The Lone Variant Rides Again!

So anyway, as I was saying back in 2021, I hadn’t seen one of the apparently-rare “red shirt” editions of Lone Ranger #37 “in the wild,” as it were. There was that image of it on the Grand Comics Database (which I’m not linking directly to just yet, for reasons that will become apparent), that looked…not quite natural to me, for some reason. I mean, I could have been wrong, but I still wanted to see another copy to compare.

Well, in steps my Bluesky pal Comics in the Golden Age (an old family name, I’m presuming, but a good follow if you like comics!), who informed me that on the Lone Ranger Fan Club Facebook page, someone posted about having the red shirt variant, and was asking for information about it.

Mr. Comics in the Golden Age replied, pointing this person to my (eep) five year old post on the topic…and the end result is that I am in contact with Cedric, the owner of these comics, and he graciously offered photos of them for me to present here.

Just a little bit of background: these used to belong to Cedric’s father, who recently passed away and for which I’m sure we all offer our condolences. Cedric says he vaguely recalls that it was his father who notified the Overstreet Price Guide of the existence of this red-shirt variant, which is why that bit of info was even in the guide for me to find in the first place.

And to remind you all, the change seemingly came as the owners of the Lone Ranger wanted the licensed material to feature the blue-shirted costume, as opposed to the red shirt he had previously worn. Given that a few copies of Lone Ranger #37 got printed with the red shirt, this may have been a real “STOP THE PRESSES!” situation so that the publisher could slap some blue paint on everything.

Thus, here is the main attraction…Cedric’s copy of the Red-Shirted Ranger:

…which, by the way, someone already used an image of Cedric’s copy to replace the one that had been on the Grand Comics Database page for this issue. You can see the image that used to be there in my original post.

Here’s Cedric’s copy of the vastly more common Blue-Shirted Ranger edition:

The changes extended inside as well, with the red shirt version looking like this:

…and the blue one appearing as so:

Cedric also sent along a pic of the indicia of one of these issues, if you needed a little more authenticity for these items:

Finally, let’s get a good look at that arrival stamp, letting us know just when, at least at whatever newsstand this was sold from, when the comic arrived:

Only a couple of months ahead of the July 1951 cover date! Note that this was on the rare red-shirt variant, which seems to confirm that copies of this version did in fact get distributed, and weren’t just, like, office copies or whatever.

This was not a follow-up I expected to post, though I’m glad I got the opportunity. This is indeed a rare item and it’s nice to see actual additional visual proof of its existence. A big ol’ thanks to Cedric for allowing me to share this ere (and be sure to visit his site for his illustrative services), and to Comics in the Golden Age for helping to make this happen.

Now let the debate begin: do you prefer the Lone Ranger with the blue shirt, or are you wrong? Let me know in the comments!