Classics Illustrated #62: Bret Harte's Western Stories (2023 Comic Book & Graphic Novel Reading Challenge)

I think it's an unwritten rule amongst established comic book collectors- if you find an original issue of Classics Illustrated and you can afford it; YOU BUY IT! Even if you have no idea who the author is, as was the case with me and this issue.

Bret Harte isn't a former professional wrestler. Instead, he's a rather obscure writer of Westerns; in particular tales about mining towns and the drunks, gamblers and outlaws that occupy them. A New Yorker, Harte went west to California in the 1850s. After a couple of years trying his hand at mining, Harte took his experiences and wrote a romanticized version of the West that gained immediate popularity. 

In between jobs as an educator, journalist and even the secretary of the San Francisco Mint, Bret Harte penned a number of short stories with tragic endings. 'The Luck of Roaring Camp' and 'The Outcasts of Poker Flat', both of which are collected in this 1949 issue are no exception. All of the main characters die tragically, despite amazing tales that bring the reader into an almost awe of the surroundings and events. 

Unlike the characters he created, Bret Harte returned back east in 1871. Having found his fame and fortune, Harte did something unusual on his return home, he stopped writing about life out west. Instead, Harte began writing historical romances about aristocrats. Almost immediately, the writer lost his audience and later attempts to recapture that lightning in a bottle came to naught as interest in stories about the gold rush had become passe, replaced by the mysteries of Sherlock Holmes and Poe and the science fiction fantasies of H.G. Wells and Robert Louis Stevenson.

Harte died in 1901 and would have faded into near obscurity if not for the Golden Age of Hollywood. In 1919, John Ford directed the first of at least 5 adaptations of The Outcasts of Poker Flat which tells of a group of settlers run out of town only to get snowed in at a makeshift camp in the harsh Sierra Nevada. Over the years, Harte's body of work has been captured on celluloid including 1955's Tennessee's Partner starring Ronald Reagan, an acclaimed musical, a spaghetti Western; even a Soviet era cowboy flick!

Classics Illustrated #62: Bret Harte's Western Stories were reprinted 9 times with the last edition debuting in 1968. The artwork was by Henry C. Kiefer, a student of such studios as the Iger Shop and Funnies Inc. Along with a biography of Mr. Harte, this issue contains prose articles on the opera Pagliacci, the discovery of the magnetic south pole and a popular breed of dog. 

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 8 out of 10 stars.

Completing this review completes Task #1 (Comic from the Golden Age (1938-1956) of the 2023 Comic Book and Graphic Novel Reading Challenge.