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.