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.   

CROSSOVER MADNESS

 In some of my posts on the crossover subject, I've noted that I didn't consider a work a crossover if a famous icon appeared only as a conventionally dead person. Thus DRACULA'S DAUGHTER is not a crossover simply due to the presence of Dracula as a slain corpse, because in that form the vampire has no agency. If he was seen doing only one thing before he perished, as happens with Fu Manchu in DAUGHTER OF THE DRAGON, Dracula would have agency. (Parenthetically, DRACULA'S DAUGHTER is a charisma-crossover because Van Helsing carries over from the 1931 film and does have agency within DAUGHTER as well.) So an undead being can still have agency, even if the original character of the individual has erased, as seems to be the case with Undead Wild Bill Hickock in JONAH HEX TWO GUN MOJO.                                                           

 The same principle holds for spirits of the dead that may not be able to do anything but render warnings or advice. This type includes the various specters that tutor the Ghost Rider so that he can become a new champion of the frontier: Wild Bill Hickock, Calamity Jane, Pat Garrett, Kit Carson, and some lawman I never heard of, Bill Tighman. The end of the story suggests that the hero may have dreamed the encounter, but as long as the icons in question have a possible real existence, as opposed to being null-variants, they still have crossover-agency.                                                                   

  

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.  

MONSTER MASHUPS #115

 There's no story in OUT OF THE NIGHT #4 (1952) that corresponds to this cover, apparently depicting a battle between a witch (note the broomstick) and a winged demon. But since it's Frank Frazetta, who would complain?                                                                                               

   Same thing here: two monsters fight on the cover with no corresponding story inside. The white creep battling the winged demon was perhaps meant to be a zombie, given the graveyard setting.