RAR #104: JAY TALL BEAR

 The sixties war-comic CAPTAIN SAVAGE included one Real American marine, name of Jay Little Bear.

RAR #102/103: BLACKHAND AND RUNNNG DOG

 TIM HOLT #39 brings back an Evil Indian trope not much seen since colonial days: the cannibal Indian. Blackhand plots to devour hero Red Mask and four famous westerners in the belief that he'll gain the supernatural power he needs to beat the Whites.

The negatively named Running Dog devises a giant rattle filled with rocks in TH #41, into which he places victims-- and then it's "shake, rattle and pulverize."

 

 

  

RAR 101: SANCHO THE YAQUI

 I've only read the opening of the Mex-western "Yaqui Gold" (CHAMPION COMICS #3, 1940), but probable sidekick Sancho makes a forceful debut. ADDENDUM: This ongoing serial petered out in three episodes, as if the author was told by his editor to wrap things up, in order to make room for a new feature. The muddled ending states Sancho's not just a sidekick, but "The Black Panther," the ruler of a new Aztec rebellion, albeit one that never gets started. He covets the lead White girl for a potential bride, but she doesn't accept him or the lead White suitor either-- which is so atypical an ending that I think the author meant to elaborate some more involved plot and was forced to just throw up his hands and whip together the existing conclusion.         

RAR 100: APACHE CHIEF

 APACHE CHIEF is technically the first RA superhero to join any version of the Justice League.

   

RAR #99: STRONG BOW

 Though heroic ranch-owner Spurs Jackson was the star of all six issues of SPACE WESTERN, backup stories included some solo stories by his two buddies, Hank Peters and the Indian (possibly Pueblo) Strong Bow. The latter, despite being a typical laconic Red Man, gets the only good joke in the series.

And in SPACE WESTERN #42, Strong Bow has to help his people fight off "Aztecs from Vulcan," who are masters of fiery technology.

RAR #98: CHARADE

 

"The Bravados," from the short-lived Skywald Comics, enjoyed just four adventures, each ten pages long. The premise: six footloose heroes of the Old West team up against an evil Mexican bandit who caused them harm in one way or another. In the case of Charade, he was an Apache warrior who had his tongue cut out by the evil bandido. This affliction kept down his dialogue, and the scripts were so wedded to this idea of the "silent red man" that he never even got any of the "thought bubbles" given the other White and Black characters. To be sure, none of them were deep characters either, for all the stories were just fast-paced adventures. And, believe it or not, it was only upon visiting this comic again that I realized Charade must have been named for a certain game in which one has to remain silent throughout.    

RAR #97: MOONBEAM

If the covers of this Belgian comic, SILVERARROW, are any indicators, the feisty female adventuress Moonbeam might be the best of the Native American female characters in period-western comics.

RAR #96: BRIGHT FEATHER, GOLDEN ARROW AND MANY HEARTS

 This 1951 "real American" comic has a convoluted history.

First, there was a 1939 masked-cowboy comic strip, "Lightnin' and the Lone Rider," whose two years of strips were reprinted in FAMOUS FUNNIES #61-80.

Then, according to one online source, the comic book company Ajax-Farrell bought the rights of the character, but devised their own version of the masked hero, different in various details, such as an Indian boy-aide, "Bright Feather," introduced (in LONE RIDER #1, 1951) as if he'd always been there.

Then, before any readers could have responded to anything in issue #1, some writer decided to have an Indian elder relate to Bright Feather a story about "Comet's-Tail," a mature warrior of the tribe from some indeterminate period. During a terrible drought CT decides to share his food with an infirm old woman. The old woman turns out to be a comely female magic-maker, "Many Hearts." The story doesn't define her very well, probably because MH is functionally a goddess-figure-- and it would have been unlikely for an American company in the fifties to portray an Amerindian goddess as diegetically real.

             

 It takes CT a few days to figure out that the comely squaw actually is the old woman-- a motif possibly borrowed from the English "loathly lady" trope seen in some Arthurian tales--AND that she prompted CT into sharing his food in order to demonstrate his moral rigor.

Once CT has demonstrated his purity of heart, the magic maiden gives him a golden arrow, telling him to shoot it at the sky. The arrow ends the drought and saves CT's tribe, after which MH gives CT his new name, "Golden Arrow."

Then the third issue of RIDER starts out with a story in which Bright Feather is still the hero's partner, though now Golden Arrow has an inset picture on #3's cover, even as there was one on issue #2. That story is followed by a solo "Golden Arrow" tale, and the last story, once more focused on Lone Rider, gives him no sidekick.

    In issue #4, a solo Rider story is followed by one in which Golden Arrow is suddenly in the same tribe as Bright Feather, whereas the story in #2 implies that BF has never met GA, and that GA belongs to some past generation.   

Finally, the A-F editors get around to the "crossover" they've been building up to: issue #6 bringing Golden Arrow into contact with Lone Rider, which at first glance looks like the editors deciding that the Rider needed a "Tonto" type of partner rather than a "Little Beaver." In this story, the Rider witnesses a ritual in which Golden Arrow, currently the chief of his tribe, shows that only he can pull Excalibur from the stone-- er, I mean, "the enchanted arrow." The masked cowboy wants to believe GA's feat is a trick. However, as in GA's first appearance, there's a "foundation myth" in which a godlike figure bestows the arrow upon the tribe, precisely to reify GA's claim to chieftainship. So this is one of the few western comics, like the story in #2, that indicates that Amerindian magic is real. I'll leave things at this for now and see if later RIDER stories have similar qualities.            
  

ADDENDUM: In issue #7, Golden Arrow's name suddenly becomes, without rationale, Swift Arrow, but he keeps his same pattern: either rendering aid to the Lone Rider or telling stories about mystical Indian lore, like "Blood Fury" in LR #19, wherein SA tells LR about how he and his tribe were rescued from death by a goddess-like being: "The Snow Squaw." Contrary to my expectations, for the full 26 issue run-- some of whose stories are reprints-- Swift Arrow keeps his own feature and does not become the Rider's "Tonto," while Bright Feather remains the permanent sidekick to the top-billed hero.    

In issue #23 (1955), the company introduces another masked cowboy, The Apache Kid, and this hero, like the first one from Atlas in 1950, got his name from having been raised by Apaches. He just gets two adventures before the title ends. A humor strip, "The Old Hermit," frequently guest-stars the Rider, but the relationship of the two characters is more an inversion like Superman appearing in a Jimmy Olsen strip, than a series of crossovers like those of LR and SA. 

RAR #95: RED ARROW, NAWANDO AND WHITE BULL

In 1951 P.L. Publishing released three issues of RED ARROW, devoted to the adventures of the war-bonneted main hero and his young sidekick Running Deer. The characters had no origin and were given no motive for riding around the West fighting evildoers. The stories were ordinary and the only art I liked was the cover of issue #3, shown below. The "Minnie-Hot-Cha" in the green dress may have actually shared the name of Hiawatha's bride, since in her one appearance she's named "Laughing Water."

  

In this essay I've analyzed the one good story to appear in RED ARROW. This was a one-shot tale about a Navajo medicine-man, Nawando, whose vision guides him to his successor, the young brave White Bull. 

RAR #94: JAMES HIGHWATER

 In the Grant Morrison ANIMAL MAN run, James Highwater is an anthropologist who helps the hero undergo a "vision quest," though he's not a standard "mystical Indian" in any way.

RAR #93: MADOGA

 

Madoga, seen above in the first three panels fighting a big mummy, was a member of a society of sorcerous villains, The Legion of the Weird, who were defeated in their one outing by the Challengers of the Unknown.   

RAR #92: THE MOHAWK POLTERGEIST

 

The 1983 SUPER FRIENDS episode "Once Upon a Poltergeist" brings Batman, Robin, and Apache Chief into conflict with the unnamed ghost of a deceased Mohawk chief, who creates havoc in Gotham City because he has mistaken the terrain for his ancestral lands. The scenes in which the Mohawk shakes the towering buildings of Gotham in order to hurl them from "his" land is an inspired menace, since in general Real Americans have a grudge against WASPS for usurping the land, even if the menace in this story is mistaken in his particular object. Apache Chief, whose knowledge of Real American culture proves important to solving the problem, calls the chief a name once, but it's simply a word that signifies the general term for Iroquois people.      

RAR #91: THE KICKMIQUIK TRIBE

 In this 1950 DONALD DUCK story by Carl Barks, the tribe encountered by Donald and his nephews never has a proper name. However, since they live near a river called "the Kickmiquik," why not let that be their default name? In my essay I noted that Barks exerted himself to make the tribal people's customs and attire match that of the Indians of the Northwestern U.S.                                                                        

RAR #90: TUROK AND ANDAR

 Here's a scene from the first appearance of those intrepid comic-book braves Turok and Andar, as they have their initial encounter with the denizens of the mysterious lost valley that (in the original comic) they never escape. Here they meet both dinosaurs and cavepeople in one easy lesson.                                                                                                       

  

RAR #89: JOHN DEERFOOT

 

I found John Deerfoot totally by accident, selecting a random issue of G.I. COMBAT (November 1958). The story by Bill Finger is nothing special, but the protagonist does precede series characters Johnny Cloud (1960) and Little Sure Shot (1963), the latter being a member of Sergeant Rock's "Easy Company." Deerfoot has nothing to do with Rock's long-lived unit, for evidently the name was in use by DC writers before Rock himself appeared in 1959. In fact, the Wiki article on "Easy Company" alleges that a 1959 Bob Haney story first uses the unit-name, but it seems likely to me that the Finger story was both written and published first-- though who knows (or cares) if Finger was the first DC writer to use the name of the battle-unit.                                                                                                                     

RAR #88: CHARLIE WHITE WING

 

 In RAR #16, I gave an example of a 1940s story in which American Indians had to be stigmatized because they had grievances against the U.S. government. But by the 1970s no one reading or writing comics would have doubted that the tribes' many grievances were justified. Thus BRAVE AND BOLD #121 (1975) pits the team of Batman and the Metal Men against a team of aggrieved "redskins" who extort the government for concessions by taking over a train stocked with such prized government documents as the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. Charlie White Wing is one of three leaders who have "passed" in WASP culture so as to become docents for this mobile museum, and writer Bob Haney may or may not have meant to imply that the three of them were able to pass because they were (in Charlie's words above) "half-breeds." To be sure, both the three organizers and their "red brothers" are all given the same light red pigmentation. Anyway, Haney had a formidable task: to evoke a sense of danger to the good guys while not unduly vilifying the extortionists. His solution is to make everyone happy with a secondary threat: unnamed foreign agents place a bomb aboard the train and the superheroes must work with the Indian insurgents in order to save themselves, the train and its precious relics. It's a facile solution, and it even loosely implies that the extortionists will be forgiven their sins and released without prosecution. But the intent was good, whatever the execution.   

RAR #87: INJUN JONES

 Injun Jones, a white kid raised to maturity by an Indian tribe, hung out in the pages of ACG's BLAZING WEST title for a while. The name sounds a bit inspired by Mark Twain's "Injun Joe" character in TOM SAWYER. I bet he was more consistent than the Apache Kid about maintaining his "redskin" appearance with the use of "warpaint."             

 

RAR #86: THE FROZEN GHOST

 

"The Frozen Ghost" was first the title of a old Lon Chaney Jr mystery flick, but here the name is a literal ghost of an Indian, turned into a frost-demon by the Indians' "god of winter." Only a courageous white guy, armed with Indian magic, can descend into the Frozen Ghost's icy lake and destroy the fell spectre. 

RAR #85: LITTLE CLOUD

 

After the tribe of the juvenile medicine man gives succor to a gang of white outlaws, the evildoers slaughter the Indians. But they come back, possibly due to Little Cloud's powers, and wreak vengeance. The leader gets a non-supernatural punishment in the form of the old "shrinking rawhide" trick.  

RAR #84: MOONSTALKER

 Moonstalker is a noble villain who tries to kill people with explosive arrows. He first appears in the 1994 ZORRO series being rescued from a whipping by the title hero. He then pauses in the midst of the action to interrogate Zorro to find out why the hero rescued him. A possible anticipation of the popular "white savior" canard of the 2000s?