Tomahawk started out fighting redcoats, and ended up battling frontier dinosaurs, frontier supermen, giant gorillas, Indians who flew giant eagles, Liliputian Indians, volcano Indians, alien Indians — and invisible Indians.
In that, Tomahawk and his young friend Dan were really no different than Batman and Robin, Jimmy Olsen and Lois Lane, the Sea Devils, the Challengers of the Unknown, or any of the other DC features that featured bizarre and absurd menaces month after month.
As a kid, I liked them all. Plausibility need not apply. A world of silly, colorful melodrama suited me just fine.
“The character was created by writer Joe Samachson (who also scripted the first J’onn J’onzz, Manhunter from Mars story) and artist Edmond Good (whose work also appeared at Quality and Fox) — but the man most closely associated with his development was Fred Ray, a cartoonist who was also a Revolutionary War buff,” noted comics historian Don Markstein.
“Tomahawk got his name from the fact that he was raised by Indians, thus absorbing their lore — a definite asset in the forest-based guerilla warfare he carried on against the British — combined with the fact that his name actually was Tom Hawk.”
Tomahawk was therefore a direct descendent of one of the first American fictional heroes, James Fenimore Cooper’s Nathaniel “Natty” Bumppo, introduced in Cooper’s 1841 novel The Deerslayer.
A cross-cultural figure, this highly skilled and courageous “Hawkeye” was a son of white parents who grew up among Delaware Indians and was educated by Moravian Christians.
But unlike Hawkeye or even Batman, Tomahawk was born in 1947, into the age of the atom bomb. So perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise that science-fictional elements began to flavor the series.
For example, Tomahawk 62 (May-June 1959) offered Raids of the Invisible Braves with art by Bob Brown. The braves have access to an invisibility fluid created by a now-dead “paleface medicine man,” and Tomahawk and Dan take a bath to turn the tables on them.
Vincent Mariani wrote:
ReplyDeleteFrom the series' beginnings, Tomahawk and Dan Hunter were plugged by DC as "Batman and Robin in buckskins", a phrase I had originally thought was a quip by a fan.
In addition to Ray and Brown, Bruno Premiani and Nick Cardy also did excellent work on the series.
Bob Doncaster wrote:
ReplyDeleteTomahawk also delved into the costumed hero with Miss Liberty.
Vincent Mariani wrote:
ReplyDeleteI never liked that new logo from that era. I preferred the earlier frontier stories, but surprisingly, even in the1950s there were a number of sci-fi/monster tales. Comics may have always been moving towards an inevitable and total dominance by a superheroic trend that was undetectable in the years of more diversity in publications.
Salvatore Marlow wrote:
ReplyDeleteFor me Tomahawk was a weird blend of tv’s Combat and Daniel Boone. The weird odd space monster was standard comic book fodder. You only have to look over the spinning rack. Two Gun Kid and/or Batman battled the occasional alien too. Why not have the frontier man meet Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, the Frankenstein monster or the Invisible Man. BTY I’m a big fan of Miss Liberty too.
Roger Caldwell wrote:
ReplyDeleteWhat a problem, standing in front of the spinner rack with the 25c allowance and so many choices.
Cheryl Spoehr wrote:
ReplyDeleteHere is a fact from real life history. Because of Smallpox and other European diseases (so far as I can tell, germs CAME FROM Europe but never back.
Given that these continents were the last inhabited by humans,that makes sense)... most North American Native Cultural Groups lost the majority of their children. So they did what culture groups all over the world did, they "kidnapped" kids from the invading Europeans. And they were so very happy to go from brutal European "families" to loving and gentle Native families.
No North American culture EVER had beatings of children , not even hitting,till the "white man "arrived with his sick attitudes. If the military then "returned the children to their families", they were horrified and ran away, often being killed by their biological parents when they tried. They were also killed by whipping. And punching, and other brutalities.
The idea of "families" brought from Europe was Family = dad's slaves, children =mom and dad's slaves. Children were supposed to be submissive and obedient. Many kids died of overwork.
In the mid nineteenth century, many kids who survived were interviewed by media and they told the story of their happiness in Native Cultures and the horror of "civilization" and how they plan to run back to their real, loving families as soon as they can. Those true books angered white folk, so they were taken back and ghost writers wrote what the white folk wanted to hear.
"Kidnapped by savages, forced to worship Satan,so glad to come back to Protestantism" etc.... manuscripts of the real biographies were discovered in the early twentieth century.
Students of child raising attitudes compared them to the "advice" given by the U.S.A. government to mothers in the nineteenth century. Those said to NEVER show affection,never hug nor compliment your kid,or your son ((there was an assumption that only boys were important)) will become a "momma's boy" and unable to compete in the market place,which is all that matters. No doubt about it, the "Indian" ways to raise kids were better,and not psychotic like the European, African,and Asian ways.
So A) I certainly can believe that Tom Hawk was "raised by Indians" and B) that this not only gave him useful skills,but also moral and compassionate attitudes,and C) that after he was somehow "returned to civilization" he was so different from those around him,that he could be a true Frontier Super Hero...
Cheryl Spoehr wrote:
ReplyDeleteAnd I love Tomahawk,always did. Sometimes I preferred believable stories,sometimes the fantastic...want to track this one down!
Vincent Mariani wrote:
ReplyDeleteFollowing trends, the series underwent a few more disjointed transformations throughout the Silver Age (as did many DC publications) culminating with the western Son of Tomahawk books.
The Neal Adams and Joe Kubert covers were great and Frank Thorne did some interesting artwork on the book, but the original concept of Tomahawk and Dan Hunter as a frontier "Batman and Robin in buckskins!", contending in the wilderness with Revolutionary Era British troops, spies, renegades, and hostile Native American foes, was long gone.
Jim Kosmicki wrote:
ReplyDeleteSon of Tomahawk at the end of the run was one of the strongest Western series DC ever did, but it was too little too late. Nobody was paying attention to DC's new stuff by then, and they certainly weren't paying attention to Tomahawk.
The original stories were very well done and pretty accurate historically, given the constraints of comic book plots and story lengths. It survived the demise of Star Spangled Comics, which the Robin solo stories did not..
Vincent Mariani wrote:
ReplyDeleteIn addition to Batman & Robin, Green Arrow & Speedy, and Tomahawk & Dan Hunter, there was the bizarre “team” of Congo Bill & Janu the Jungle Boy. Maybe Jimmy Olsen comics would loosely fit in with these series.
Robert Milne wrote:
ReplyDeleteGreat stuff which needs to be collected, but it ain't going to happen.
Paul Zuckerman wrote:
ReplyDeleteI can't say that Tomahawk was one of my favorites. I rarely if ever bought an issue and certainly wasn't excited by the super-hero elements that cropped up. I guess my favorites would be the earlier period. But, I really liked the Son of Tomahawk run that ended the title.
F-michael Dunne wrote:
ReplyDeleteDisney's Swamp Fox limited series made me a student of the Revolutionary War. So Tomahawk was a must read for me as a youngster. As someone else noted those Star Spangled Comics stories and early Tomahawk stories will never be collected. Although during 1976 DC did issue an oversized edition of Tomahawk although they took the A out of his name making it Tom Hawk. Nothing can stop you from commissioning artists to depict the frontiersman and Frank Brunner happily responded some years ago.
Jim Kosmicki wrote:
ReplyDeleteStar Spangled was converted to a war book rather than an adventure/super hero book. Tomahawk was very popular - he fit in naturally with the Daniel Boone craze that happened later, but was popular well before Disney's series.
More Fun was basically shifted whole into Adventure, Sensation was turned into a female-centered book, then a suspense book. All-American and Star Spangled were converted — All-American into a western book first, then war, Star Spangled as war from the initial conversion. Other than the big 3 characters, DC/National pretty much purged their hero books even before the Comics Code appeared. Sales just weren't there, although Roy Thomas has found some sales figures that he published in a recent Alter Ego issue that show that All Star did NOT sell better as a western than it did with the JSA in it.
Bob Bailey wrote:
ReplyDeleteFred Ray in addition to being a Revolutionary War buff was the Art Director for Civil War Times magazine for many years and did artwork the National Archives including battlefield portfolios. I bought a uniforms of the Civil War set of his at Gettysburg.