Talk about a comic not for our times, this one might just be the one. The Gunhawks is a memorable comic for me because it was part of a memorable ad which touted not only this new western but also Man-Thing, Doc Savage and a revived Journey into Mystery.
Of those four only Man-Thing proved to have much lasting power, though truth be told Doc Savage did linger in black and white after the color comic went bust. But The Gunhawks was part of that push and the comic itself is pretty well crafted, featuring some sturdy artwork by Syd Shore and a script by Gary Friedrich. What stands out about that debut issue is the unusual relationship between Reno Jones and Kid Cassidy.
Both men fought in the Civil War, on the side of the Confederacy surprisingly enough. It seems Cassidy was the son of a plantation owner and was raised alongside Jones and the two bonded. After the war with the plantation gone they leave the South to head West. The naivete about the brutal reality of slavery is stunning and would be the cause of much consternation in the modern political environment where such apologies for the grim practice is rebuffed with just energy.
Here are the covers for the remainder of the run.
Only the debut issue has been reprinted in a volume of Marvel Firsts and frankly I doubt we'll ever see the others. Eventually Reno Jones loses Cassidy and goes it alone in an attempt to keep the title running and frankly that might've been a better idea from the beginning.
When these characters have resurfaced over the years, these bizarre notions about the nature of slavery and the South have been more directly addressed, thank goodness.
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I’m not entirely sure what it says about the 60’s and 70’s but the proliferation of post-confederate western characters is sort of interesting – though as you point out it’s pretty naive when one looks back on it today. Was this really only anathema to comics books of this period, I wonder? Jonah Hex, Captain Doom, this odd relationship between these GunHawk fellows. Co-incidentally, I got a chance to sit down and watch Tarantino’s Hateful Eight over the weekend. Fantastic, claustrophobic post-civil war tale with Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell and a handful of the usual Tarantino suspects. As with any Tarantino movie it’s worth sitting through for the dialogue alone, but there’s a really interesting plot device which revolves around a letter the Sam Jackson character keeps with him - from President Lincoln. Worth checking out...
ReplyDeleteHeroes and Anti-heroes suffering from the aftermath of war touched a nerve with readers in the Vietnam and Post-Vietnam era. No one wanted to touch Vietnam itself (for nearly a decade) but they were willing to talk about war in the relatively remote context of the Civil War (Outlaw Josey Wales, Wild Wild West) and WWII (Rat Patrol, Hogan's Heroes) and the Korean War (MASH). At least that's my theory on it.
DeleteHateful Eight looked interesting so I'll have to give it a glimpse. Thanks.
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