Born on this day in 1909: actor Ralph Byrd, who appeared in dozens of movies and film serials across two decades, including The Trigger Trio, S.O.S. Tidal Wave, The Howards of Virginia, The Mark of Zorro, North West Mounted Police, The Son of Monte Cristo, Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Book, Radar Secret Service, Jungle Goddess (those last two riffed on TV's Mystery Science Theater 3000), and lots more, but he's especially know as Chester Gould's square-jawed detective Dick Tracy in four serials. When the role was recast at RKO in 1945 with Morgan Conway, movie exhbitors protested and Byrd returned to the role to do two more features in 1947!
photo cover of Ralph Byrd on A Cop Called Tracy #7 (Avalon, 1999)
Byrd played another comics character role portraying cowboy crimefighter Greg Sanders/Saunders in 1947's movie serial The Vigilante: Fighting Hero of the West from Columbia.
cover of Real Fact Comics #10 (DC/National, September 1947), pencils and inks by Mort Meskin
DC Comics didn't adapt the story, but they did publish a making-of-the-movie-series story in Real Fact Comics!
from "How a Movie Serial Is Made!" in Real Fact Comics #10; script by Jack Schiff, Mort Weisinger, and/or Bernard Breslauer; pencils by Mort Meskin, inks by George Roussos
This is an expanded and updated version of a post originally published January 24, 2021.
from "The World's Greatest Gold Strike" in Real Fact Comics #15 (DC, July 1948); script by Jack Schiff, Mort Weisinger, and Bernie Breslauer; pencils and inks by Howard Sherman
Born on this day in the DC Universe: Vigilante! Naw, not the guy on the Peacemaker show...the original Vigilante, Greg Sanders (later "under the name of Saunders"), the Singing Cowboy Crimefighter, Rogue with a Rope, Fighting Hero of the West!
from DC Super Calendar 1976 (DC, December 1975), letters by Ben Oda
Vigilante! Created in the pages of Action Comics by Mort Weisinger and Mort Meskin, he rode out of the west to sing and rope criminals, and he's all out of songs! But wait, he does have some rope and he's gonna lasso himself up some crime! Yee-haw!
from "[The Origin of the Vigilante]" in Action Comics (1938 series) #42 (DC, November 1941), script by Mort Weisinger, pencils and inks by Mort Meskin
"Next month: A thrilling Vigilante adventure!" And DC were better than their word. Vigilante appeared in the next issue of Action Comics and for the following 155 issues. Give or take a racist sidekick (ugh) or two, that's a lotta cow-punchin' adventures. (Dear Mr. Saunders: please do not punch cows. Love, Bully.) And he was a founding member of the Seven...or Eight, if you count Stripesy...or nine, if your count Wing...okay, okay, the Nine Soldiers of Victory!
from "Beware! The Black Star Shines!, Chapter 1" in Leading Comics #2 (DC/World's Best Comics, Spring 1942), script by Mort Weisinger, pencils and inks by Mort Meskin
Vigilante even holds the record as EDIT: one of the first DC heroes ever on film in a 1947 Columbia serial, played by Ralph Byrd (Dick Tracy). Start wondering now: "Gosh, how is he ever gonna get outta that cliffhanger?!?" Thanks to eagle-eyed commenter jmurphy for reminding my little stuffed brain that I'd forgotten the first DC serial was the 1943 Batman!
But you (and I!) probably know Vigilante better from his exceptional song-story "Grey and Blue: The Ballad of Batman" from the much-loved and -missed ('specially by me!) animated series Batman: The Brave and the Bold!:
So happy birthday, Vigilante, and keep on dispensing both justice and trhose easy-listening cowboy hit songs of the Golden Age!
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