover of The Marvels Project #1. I'm a local creator, so I was able to join in on the fun. Since Marvel's Two Gun Kid was featured in The Marvels Project #1, I did a little funny drawing that pokes fun at the whole "masked cowboy" concept. Here's my blog post about the event -- the Two Gun Kid cover can be found beneath the pictures of the cake! Now you can see why I'll never be referred to as a "writer/artist" . . .

~ Ben

“Ace” of Diamonds, Remix Comix, Whisperingloon Studios, and the other stuff I made up for this webcomic are TM and (C) Ben Avery, 2009. While the original Black Diamond Western is in public domain, “Ace” of Diamonds (the story and the artwork) and the contents of this page are NOT public domain.


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History Lesson

In the book Comics of the American West by Maurice Horn, Black Diamond Western (the original comic book Ace of Diamonds is based on) is featured in the subsection "The golden age of the Western (1948-1954)".

The section gives some background and details on Western comics after WWII, and how Western comics boomed while superhero comics "slumped" (84). It talks about Kid Colt ("one of the more entertaining of the cowboy features", 85) and many of the other Atlas comics of the '40's and '50's (many written by Stan Lee). It gets into National Periodicals' forays into the Western, including Nighthawk ("most interesting of all . . . about yet another hooded figure of justice, by the name of Hannibal Hawkes, whose emblem, a hawk emlbazoned on his shirtfront, spread terror in the hearts of prairie evildoers, much as National's Batman was already doing with Gotham City criminals", 87).

"In that prolific year 1948 Western comic books just seemed to tumble over one antoher as far as the wide horizon," Horn says (88). The following year "proved hardly less productive" (89). The chapter gives examples of these comics, but it's what he says about Black Diamond Western that I found most interesting. I had hoped to find some information about the title and the artists, but here's what I got instead:

And still they came . . . Lev Gleason, notorious for his crime comics, put out Black Diamond Western (formerly Desperado), about yet another masked rider who faught outlaws, maurading Apache bands, claim jumpers, and a mysterious criminal mastermind known as the Scorpion. The comic book was on the whole undistinguished, with only the wildly parodic Bing Bang Buster by Basil Wolverton as its redeeming grace; it lasted from 1949 to 1956. (90)
Well, there you have it. At least Black Diamond Western warranted a whole paragraph in the book! I'm going to continue my search for information about Black Diamond Western and the people who made it happen!

By the way, Basil Wolverton's pages will be featured in either issue 2 or 3 of Ace of Diamonds, while the Scorpion will be mentioned in the near future but not featured until much later. He's the closest thing to an arch-enemy that Black Diamond had, and will join Faro Kid in Ace's rogues gallery.

A sidenote: Nighthawk gets a hawk on his shirt, ala Batman. What does Black Diamond/Ace get? A black diamond shape. Good grief. That'll strike terror in the hearts of men, right? "Yikes! Look out! It's a girl's best friend!"

~ Ben

“Ace” of Diamonds, Remix Comix, Whisperingloon Studios, and the other stuff I made up for this webcomic are TM and (C) Ben Avery, 2009. While the original Black Diamond Western is in public domain, “Ace” of Diamonds (the story and the artwork) and the contents of this page are NOT public domain.

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In the original comic (Black Diamond Western) that little kid in panel five is running to his mother to ask if he can go out to play! Of course, his mother says no. I've always wanted to use that "SOB!" line since a friend of mine brought my attention to it.

More about that dream of Ace's today. The dream motif is going to be revisited a number of times, because it allows me to use some of the more strange and oddballish back up features that appeared in Black Diamond Western. However, I'm realizing now that the dream motif, which started as just an idea to use those items, actually helped push forward the story that I will be developing. It's not just a gimmick, it's vital to the story.

~ Ben

“Ace” of Diamonds, Remix Comix, Whisperingloon Studios, and the other stuff I made up for this webcomic are TM and (C) Ben Avery, 2009. While the original Black Diamond Western is in public domain, “Ace” of Diamonds (the story and the artwork) and the contents of this page are NOT public domain.

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So, Ace had a dream. About his hat. What's that all about?

Tune in to find out!

The upcoming dream sequence is interesting to me, because it really fits into the direction I want to send this series into, even though it will come from a different story that didn't feature Ace at all! It still comes from the same issue of "Black Diamond Western" that this Black Diamond story came from, but originally Black Diamond Western, the comic book, had one upfront story featuring Black Diamond and two or more back stories featuring other cowboy adventures (some by Basil Wolverton!). For Ace of Diamonds -- the remix -- the idea is to use as many pages as possible, but for the same story! Sometimes, that may mean a flashback to Ace's past, sometimes it may mean a dream sequence (as is coming up -- I mean, how else to you use a story narrated by a hat? Tune in to find out more!) and sometimes it may mean backstory for a minor character.

Meanwhile, that woman has shown up again . . .

~ Ben

“Ace” of Diamonds, Remix Comix, Whisperingloon Studios, and the other stuff I made up for this webcomic are TM and (C) Ben Avery, 2009. While the original Black Diamond Western is in public domain, “Ace” of Diamonds (the story and the artwork) and the contents of this page are NOT public domain.

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