I remember just enough of the Bear Claw episode to wonder about, and wish I recalled, the rest -- just a terrified looking prospector or outlaw screaming "Oh no! BEAR CLAW!" and an image or two of the big hairy scary guy himself. Was he supposed to have had actual bear paws grafted onto his arm stumps, or were they just gauntlets with claws? The monsters turned out to be real on that show pretty often, so it couyld've gone either way. And what happened to him at the end of the episode? I tseem to recall, vaguely, that he brought a suitably violent and horrific fate upon himself while trying to kill the Masked One and Tonto, but it was long long ago and try as I might the memory eludes me. I NEED TO KNOW THESE THINGS AGAIN like I did when Saturday morning was really Saturday morning!

I'd like to see some of those episodes again -- there are just a few on Youtube, but none of the really bizarre ones like Bear Claw or Tonto Vs The Frog Men -- and no Tiny Tom episodes either, dammit!

Speaking of Tiny Tom, what was the deal with him, anyway? Was he a juvenile delinquent scientific child prodigy, or a mean, mad midget megalomaniac like Dr. Lovelace on The Wild Wild West? Was it ever established for certain on the program whether he was either one?

Amazon.com had a neat little book, CHAMPION OF JUSTICE by Fredric James, that involved a Texas Ranger in modern times and his Amerind partner who use a time machine to retrieve his nephew Dan lost in the 1870s. Check it out!

Greg Hatcher said "Ha! It was going to be in there, but I just plain forgot it when I was writing the final draft. Blocked it from memory, I guess. Although you are perfectly right, you know; there's really no good reason to bring it up, nobody saw it but you and me and probably a couple of other desperate hopeful fans. It was just too depressing."

Since the lead actor was previously on Dawson's Creek, I knew it was going to be absolutely horrible, and BOY, was I right. The main things I can remember are Silver being the Lone Ranger's "Spirit Guide", The L.R. having fantasies about Tonto's sister/cousin (I forget which) and Tonto running around in a pink shirt instead of buckskins.

The night that it aired, I called up a buddy of mine so that we could mock the entire film with an impromptu MST3K-style commentary. Good times.

I flat out LOVED the first issue of new L.R. series (My comics shop was sadly sold out of the second issue). I'll have to track down the Clayton Moore Ranger films on DVD based upon your recommendations.

Ha! It was going to be in there, but I just plain forgot it when I was writing the final draft. Blocked it from memory, I guess. Although you are perfectly right, you know; there's really no good reason to bring it up, nobody saw it but you and me and probably a couple of other desperate hopeful fans. It was just too depressing. Besides, I couldn't find any pics from it except a couple of shots on IMDb of the cast goofing off.

This was one of those ones where after it posted I thought of all sorts of things I was going to do and realized I'd forgotten to do them. I was going to put up some shots of the Ranger paperbacks. I was going to include a link to the Wold Newton site, specifically this article, for those folks interested in reading more about the relationship between the Ranger and the Green Hornet. I was going to talk more about the newspaper strip and the short-lived Lone Ranger pulps, or at least point people to books about them. I was going to talk more about Clayton Moore and Jay Silverheels, and the good works they did for charity and so on and so forth, they were really inspiring people in their personal lives. And I was going to plug the fan club's web site.

Really this should be a book project, and I don't think anyone's ever done the definitive, overview, radio/TV/cartoon/film/novels Lone Ranger encyclopedia-retrospective book yet. I wish somebody would, I'd be first in line. As it is I got so excited just writing this week's column I ordered a Fran Striker Ranger novel off Amazon and a couple of the Gold Key comics for cheap off eBay, and I think I'll probably end up with Clayton Moore's I Was That Masked Man memoir, as well. It's Ranger fever here in the Hatcher household. We just watched City of Gold last night, that was the last of the DVDs to arrive, and I'd forgotten how really GOOD it was.

The Ranger feature films were actually kind of cool in that they were almost subversive in the way they took the Western movie cliches of the time and just up-ended them. The 1956 one is all about PREVENTING a range war, making sure the ranchers and the Indians can live in peace, and 1958's City of Gold turns on a key plot point about a Native American doctor who's been passing for white, and he has to sort of 'come out of the closet' and accept his heritage, and the townspeople have to learn a lesson about prejudice and civil rights for everyone, even 'redskins.' and because it's the Ranger, you buy into it. "The law is for ALL men, Red Hawk. Give us a chance to prove to you that there IS justice!" There's none of that Adam West winking-at-the-audience crap. Moore absolutely means it, he says it with such total conviction you just can't be cynical.

I love that. I think for all of us adult fans of superhero stories, we have this thing where it's HARD for us to believe in the good guys, in a post-Dark Knight, post-Watchmen comics landscape... but we still WANT to. I hope the new Ranger book from Dynamite hangs on to that essential goodness of John Reid, the guy that's bringing Justice and Law and Decency to the West... for ALL men. Because that's a big part of what he should be about.

Thank you for that.

I did have some questions, though. Why did so much crime occur within a day's ride of the Lone Ranger's secret hideout? If the Lone Ranger had a faithful companion, why was he lone? And why did he wear a skin-tight, pastel blue jump suit? He looked like Jack LaLane in a cowboy hat.

Kurt