Character Origin
In 1968, Carmine Infantino, newly installed Editorial Director of DC Comics, and his editor, Joe Orlando, were looking for something new. Western movies were popular at the moment, with the spaghetti westerns of Clint Eastwood breathing new life into a genre that had fallen into disrepute. Western heroes were few in comic books at the time, it was felt they could be revived.
Joe Orlando and Carmine Infantino came up with the name and basic premise of the loner whose family had been wiped out by murderous thugs, and then brought in Sheldon Mayer (former DC editor and creator of Sugar and Spike) and Sergio Aragonés to further flesh out the concept. Shelly Mayer would write the first appearance (Showcase #76). Infantino claimed to have greatly rewritten it. The assignment was then handed to Aragonés, with Denny O'Neil doing the dialog over Aragonés' plots, and Nick Cardy providing the art.
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