Friday Night Fights: Minimum Clonage - Round 8: The Man In Black!

Welcome to Round 8 of Friday Night Fights:Minimum Clonage, where contestants are not allowed to re-use any of their dominant fighters during the 12-round bout. In my case, that would include:

Shadow Lass

Professor Zoom

Ant-Man

Iron Man

Bethany Cabe

Liberty Belle

Nexus

If you notice a common thread in all my previous fights listed above, it's that they've all been from the superhero genre. Tonight I step out of that box to focus on westerns. Our featured showdown comes from October 2006's Strange Westerns #1 in a story entitled "Black Homecoming", written and drawn by the legendary Bat-team of Steve Englehart and Marshall Rogers (their final collaboration before Rogers' death) and inked by Al Vey, and featuring tonight's dominant fighter, the Black Rider.

Synopsis: The Black Rider, in his regular identity of Dr. Morris Masters, is staying in New York City with his Aunt Helen and Uncle George while he tracks down a Chinese prostitution ring which killed one of his patients. In the course of his investigation, he deduces that the gang behind the prostitution ring is run by... his Aunt Helen and Uncle George.

Aunt Helen gets the drop on our hero, only to make the stupid mistake of taking her eyes off him to bicker with her husband. This is never a good idea, as the next sequence will demonstrate.

Bad move, George. Here's why:

Another lesson for would-be 19th Century crimelords, courtesy of Spacebooger. Our musical accompaniment comes from another man in black, Johnny Cash.