Sadly Howard passed away early in 2012 - he will be much missed
Howard Hopkins is a prolific writer with a penchant for action packed, character driven stories and taking his shirt off in You Tube videos. Under the name Lance Howard he has provided more than thirty westerns for the Black Horse Western imprint and he also writes horror both for adults and children under his own name. There will be an interview with Howard later this month on the Archive but for now we hand the reins over to the always obliging Mr. Hopkins for his guest blog in aid of Wild West Monday.
Over to you, Howard:
THOSE THRILLING DAYS OF YESTERYEAR
Before I started writing westerns, I was not a huge fan of the genre per se. My tastes ran more to superhero and Star Trek. I watched the Wild Wild West as a kid, along with scattered episodes of Gunsmoke—though I never really got into that one—Lancer, Big Valley and that was probably about it. I think Wild Wild West attracted me more for the cross-genre appeal, as later did The Adventures of Brisco County Jr.
After I started writing for Robert Hale’s Black Horse Western line I became a much bigger fan, started reading and watching the genre a whole lot more. I devoured handfuls of Louis L’Amour, Matt Braun and Richard Wheeler, as well as others. I got addicted to The Young Riders on TV and the Magnificent Seven series.
Despite the lack of western love in my youth (I sure hope I am making up for it now after turning in my 31st Lance Howard Black Horse, Dead Man Riding, recently), one western was always a constant for me. It was my first exposure to the genre and to this day I can still list it as my favorite.
I’m talking about that Masked Rider of the Plains and his faithful Indian companion—The Lone Ranger and Tonto. As a kid I listed to rebroadcasts of the radio show, watched the reruns of Clayton Moore and Jay Silverheels as they galloped across the plains each Saturday on a local TV station, and read the Big Little Books, comics or whatever else I could find that featured that western icon.
I still listen to CD sets of the show (for info on them check out www.radiospirits.com), watch the old Moore show on DVD and read Dynamite’s latest and most excellent comic book incarnation of the Masked Man. Rumor has it a new movie is in the works and Johnny Depp has agreed to play Tonto (according to the latest issue of the Western Writers of America’s Roundup Magazines).
The Lone Ranger embodied everything about the western I loved—even when I didn’t love them. The hero who had survived the worst man and the elements could offer, only to come back stronger than before, the humanity of the stories, the grandeur of the terrain. Although the Lone Ranger was bigger than life he was never too big. He never forgot his humanity and stuck up for the little guy, the mis-accused. And he saw men as men, not red, black or white. Along with The Green Hornet (who, incidentally, was The Ranger’s great nephew) he eschewed prejudice during a time it ran rampant in the world (the 1930s in which The Lone Ranger was written and the late 1800s where his stories were placed).
The Lone Ranger, I feel, isn’t given the credit he’s due, not only for influencing a certain style of western, but of story. He had a sidekick before Batman and a set of unshakable morals before Superman.
It’s getting tough these days to find stories like that, though one need only look as far as some of the tales coming out of Hale’s Black Horse Western line by myself writing as Lance Howard, Jack Martin, IJ Parnham, Ray Foster and others. Perhaps some purists will claim this was the West that never was, and I reckon they’d even be right. But instead I look towards them as the West that might have been, had a man like The Lone Ranger truly ridden the plains on a great white horse. In the final tally, The Ranger wasn’t meant to be accurate, only entertaining, inspiring and in that he succeeded beyond a boy’s wildest dreams.
