When I was a child back in the early 1960s, I wanted to grow up to be a hero. I tied a towel around my neck and was sometimes Superman or Batman. I ululated in the back yard like Tarzan and shamed the cats in the neighborhood. I ran as fast as Jonny Quest in my PF Flyers.

But the hero I loved most of all at that time was the Lone Ranger. His adventures came on every afternoon, and I'd get home from school in time to watch him shoot the guns out of the bad men's hands, give lectures on the evils of, well...evil, and leave that cool silver bullet behind so people could ask, "Who was that masked man?"

The Lone Ranger was the brainchild of George W. Trendle, a radio producer, but he was given life by Fran Striker in radio script and novel form, and brought to iconic life on television by Clayton Moore.

But in the beginning, he was a young Texas Ranger named John Reid who was with his father and brother the day they were gunned down by Butch Cavendish's men. Reid clawed his way out of the grave, donned his signature mask, and started cleaning up the West.

The last couple of years, Dynamite Entertainment Comics brought the Lone Ranger back to comics, which had to have been one of the coolest and riskiest things ever done. I mean, in an age of FaceBook and MySpace, who'd buy a cowboy hero?

More people should, because the graphic story rendered by Brent Matthews (a Hollywood scriptwriter) and Sergio Cariello (an award-winning graphic artist) is one of the best stories that came out in novel form this summer. The story is familiar to everyone, but Matthews's way of telling it in cinematic presentation, and Cariello's beautiful drawings, give the tale a life that hasn't been seen before.