Primer
What the hell is this?
Well in the Timely era there were a bunch of odds and ends and in a lot of these cases it was just simpler piling these odd comics together in one category since they don’t really fit anywhere else in the index. So they’re here. Let’s talk about them shall we?
Lana
Lana was a romance/humor strip that was aping Archie style comics. It’s not part of continuity so I’m skipping the entire run. However, issue #4 did feature a Venus backup story. This issue is presented here, but I am only indexing the Venus story.
The Witness
This character made his first appearance in the pages of Marvel Mystery Comics. He should not be confused with the character of the same name that appearing in Mystic Comics. For whatever reasons they tried to give the Witness his own series but it only lasted a single issue.
Rex Hart/Whip Wilson
Both of these series were licensed comics that were based on actors who were best known for their roles in westerns. Yeah, despite what the morons at Fandom think neither Rex Hart nor Whip Wilson are part of the Marvel Universe (something other editors ignored even though I wrote notes on those issues on their website back when I worked for them). That’s what happens when you get a bunch of lazy hobbyists taking shortcuts on research that have no fucking clue what they’re talking about. But they’re also the same website that thinks tracking the appearances of cows in comics book to be more important than having accurate information. Anyway, the series did feature backup stories that starred characters that are part of the Marvel Universe. The Black Rider, Diablo the Bear, Nimo the lion and Blaze the Wonder Dog all appeared across these two books.
Best Western
Best Western was another western anthology series that featured Marvel’s recurring western heroes. The title ran for two issues until it was replaced with Western Outlaws and Sheriffs, which was entirely one-off western tales, so fuck that noise. The issues indexed here are only the in-continuity stories.
Marvel Tales
Succeeded Marvel Mystery Comics and was an anthology series that featured horror, suspense, and science fiction stories. There are a bunch of vampire stories in this series that are considered in continuity as per the Marvel Vampires Handbook. I probably won’t be getting around to indexing those stories for a while (Also those issues land in the Atlas era section anyway). However, issue #97 did feature a leftover Sun Girl story that I have indexed here.
