The very first character to use the name of Ghost Rider wasn't a Silver Age motorcyclist, but in fact a genuine cowboy that started out in 1949. Magazine Enterprises had a comic starring real life western star Tim Holt who in the pages of his own comic went on to become a secret vigilante called Red Mask, but another story running in the same series was about another gunslinger named Rex Fury. He would travel from town to town as a bespectacled salesman along with his Chinese stereotype assistant Sing Song. Whenever trouble popped up he would lose the Clark Kent getup and becomes the sharpshooting Calico Kid, a wandering do-gooder who only took off his glasses to fight outlaws. Rex started this in Issue 6 of the Tim Holt comic, but the character was steered down a different path. Writer Raymond Krank and artist Dick Ayers were convinced by head publisher Vin Sullivan to change Rex Fury's identity into the Ghost Rider based on the popularity of the song, Riders In The Sky. In Issue #11, Rex Fury buried his Calico Kid persona after coming across bandits disguised as Native Americans lead by the crooked Bart Lasher who toss Rex and Sing Song into the Devil's Sink whirlpool. The two end up alive in an underground cavern where Rex believes that Lasher left them for dead, so he gets a new white horse and a totally white outfit to adopt his second alter-ego as Ghost Rider. At first, Rex wore white makeup to give off a supernatural appearance, but by the next issue worer a white mask to cover his face. Ghost Rider eventually got his own title a year later which gave him one of the first superhero retcons in comics. During Rex's timeout in the whirlpool, he was sent to the other world where he gets a montage guided by the ghost of Wild Bill Hickok, Pat Garrett, Kit Carson, Calamity Jane, and Bill Tilghman. These departed western defenders each taught him their own particular fighting styles in the afterlife over a period of months, but lasting only a few minutes in the real world. This is like if Bruce Wayne had gotten all his years of Batman training during the course of a single afternoon nap. From this point on, Rex used his spiritual skills as Ghost Rider to foil the plans of old west bad guys. Most of his enemies used the tired old cliche of hornswogglers disguised as monsters to cover their criminal activities, even though some of them were the real deal such as werewolves. Dick Ayers would later on go to work for Marvel pitching them the same idea which they renamed Phantom Rider, and then as the biker Ghost Rider. Ayers would regret this as Marvel completely cut him out of the character's new fame as a fiery-skull hero who sold his sole to the Devil.
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