Quite simply, people have fallen in love with this character, because New York-based writer and artist Steve Sheinkin is taking Rabbi Harvey even further than Caine dared to tread.

Rabbi Harvey is taming the Wild West without lethal force -- in fact, without gunfire or martial arts of any kind. Rabbi Harvey is taming the Wild West with centuries of Jewish folk wisdom.

The tales in these paperback books are an absolute delight as he turns around the lives of even the most ruthless killers!

In recent years, I've talked a number of times with Sheinkin from his home base in Brooklyn. At 39, Sheinkin may have the perfect eclectic background to create something so innovative. He grew up in a home steeped in Judaism -- and full of thick books of Jewish folk tales -- but he didn't grow up as an obsessive fan of comic books or Westerns.

When I telephoned him to prepare this story, he told me that he came to Westerns and comics almost backwards -- through "Star Wars" and other films that sprang from the roots of pulp fiction and Hollywood cliff hangers. In other words, he wasn't a die-hard fan of any particular genre and was free to mix and match elements he enjoyed.

"When I was a kid," he told me, "everything was all about 'Star Wars.' I wasn't the right age to have seen the original Clint Eastwood movies. For me, I came to all of this as an adult. When I got older, for example, I got into John Ford movies and John Wayne Westerns, especially. I love 'Rio Bravo' and I used that the most for visual references as I designed scenes for Rabbi Harvey."