Greatest Covers You've Never Seen--Bulls Eye #5 (1955)

By Jack Kirby

Bold Fashion Choices--Bulls Eye!!

So, I was trawling through some crime comics, looking for something to post today, when I stumbled across a full page ad for this:

Holy crap, it may have been 1954, but this guy is just a few shoulder pouches away from being totally 1996! That is the goofiest damn cowboy ever! Guns AND arrows?!? That color scheme!! That feather in his hat!!

Bulls Eye (or Bullseye, they were never consistent) was the last hero co-created by Jack Kirby and Joe Simon, for the short-lived Mainline Comics.

And yes, sometimes they went even goofier with the color scheme.

By the way, that's not a T-shirt with a bullseye on it, or a tattoo. Our hero's chest was branded by "renegade Indian chief" Yellow Snake, because he hated the kid, and although his tribe wouldn't let him kill the lad, he wanted to be able to recognize him and "drive a spear through his center" when he grew up. Nice guy.

Our hero never had a real name. His grandfather, "Deadeye Dick," always just called him Bulls Eye. Later, when he tried to save a peddler during a highway robbery, the dude died anyway, and the sheriff thought he was the killer. So our hero adopted the identity of "Panhandle Pete" (because apparently last names were optional in the old West).

Mainline folded after Bulls Eye #5, and Charlton picked it up for a whole two issues.

But as goofy as he looked, our chest-exposing, be-feathered arrow shooting cowboy did manage to get into interesting adventures:

Cowboy vs. Pterodactyl. Thank you, Jack & Joe...