Bonanza #13

How was the West won? It's a question I once asked my grandpa to which he responded 'You know, that's a very good question.' So good, that he never answered me. Well, if you are to believe this issue of Gold Key's adaptation of the hit Western TV series Bonanza, the West was won thanks to the use of bicycles!

Thieves steal the horses of all 4 Cartwright men: Pa, Hoss, Little Joe and Adam! The only way to get after these varmints is to use this new contraption called a bicycle! But we're not talking about a single bike or even a two-seater. Oh, no! Instead, they all mount up on a 4-person tandem bike!

This has got to be the goofiest Bonanza story of all-time. The family can't use their 2-horse wagon as the animals are too tired. Got to use a bike instead! The Cartwrights at one point rode the bike across an icy pond. One of the sons decides it's faster to use roller skates, but falls through the ice because clearly he's too heavy than a bike with 3 people on it! And for some reason, you have to show how stupid the Indians are and include a scene of the Native people thinking a bicycle is some force of white man magic. 

I'm not making any of this up folks. This all really happened in a title story dated from 1965. 

There are two follow-up stories included in this issue. The middle story doesn't appear to have any characters from the TV show that I recognize. Instead it stars a weary prospector called Bedrock Barnes. Is he like a recurring character? Was he regular filler in the Bonanza books? Not sure. All I know is that Bedrock finds a wrecked ship in the middle of the desert; a ship that contains a valuable lost shipment of gold. Only when he brings help to bring back more gold, it appears that the desert has reclaimed the fabled relic. 

Story #3 does have the Cartwrights in it. It's a very unusual tale about a Mexican grandma who packs heat. It's not as silly as the bicycle story. History has produced some bad ass grannies. I find the story more confusing as the lady is trying to fund a revolution down in Mexico and yet when she reaches her family (which might just be members of her gang), it seems like the Abuela's intentions are a lot more selfish. 

And where do the Cartwrights fit into all this? Adam Cartwright just happens to be on a stagecoach that the old lady robbed. Now she's got him at gun point, forced to carry the gold back to her hideout. Naturally, instead of calling for the Sheriff or US Marshalls, the rest of the Cartwright clan decide to take vigilante justice into their own hands. 

37 issues of Bonanza were released by Gold Key from 1962-1970. While there are some much more attractive covers out there, perhaps filled with less far-fetched stories in them, I found this book in a bargain bin for only a dollar. A sucker for Dell/Gold Key/Whitman comics based on old TV shows, I could not pass this one up. It will stay a part of my collection. This book will also be listed as containing one of the weirdest, wildest, implausible Western tales of all time.

Rating: 5 out of 10 stars.