Eclipse Monthly, No.5

Story, Art and Cover by Doug Wildey

Eclipse Monthly is an anthology style comic printed in full colour by Eclipse Comics, Issue #5 was published in 1984 and features two stories; the first is 'The Masked Man' by Barney McAllister and the second (and the one I'm more interested in) is called 'Rio' by Doug Wildey.

Douglas S. Wildey was born in 1922 in New York. During World War 2 he was stationed in Hawaii, where he began his art career as a cartoonist for the base newspaper. Following the war he freelanced for the magazine and comic book company Street and Smith Publications. He then went on to draw mainly Western Stories including Buffalo Bill, Gunsmoke and Indian fighter; it seemed at this time, Wildey had produced work for almost every publisher except EC (the good one).

In 1952 Wildey and his family moved to Tucson, Arizona. In 1954 he began to produce work for Atlas Comics (a forerunner of Marvel Comics) which were mainly composed of Western stories. Around this time his work also began to appear in some Atlas horror-fantasy comics such as; Journey Into Unknown Worlds, Marvel Tales, Mystic, Uncanny Tales, Mystery Tales and Strange Tales.

In 1964 Doug Wildey became involved in the creation of the Hanna-Barbera animated series 'Jonny Quest' which ran for one series until 1965. Following this, Wildey returned to comics drawing mainly western stories for many more publishers, including the following story 'Rio' which is from 1984.