Reno Jones

[Kan-Man]

So I'm reading the latest issue of Wizard on the train last night and I come across a sidebar where you have to match the western characters with their names.

One of them was Reno Jones and something clicked with me. I tend to be a very nostalgic person and I love those moments when I suddenly remember something from my youth that I've long since forgotten - whether it's a comic, a toy, a cartoon, a breakfast cereal, whatever.

Anyway, Reno Jones did it for me. I did some research and found that he was in a Marvel comic called The Gunhawks, which ran for 7 issues in 1972. This was the year I started collecting, so chances are I had one of these issues.

Does anyone else remember this character or this comic? I know there are a bunch of western fans out there, so I thought I'd ask.

[Slam_Bradley]

An issue of Gunhawks was one of the first comics I ever read. It had to have belonged to one of my older brothers. I have very vague recollections of it. That's all I have.

[MWGallaher]

Gunhawks was a novel western for its time, blending the dying Western comic with the 70's drive for diversity by featuring Black cowboy Reno Jones as one half of the "buddy" book (along with the more generic and Caucasian "Kid Cassidy"). This may have been the first continuing fictional black western star, at least in the comic book world--I know there were some western films with all-Black casts made for black audiences, and there were probably some paperback cowpokes of African descent, but Reno Jones was a trailblazer at Marvel, for sure.
He even headlined the book for, unfortunately, its final issue. Set up nicely as a tragic hero who was convinced he had killed his late partner, Cassidy, in the previous issue, the series was retitled Reno Jones, Gunhawk, and then was cancelled. Reno had always felt like the star of the series, anyway. It's a fun little package to collect, I think, with some art by the underappreciated Syd Shores and the somewhat-more-appreciated Dick Ayers, scripts by hipster Gary Freidrich and fogey Gardner F. Fox, inks by, well, not the most beloved inkers of fandom, but we can live with it.
I love all those short-run Marvel series of the 70's; the ones that failed are often far more entertaining than the ones that succeeded, and I think GUNHAWK(S) is an example of that.

[Scott Shaw!]

This may have been the first continuing fictional black western star, at least in the comic book world--I know there were some western films with all-Black casts made for black audiences, and there were probably some paperback cowpokes of African descent, but Reno Jones was a trailblazer at Marvel, for sure.

No time to verify this, but I'm fairly certain that Dell's LOBO -- a two-issue series about a black gunslinger in the Old West -- was published shortly before GUNHAWKS.

Oh, why not look it up...the OVERSTREET GUIDE says that LOBO was the "1st black character to have his own title", and that the first issue was published in December, 1965 and the second and final issue was published in October, 1966. Both issues were drawn by the notorious Tony Tallarico.

As for GUNHAWKS, Marvel published seven issues, cover-dated from October, 1972 to October, 1973. And the final issue was re-titled GUNHAWK.

Hey, so I was right! One of these days, I'll spotlight LOBO at ODDBALL COMICS. (I own both issues.) I never realized it was so oddly significant!

Aloha,

Scott!

[MichikoS]

Though not much into western comics, I read Dell's Lobo when it came out in the '60s, and I recall being secretly thrilled that the hero was black --secretly, because there wasn't anyone I could talk to about it at the time! (Who'd care what a little kid had to say?)

I had been making my way through Edgar Rice Burroughs at the time, and somehow Lobo was associated in my imagination with the great heroes of Burroughs's fiction. I ended up liking the comic a lot more for that reason, even though the association is strictly circumstantial.

I had occasion to pick up both Dell Lobo issues recently, and, as an adult, I'm disappointed to find that there is nothing -- absolutely nothing -- in either the plots or dialogue to indicate that the lead character is black! It might just have well have been a coloring error on Dell's part that made the character's skin dark instead of pink.

But. But. It wasn't. Somebody deserves credit for making the decision, back in those benighted times, to feature a black protagonist in a comic, albeit one that wasn't particularly well-drawn or well-written. That it lasted a mere two issues says something about the experiment, I suppose.

But I will always have a soft spot for Lobo in my heart.

Michi

[MWGallaher]

Hey, so I was right! One of these days, I'll spotlight LOBO at ODDBALL COMICS. (I own both issues.) I never realized it was so oddly significant!

To be frank, Scott!, I don't know much about any of the Dell "microseries" until I see them at Oddball Comics! They seem to have had so many throwaway concepts, it must have been really tough to be a Dell fan in the 60's and pick up an issue of something that really tickled your fancy, because there seems to have been very little certainty that they'd ever get around to doing another issue--and if they did, it probably wasn't going to be in the next couple of months.
It makes me really wonder about Dell's policy when it came to creating new features. They seem to have been extremely conservative about generating ongoing features, and yet that conservativism had to have been detrimental to any of those features having a good shot at success.

[Lone Ranger]

I have a couple of issues of the Gunhawks series.

It is a strange little series, stealing a little from The Searchers as well as Butch & Sundance. so-so. The writing is quite over the top and the Syd Shores art, although quite nice in parts, is hit and miss.

My real problem with the series is the notion that Reno Jones was a black Confederate veteran, who fought to keep the plantation in the hands of his 'good' master.

Yes, I am sure this happened from time to time, but something in my politically correct white liberal brain cannot compute the fact that a slave boy and the master's son would be raised as brothers. It's a bit too apologetic and convenient for my liking.

Did any funnybook Union veterans ever head west after the War? Those that come to mind all seem to come from south of the Mason-Dixon line.

Anyhow - it's worth checking out as a curiosity piece.

I've been hunting for those Lobo issues for years - never seen them anywhere.

[Gothos]

Re: Union soldiers in the west-- Skywald's THE BRAVADOS actually had a black Union veteran, whose name I don't recall. I remember one flashback specifically showed him in Union blue, getting captured by the Rebs and imprisoned in an "Andersonville"-like POW camp. The main story dealt with his seeking vengeance on the camp commander, who had survived the war and was living peacefully w/o being punished for his war crimes.

[Jeremy A. Patterson]

I have one issue of GUNHAWKS in my collection!


J.A.P.