By 1950, after the superhero genre had lost it’s popularity in comics, the comic companies were looking for the next big thing, one thing that held sway for a while was the Western, especially comics featuring one of the many B-Western stars of the era.
Fawcett was doing well with a bunch of these including Hopalong Cassidy, Rocky Lane and even Tom Mix, even though he had died almost 10 years earlier and had not been in a film for almost 20 years.
Doing very well they were looking for more B cowboys to feature in the cheap to make, and profitable comics. unfortunately they had run out of stars they could use, it seems there were just so many out there that either they didn’t have or their image was already signed with another company.
Fawcett then came up with a solution, if there were no more cowboy actor to base a comic on, make one up, the kid would never know the difference.
So they hired male model Bob Holland (who in the 60s would be the face used for the paperback version of Doc Savage and the Avenger and in the 70s Mac Bolan the insparation for the Punisher) to pose for the covers of their new comics as “sensational new western star” Bob Colt who’s film career was every bit as fake as the adventures of Bob Colt found inside of the comic.
Where any comic buyers fooled?
Whatever the case the comic lasted for 10 issues.
Bob Colt never rode again after that.
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