Once again, Marvel's ideas on the black experience is a case study in clueless, fantasy-laden plots utterly divorced from reality. Honestly, they should have taken pages of notes from O'Neil's historic handling of such subject matter at DC, because this issue's "happy, free slave" business was absurd and offensive in the extreme. For what few slaves were ever allowed to even touch a book for the purpose of learning from it(usually those selected to work exclusively indoors), and treated as something more than a sub-human, they were never perceived as being on equal footing with their owners, including the slave children who grew up playing with their own. I often wonder why a number of Marvel's various writers painted wholly unrealistic pictures of racism / race relations when companies such as DC and numerous 1960s/70s movies dealt with the subject with far greater sensitivity / accuracy.



What else would Friedrich use their Southern heritage for, other than what was presented here: that not all slaves were...slaves, and just as free and educated as their masters? It really reads like the story was moving toward taking cues from the Lost Cause of the Confederacy movement that sprang up around the end of the 19th century, where the undeniable evils of chattel slavery were spun into justification of the noble cause(s) of the masters, among other piles of propaganda. Unless Friedrich has the characters (Jones in particular) have some moment where they realize they sold themselves on a life that did not exist (and they need to approach people in a very different way from that point forward), his handling of a serious subject is disturbing.

Well put,tarkintino. However,  I’d take issue with the cost of the space program. There were scores of other programs that were far more expensive and way less productive than the space program, which often took the hit when critics complained about our national priorities.

Otherwise, I’m with you a thousand percent.

Gunhawks #2, December 1972

“The Night They Rode Old Dixie Down!”, 20 pgs
Gary Friedrich, writer
Syd Shores, penciler
Jack Abel, inker
Denise (Wohl) Vladimer, letterer



Cover by Syd Shores

Summary:

Cassidy and Jones are on horseback and firing at the owl-hoot they are pursuing, their only clue to Rachel, Reno Jones’s abducted love. Their target is out of range of their traditional firearms, so Reno resorts to the buffalo gun. The back-kick knocks Reno off his horse, but hits the target. They rush to him, hoping he’s still alive, because it was his boss from whom they obtained Rachel’s locket last issue.
The wounded thug confirms that the locket came “from a colored gal…! She…cooked for us…for a spell!”

Reno loses his patience and slaps the prostrate punk around, learning that the woman had been sold to a plantation owner in River City who still keeps slaves, despite the end of the war. Reno really loses it at this news, but Cassidy’s attempts to restrain his partner are moot: the man has died. But they have a trail to follow now, and it leads to River City!
Breaking for camp, the boys catch up any readers who missed the first issue, and Cassidy comes up with a plan he’s convinced will bring Reno and Rachel together again, leading to a little bit of campfire horseplay between the old buddies:



Reno goes along with what looks to me like an ill-advised idea: Cassidy brings Jones into town at gunpoint, pretending to be a bounty hunter bringing in a murderer! Onlookers admire the muscles on the “darkie” and plot to bring him to the boss for a commission:



Reno puts on a convincing struggle against Cassidy in a charade that delivers Reno right where they planned: the jailhouse. Where he then waits for what the sheriff calls “the hangin’ judge”. See, I told you this was ill-advised! Cassidy’s confident in the plan, and in the saloon, he jaws with the boys we saw earlier. They suggest that bringing him in to face the law wasn’t the most profitable thing to do with him…their boss, “the Colonel”, would pay a pretty price for Reno. Agreeing to give the boys a cut of the profit, Cassidy suggests “let’s sell us a slave!”

From his cell window, Reno sees the Kid leaving with the strangers, and realizes the plan is working…so long as Cassidy doesn’t get himself killed and leave Reno to face the music.
Cassidy finds that the Colonel has recreated a southern plantation in the wild west, complete with slaves. The Kid’s had a change of heart since the war, and vows to help free these people:



Colonel Johnson recognizes the Kid’s Confederate Uniform pants (that the uncredited colorist has mistakenly rendered in more of a blue) and welcomes a fellow son of the south. He’s also enthusiastic about the prospect of a strong new slave and asks Cassidy to bring him to the plantation. Well now they’ve got to execute a jailbreak, which they reckon should be easy, five men against one sheriff with a couple of deputies.

The boys get to business, knocking out the guard and pulling down the jail wall, and make off with the abducted prisoner. Reno looks like a good investment, and he gets confirmation that he’s on the right track when he sees a portrait of Rachel on the Colonel’s wall! Cassidy, using some offensive terminology I’ll refrain from quoting here, remarks on the attractiveness of the portrait that Reno’s obviously taken with, and the Colonel tells him that he’s got a long story to tell about her over dinner.

Reno is delivered to the slave quarters, where the dispirited men get a pep talk from Reno: “No man can be kept a slave against his will…and I’m gonna prove it to you…by leading you against the Colonel! Cause I’d rather be dead than a slave any day!” The slaves need some convincing to overcome their reticence, but they come around to Reno’s plan, starting by overtaking one of the guards:



From there, the black men, armed only with gardening implements, head for the Big House, where the Colonel and Cassidy are dining. The report of the rebellion reaches them before the slaves do, and Cassidy reveals which side he is really on, drawing his pistol and demanding to know where the girl is.

Outside, the garden tools are proving very effective when wielded by men fighting for their freedom, and they commence to setting fire to the place.
Cassidy, having learned some disappointing news at his meal with the Colonel, brings the slaver before the mob of his victims, where he expresses bafflement at their turning on him:



The slaves respond with gunfire, killing the Colonel, but Cassidy reveals that he’d gotten the low-down on Rachel before the Colonel bit the dust: she served as his “special maid” but was kidnapped in an Indian raid.

The freed slaves have a request that Reno must refuse before the Gunhawks head for Indian territory:



Comments:

Gary Friedrich, having developed a post-slavery premise, finds himself promptly heading into a slave rebellion story. I’ll buy the concept of a slave-owner relocating his plantation to a more remote location in the West; this packs more punch than the buffalo hunters provided in the underwhelming action of the first issue.

It’s hard to square this Reno Jones with last issue’s. Then, he was “well, I don’t know about everyone else, but my experience with ‘slavery’ wasn’t bad at all”, and now, he’s exhorting the men to risk their lives for their freedom, condemning slavery in the passioned language of a longtime activist and personal victim, not as someone who has only now seen what it’s like up close. While Friedrich has begun to make up for his distasteful and inaccurate fantasies of a “good master” from last issue, he offends this time with self-righteous victim-blaming, painting the slaves as too cowardly to rebel until a hero comes to lead them. I do admit to appreciating the idea of taking up the farming implements as makeshift weapons. It’s not rendered as effectively as it might have been, but underdogs making do with what they’ve got to win a battle is pretty satisfying.

There continue to be both more and less explicit signs that this is supposed to be a more mature, contemporary Western, first with the lethal level of violence on display, but more subtly, with the implications regarding Rachel’s role as “special maid”. She had to be very “special” indeed to warrant a prominent portrait on Colonel Johnson’s wall. Perhaps Friedrich didn’t intend it to be read the way I’m reading it, using the portrait as a convenient means of confirming that the Gunhawks were on the right trail, but the notion that his beloved was being used as a sex slave would be a strong motivation to explain Reno’s urgency.

There’s a little more effort at establishing some sense of character for Kid Cassidy this time around, as the overconfident schemer with Crazy Ideas That Just Might Work, but I’m disappointed in the presumably intelligent Reno Jones for going along with a plan that brands him an accused killer—anyone who’s read Rawhide Kid or Kid Colt Outlaw can tell you that’s a bad idea, especially when you have an actual dead guy you shot as evidence to make your ploy more convincing!

I’m not a fan of what Jack Abel does here to Syd Shores’ pencils. I have to wonder if Shores was only able to provide very rough layouts, because there are panels throughout that suggest either that Abel was looking to other artists as inspiration for the finishing details or Shores was referencing others to speed up the penciling process. There are panels that look like Gene Colan, George Tuska, John Buscema, Don Heck, Jack Davis, and, as always when he inks, Jack Abel.

Belated thanks for your expression of approval for the benefits of the US space program, Prince Hal! As some of you are aware, I am, by day, a NASA engineer, so I appreciate it!

Gunhawks #5, June 1973
“The Reverend Mr. Graves!”
Gary Friedrich, writer
Syd Shores, artist
Jack Abel, inker
Denise Vladimer, letterer
Benjamin Hunt, colorer (that’s how Denise wrote it, not “colorist”)
Roy Thomas, editor



Cover by Syd Shores

Summary:

A kneeling Reno Jones, an out-cold Kid Cassidy, a dead bear, and an array of watching Cheyenne braves. Reno’s not in a good mood, and even with his hands bound, he’s ready to take on Grey Fox, at the risk of his own scalp…”providin’ you get close enough to learn how tough my kinky curls are!”
Their duel is interrupted when they are disarmed by the shots of a gunman skilled enough to shoot the knife and spear from their hands…a gun running preacher, who demands Reno Jones as payment for the supply of rifles he’s bringing to Grey Fox!



The Indians have no use for Rev. Graves’ god, but they do want the guns, so they surrender Mr. Jones to his keep. Reno resists being ordered at gunpoint, and puts up a good fight, bound though he remains, but Graves gets the drop on him.

That evening, the Indians do a war dance as Rachel (without an extra ‘a’ this month) tends to the feverish Kid Cassidy. She fills him in on Reno’s abduction, but still worries that he’ll return to be killed by Grey Fox when he learns she’s now his squaw.

With Reno bound and gagged in the back of his wagon, Rev. Graves encounters Captain Worth and his cavalry, and he shares the good news…no, not the Gospel, the good news that Grey Fox and his men are quiet at their village…and…unarmed!

Reno’s baffled at this lie, but Graves explains: he does indeed hope that both sides slaughter each other, since he resents both the Indians who massacred his parents and the soldiers who did nothing about it. A good kick is all Reno can manage to let Graves know what he thinks of this un-Christian scheme. But the kick is enough to put Graves out long enough for Reno to borrow a knife and free himself, steal one of Graves’ horses, and head to warn the Indians.



Grey Fox is not only surprised that Reno returns after having his life spared, but he doubts the sincerity of the warning…until the cavalry opens fire on them all!
Jones and Cassidy reunite, with Rachel hidden away. Although their relationship has been a little strained of late, they’re joking again, as Cassidy leads his friend away from Rachel, following her wishes.



Before they can escape, Rev. Graves returns, “ready to strike down the blasphemers!” He gets a shot at Reno’s shoulder, but weak as he is, Kid Cassidy returns fire and downs the preacher with a shot to the chest.

With his dying breath, Grave repents his life of hatred, and reveals that he was taken in by a black family when he was orphaned, and had hoped that Reno could have been his friend. The Gunhawks bury the preacher, but Reno has a feeling drawing him back to the village: “Maybe it’s Rachel! We always did get a funny feelin’ when we were close to each other!”

The village is once again a scene of devastation, with Captain Worth lamenting the cavalry’s substantial losses, but celebrating the slaughter of all the renegade. Well, all but one—Grey Fox has survived to escape with Rachel, giving Reno Jones one brief look at his lost love! He’s about to give chase, when Kid Cassidy reluctantly follows Rachel’s wishes, knocking his partner out so the he cannot follow!



The next issue tease promises "San Franciso Slade" which wouldn't appear until the following issue. Given the big change that occurs next issue, it's hard to imagine the stories could have simply been swapped in order. The San Francisco adventure as published could not possibly have followed this one unless it was drastically revised.

This issue’s capped off with “The Rustler”, a reprint of a Stan Lee/Gene Colan story.

Comments:

This one feels hasty and underdone. Whatever Friedrich intended to come across with Reverend Graves, it just didn’t work. His preaching is too inconsequential to sell the character as some kind of hypocritical Bible-thumper, and the bit about him being raised by a black family and just wanting to be Reno’s friend just felt really random and irrelevant. If this is saying something about race, it’s not coming through to me. Graves comes and goes without accomplishing much, and it all feels utterly pointless and scattered. He’s an ace shooter, he’s a scheming planner of mayhem, he’s a hollow reflection of religion, he’s a gun-runner, he’s a possible slaver, and most of all, he’s a cartoonishly freakish visual, suggesting Herb Trimpe more than Syd Shores, who’s making his final appearance in these pages, one of the last jobs before he died. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Trimpe did some revisions on Shores' work here. 

This issue is a lot more soap opera than Western action, with the meat of the story the complicated interplay between Reno, Rachel, Grey Fox, and the Kid. Cassidy’s knocking out his friend doesn’t ring true at all. Despite Rachel’s wishes, once Reno spotted her, I can’t see trying to stop him from pursuing. The only memorable action is the amped-up level of slaughter, which happens off panel. I guess Friedrich is telling us “War Is Hell” or something obvious like that.

Reno at least finally gets to spot Rachel. A writer on the letters page expresses surprise that the Rachel subplot seems about to resolve. The response is that “the reason for Reno and the Kid finally find[ing] Rachel is a simple one: we don’t think the book could have survived forever on just that one plot, and even faithful fans…would eventually tire of Jones and Cassidy ‘just missing’ Rachel”. And yet, that’s essentially what happens again this issue. Another letter writer recognizes My Lai as the inspiration for issue 3, although the response claims, unconvincingly, “that Gary was not drawing any conscious parallels to more recent events.” Yeah, right.

Coming Attractions:

It looks as though this thread is losing whatever appeal it once had, just like the Western comics it’s been examining. We’re nearing the end of the trail, so hang on for two more issues to bring us back around to where we started.

Sorry to see this thread coming to the end of the trail, MWGallaher.

Looks like Friedrich cribbed a bit from the great Western, “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” with simultaneous shots from Jones and Grey Fox. Too bad the art decrease in quality as the title goes on. So many new titles start off with above average art and swiftly go downhill. Abel rarely made anyone’s work sparkle.

And too bad that Reno is fast becoming an 1870s Luke Cage, but I’ll be honest, any other unique or offbeat direction would be beyond what Marvel wanted out of book space like this. At least DC, especially in the late 60s, allowed its out-of-the-box titles to have very different characters and settings, and A-list artists (Howie Post, Nick Cardy, Ditko, Kane, etc.) who made books like Anthro, Bat Lash, Creeper, and Hawk and the Dove jump out at you from the newsstands.

Gunhawks #7, October 1973

“Rodeo Doomsday!”
By Gardner Fox, writer,
Dick Ayers, penciler
Frank Giacoia, inker
Charlotte Jetter, letterer
Janice Cohen, color
Roy Thomas, Editor



Cover by Larry Lieber and Vince Colletta (?)

Summary:

The final issue opens with Reno Jones riding from cavalry in pursuit of him. After a quick flashback to orient readers who missed the dramatic previous issue, Reno finds himself sandwiched between the soldiers and a group of attacking Indians, all on horseback. Complicating matters is a wagonload of women rolling into the battlefield, attracting the Indians’ attention. Reno feels an obligation to intervene and save the women.
Things are too hectic for him to spot Rachel in the wagon, as Reno is dislodged from his horse and takes on the attacking braves with his pistols: “His hands blur as he shifts guns—almost in mid-shot! For Reno Jones is a master gunman, needing only one frontier Colt revolver to do the work of two!”
Having delayed the Indians long enough for the wagon to gain distance, Reno decides it’s time to high-tail it before the boys in blue arrive, so he summons his steed “Bronc” and heads for the hills, allowing Major Worth to escort the ladies in the wagon.

Although the issue seems to have picked up directly after issue 6, a flashback tells us differently, first relating how Reno got his new outfit—with a spiffy white vest and hat—outwitting a gambler who thought he could cheat a black man. After that, Worth picked up the trail of the “nigra” he’s after, chasing Reno into his current situation.
Reno discovers an “outlaw post office” a cairn in the hills where “longriders” leave messages for each other, and in it, he finds a poster for a rodeo contest in the town of Cayuse. Seeing an opportunity to fund his ongoing search for Rachel, Reno heads to town in hopes of winning the prize money. He has the cash winnings he got along with his new suit, and that serves as his entry fee.
The other participants begin to protest: “You ain’t gonna let a darky compete against us white folks, are ya? Cayuse is no place for his kind!”
Reno adopts a humble demeanor and at least one of the participants argues on Reno’s behalf, pointing out that the more entry fees are collected, the more the prize money. This is San Francisco Slade, the guy the next issue box has been promising for two issues now. Seems he’s a top rider on the rodeo circuit, and he and his boys grin as Reno pays up. There’s no way this black man will beat Slade! Other observers have their doubts: “That hombre don’t look like any greenhorn to me…mebbe we’ve bitten off more’n we can chew!”

That guy’s right, because Reno walks off with the first prize money in bronco busting, never being thrown. That one win is enough to alarm San Francisco Slade, who arranges an ambush of his new competition, hiring some racist goons who’ll enjoy beating a black man.

Reno’s alert to them, thanks to spotting their shadows from around the corner, and takes them out easily, but has to stay in the shadows when the bluecoats arrive, escorting the wagon. Not only does he miss out on seeing that Rachel (who’s hoping Reno will find her) is with them, but he now worries how he can openly compete in the rodeo with Worth and his men in town.



That problem disappears when the Major immediately departs town, and Reno proceeds to set a new world record in the bull-dogging event, taking home another first prize pot! Time for Slade to get serious: he puts a $100 hit on Jones, a contract that the well-known gunhand “Durango” accepts.

All it takes is a barrage of racist insults for Durango to entice Reno into a duel, a duel that Reno easily wins, but one that earns him arrest as a murderer!



His protests that it was a fair fight initiated by Durango are denied by the lying Slade and his men, so the Sheriff has no choice but to take him to the jail to await trial. It’s the usual plight of the black man: “this is a white man’s world where my skin makes me guilty just because it’s not like yours.”

The Sheriff denies racism influences his justice system, but Reno’s not buying it. Later, Slade drops by the jail to show off his winnings—Slade not only gets the prize for winning the wild horse race, but get’s Reno’s winnings, too, since he’s been disqualified as a murderer.

Reno recognizes a frame-up, and gets in a solid punch through the cell bars, but this just makes his conviction all the more likely, and he finishes off the issue—and the series—observing from his jail cell as Rachel leaves town on the back of the covered wagon!

As I noted quite a few pages back, the logo appears to be a new rendition in the same style as the previous logo. It's curious why Marvel would pay for a new logo for a cancelled book when no one would have noticed had they simply lopped the trailing 's' from the other one. 

And here we close, the series cancelled but Reno’s story to be concluded in the pages of [Marvel] Western Team-Up in the company of the Rawhide Kid!



Comments:

Although this issues continues the plotlines of the buddy-Western era, and although Reno Jones has always been depicted as highly competent, this issue blithely remolds him into a typical Marvel Western lead, with exceptional skill with a six-shooter, a faithful and well-trained steed, and superiority in every sort of Old West talent, able to easily walk away with top prizes in every rodeo even he enters, none of which would be deduced from what we know of him up to now. These are specialized athletic events, and it’s hard to swallow his being able to confidently master them somewhere off panel. And Reno Jones’ most notable skill as a “gunhawk” has been his facility with the buffalo gun, which is nowhere in sight anymore. I guess he lost it somewhere along the way. While the series finale retained some of the New Wave Western influence, the dominant sense is that this is being remade to better fit the familiar model at Marvel, tossing in racism to add some more immediate threat than Rawhide Kid would face as a wanted man. I notice also that the group Rachel are no longer insinuated to be ladies of the night, but rather damsels in distress.

While I’m impressed that Marvel had the guts to kill off Kid Cassidy, who never was done justice by Gary Friedrich, I can’t help but think there was some unrealized potential in pursuing the original set-up wiped out by this issue, with the pair growing from greenhorns new to the ways of the Wild West into seasoned experts, a leap that Reno makes abruptly .

Given the approach on display, it doesn’t feel like we missed much on having the book cancelled. Too bad; after an unfortunate start that cast Reno as an apologist for the slave system, the book had some fresh qualities, lifting ideas frequently from the resurgent, gritty Western cinema of the 1970’s. It must have been disappointing that these attempts didn’t translate into sales success, but those who were into the more adult Westerns on the big screen didn’t get the message that the comics were emulating that.

I do like Reno’s new “costume”—all Marvel Western stars had to have a distinctive wardrobe they stuck to. The white clothes make for an effective contrast to his brown skin. In the parallel universe I like to visit in my head, Reno Jones continued in the same imaginary black and white magazine series that hosted Red Wolf’s continued adventures, alongside the Renegades, Outcast, Tales of Fort Rango, Night Rider, and a steady diet of Western Team-Ups reintroducing 70’s versions of the Apache Kid, Black Rider and others, with art from not only the surviving Syd Shores, but talented Filipino artists like Alcala and deZuniga, gorgeous painted covers by Western artists who’d never worked for Marvel before…shoot, I’ve gotta shake off this fantasy and get back to the real world…

In that final panel, we return to the first published tease of the comic book this thread aimed to review, a comic whose title changed just a bit before it hit the stands one month later. That brings us full circle, so aside from some wrap-ups and postscripts, that’ll be the last of the Western Team-Ups to get detailed reviews here.