Albie's Note: Quality Comics was a superior outfit most famous today for producing Jack Cole's legendary PLASTIC MAN, and Will Eisner's BLACKHAWK and THE SPIRIT in their original runs. Interestingly, they seem to have produced less Super-hero titles than they did War, Western and Adventure fare. They had a comic book called CRACK COMICS which ran for 62 issues from 1940 to 1949, when suddenly-- probably to cash in on the Western craze caused by Hopalong Cassidy and early Television-- they changed the title to CRACK WESTERN with issue # 63.
That first western issue feature a lead-off story starring Arizona Ames, a blatant use of a title character's name from a popular Zane Grey novel of 1932. They couldn't have hoped to get away with this for long-- and they didn't... by issue #66 their character's name was conveniently changed to Arizone RAINES for the remainder of his run [Was this a sly nod to the great early western writer William Mcleod Raines?? I certainly like to think so!]
Oddly , I really liked their interpretation of ol' "AZ Ames." When I found and read his tales on the marvelous Digital Comic Musuem, I felt they had a colorful B-western flair that was kinda legit and cool in its own way! See if you agree...
Just for fun, here is a cool Lionel Trains ad from the same issue:
PEACE
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