Tomahawk #81

Add Miss Liberty to my list of unexpected DC female heroines of 1959-62.  I believe she qualifies as DC's earliest masked character with a few arguable exceptions, and none of those made second appearances, while Miss Liberty returned several times in the next few years.

The opening story has Tomahawk chasing down a renegade and his band of Indian followers who have robbed a small settlement.  The quarry splits up into three different parties to make tracking them down harder.  The first band is headed for the forest, where they will be impossible to catch, but Tomahawk has an idea:

He frees the logs and they roll down the hill, blocking the pass so he can capture the first third of the group.  When they have been captured, they reveal that an old medicine man had predicted the means of trapping them:

Mysterious predictions like this one are a staple of DC plots; the entertainment comes from seeing how they come true.  As usual, there are three predictions the seer made, but the first party refuses to reveal the other two. 

A little later they encounter the second group.  Caught out in the open they are forced to improvise until the enemy runs out of ammunition:

And thus we learn what the second prediction had been.  Tomahawk and Dan locate the old medicine man to find out his third forecast:

And sure enough, when they encounter the last group of the renegade's men, the prediction comes true:

Comments: Solid entertainment.  GCD doesn't list the writer, but the art is by longtime Tomahawk stalwart, Fred Ray.

The second story is Tomahawk's Frontier Valet. The basic premise of the story is laid out here:

As you can probably tell from that panel, the gag here is the basic "fish out of water" premise that is very common in TV and movies; The Beverly Hillbillies is a good example.  It's not hard to guess that Tomahawk and Dan will find having a valet a very mixed blessing, although one assumes that on at least one occasion he will prove useful. 

Word comes of Lord Boswell's whereabouts:

Note the stark simplicity and beauty of that panel.  Fred Ray's name doesn't come up often on the list of great artists of the Silver Age, but that's mostly because he wasn't drawing superheroes.

As they set out in search of Lord Boswell, Tomahawk and Dan are captured by the hostile tribe.  And, as I predicted:

Terrific characterization there.  However, he falls from his horse and accidentally destroys a sacred war-club.  The hostiles decide that they must take the trio back to their chief to determine their fate.  When they meet the chief, they discover Lord Boswell is there as well.  He's apparently lost his memory as he does not recognize them.  The chief decrees that they are to die at sunrise.

But Tomahawk escapes, kayos Lord Boswell and disguises himself to look like the English gentleman.  This enables him to move freely about the camp and prepare some surprises for the hostile tribe:

They escape with Lord Boswell, who has recovered his memory thanks to that sock on the jaw from Tomahawk.


Comments: A little gem of a story, where everything meshes perfectly.

The finale is the cover story.  As shown on the cover, Tomahawk and Dan have been captured by a force of Indians and Redcoats, when Miss Liberty makes her first dramatic appearance:

She frees the buckskin-clad heroes and then diverts the attention of the chasers so that Tomahawk and Dan can make their way into the nearby town of Newton.  We learn what has attracted the attention of the British:

We also meet a pretty nurse who's about to journey to the next town with some medicines.  Afterwards, she lingers outside the apothecary shop:

And indeed, the British have prepared a trap for them.  Fortunately, Miss Liberty and some friends of hers have arranged a surprise:

We learn more about her here, including the need for a secret identity:

The British issue a proclamation that any village harboring Tomahawk and Dan will be razed and its inhabitants driven from the territory.  In due course they learn that the heroes are in Wilk's Landing and thus:

But it was all a plan to get the munitions out of the town and to Washington's army:

Comments: Wow, once again terrific characterization; the sacrifice of the townspeople is quite moving.

Overall the Silver Age Tomahawk is not that fondly remembered, due to some of the sillier elements of apes, monsters and weird transformations so common to the time infecting the series.  But this issue is superb, with three great stories and excellent art throughout by Ray.  In fact, I have no hesitation in dubbing this one of the Silver Age's:

Tomahawk #51

Tomahawk was a long-running DC series featuring the adventures of one Thomas A. Hawk during the Revolutionary War era.

American culture of the 1950s was dominated by the Western. Stars such as Jimmy Stewart and John Wayne rode tall in the saddle for much of the decade. Baseball historian Bill James once speculated that the reason TV shows like the Beverly Hillbillies and Green Acres were so popular in the 1960s is that the "hicks" they featured were a dying breed in America. I suspect much the same can be said of the Westerns in the 1950s; by then the Old West was gone, and we missed it.

The Western was also enormously popular in the comic books of the time. DC published almost 300 comics with a Western theme during the decade, including All-Star Western, Hopalong Cassidy, Dale Evans, and Western Comics. In addition, Western characters appeared in other magazines, including Pow-Wow Smith (in Detective) and the Vigilante (in Action). These comics were so popular that even some of the horses got their own books; the Lone Ranger's Silver had 37 issues, while Roy Rogers' Trigger lasted for 17.

The opening story in this issue is General Tomahawk. Here's the splash:

That's obviously an homage to the famed painting of Washington Crossing the Delaware; according to the GCD the artist is Bob Brown. The premise of the story is stated here:

So General Washington grants Tomahawk a temporary commission in the Army so he can encourage the men to last out the bitter winter conditions. After sneaking past the redcoats, he encounters his men:

Things look pretty bleak indeed. But Tomahawk learns that the British Fort Royal is bulging with supplies and resolves to appropriate them for his men. He and his junior partner, Dan Hunter, get into the fort on New Year's Eve by pretending to be traveling troubadours:

They manage to sabotage the British troops and escape with some supplies. And in order to prevent the British from maintaining their positions hemming in the troops:

Comments: An entertaining and amusing story, and Brown's artwork is nothing short of sensational.

The second story is the one featured on the cover. A renegade band of Indians have planned to cut off America's lifeline to Great Britain by capturing a lighthouse, and turning out the light, leaving the British fleet to crash on the rocks. Tomahawk attempts to alert the governor:

Tomahawk persuades the captain of a whaling vessel to take to sea to try to stop the raid on the lighthouse, but they are too late. In order to save the British fleet, they set fire to the whaler, alerting the English ships to the danger of the nearby shoals. Then Tomahawk and his men strand the Indians on the lighthouse island by harpooning their canoes as shown on the cover.

Note: This story appears to take place prior to the Revolution, as Tomahawk and the British cooperate against the Indians.

Comments: A fairly pedestrian story lent some luster by Fred Ray's strong artwork.

In the third story, a traveling zoo is attacked by a band of Cherokee Indians, and the animals (including a panther, a lion, a water buffalo and a rhino) are released into the wilds of America. Tomahawk and Dan help the zoo-keeper recover the animals and defeat the Cherokee.

Comments: Solid entertainment.

Overall the artwork and stories were very good, but some of the details are a little shaky geographically. For example, in the second story, Tomahawk's renegade Indians are supposedly from the Chinook tribe, which was located in the Pacific Northwest, nowhere near Boston. And how far afield were the Cherokee, given that the other stories in this issue take place in New York/New England?

The later Tomahawk series (after Jack Schiff took over) was more the monster of the month club, but this issue shows that the earlier issues provided some excellent entertainment value.

DC's Revolutionary War Character

For some reason, very few comics have been set back in the revolutionary days. Obviously there are some problems with stories of the past connecting with young readers, but that never stopped Westerns or WWII comics, which were hugely popular in the 1950s.

Tomahawk was a white man who had been raised by American Indians, so he had the woodsman abilities of the natives combined with an Anglo appearance. For most of his run, he was drawn by Fred Ray, a Revolutionary War buff who insured historical accuracy in his artwork. He first appeared in Star Spangled Comics #69, and within a few years had bumped Robin, the Boy Wonder, off the cover of that magazine. He was added as a feature in World's Finest, and later graduated to his own book in 1950.

The timing was pretty good, as with his coonskin cap and leather fringe, Tomahawk was also able to pass for a Western character, and he often found himself in scrapes with the natives as shown on the cover above. But he was also nimble enough to avoid cancellation in the early 1960s, as Westerns went out of style.

How did he do this? Well, like most DC characters, he began battling an assortment of monsters, dinosaurs and undergoing weird transformations.





And yes, for many of those years, the editor of Tomahawk was Jack Schiff, who was in the middle of inflicting similar nonsense on the readers of Batman. Speaking of costumed heroes, Tomahawk picked one up as well:



I believe that at that time, Miss Liberty was the second earliest DC costumed hero, beaten out for the top spot only by the one-shot Tiger Man from the caveman era.

He also accumulated a "family", known as the Rangers:



In the late 1960s the monsters and dinosaurs disappeared in favor of more traditional Western fare, but sales were still sinking, and in 1970 DC retooled the magazine to feature Tomahawk's son. But that stopgap only worked briefly and in 1972 the magazine was canceled altogether.

Happy Fourth of July, everybody!

Update: Bill Jourdain did a podcast dedicated to Tomahawk a few years back. Listening to it now myself, but these are always a fun listen.