We think that spinoff characters started in the 90s when they created Venom and then had Carnage and then Venom 2 and Carnage 3 and Venom: The Venoming and now there’s Anti-Venom. Also there was Vengeance, who was like Ghost Rider, but spikier and with a fiery horse skull (or something) rather than a fiery human skull. I think there was also a Morbius spinoff who was even more vampirey.
But no – even in the good old days, there were spin-off characters. Take Hawk, who is the son of Tomahawk. Tomahawk was DC’s Revolutionary War comic character. He fought the British – including the notoriously awesome Lord Shilling (fun fact: this site is now the #1 search result for “Lord Shilling”) – and, uh, other Britishers and Britishese. Maybe some Hessians too, I dunno. Possibly a Welshman somewhere.
However, Tomahawk, educational as he might have been, was not “down” with the kids of the 50s. Enter Hawk, Tomahawk’s rather unimaginatively named son. Now, maybe you are looking at Hawk and thinking “why does he look like Elvis?” But this is merely a coincidence. Hawk is the result of painstaking historical research, which conclusively demonstrated that in the late 18th and early 19th century, men wore ducktail haircuts, slit-navel jumpsuits and neckerchiefs.
Hawk was excellent at all things. He was friend to white man and Indian alike! (Black men, not so much. He was in 1950s comics, after all.) He could shoot the wings off a fly, track just about anybody, see further than a hawk, hear better than a wolf, outwrestle a bear, outrun a puma… no, wait, sorry, those last four were Bravestarr. Actually, that reminds me. Why the hell did Thirty-Thirty let Bravestarr ride him around? I mean, Thirty-Thirty must’ve thought, at one point, “why can’t we just get damn hoverbikes like everybody else?” And what was up with all the natives of the planet being hobbits? (Yeah, yeah, “Prairie People.” We all know they were hobbits.)
…ahem.
Because, silly as it might be to have Elvis be pre-incarnated as a wilderness scout, it’s actually kind of ludicrously awesome at the same time, you have to admit.
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The Bravestarr tangent is what makes this work so well and thus earns a pass for you giving this dude like 30 extra points too many…
Hawk was excellent at all things. He was friend to white man and Indian alike! (Black men, not so much. He was in 1950s comics, after all.)
Yeah, ha ha- but Hawk was introduced (like it says in the small print on the page scan you’ve posted) in issue #131, which came out not in the 1950′s but in late 1970.
The “Disco Stu meets Tonto” look is the most awesome thing I’ve seen all week.
Tomahawk was a Revolutionary War hero, and Hawk here is from the Wild West era, which was…about ninety years later. Hm.
Roy Thomas has a script hiding in a desk somewhere that explains how that works. I guarantee it. Time warp? Fountain of Youth? Mysterious Native American magic? Robots? Clones? Somewhere, Roy Thomas has the answer.
Hey, now there’s Zombie Morbius. The Undead Living Vampire?
Harvey- Obviously, Tomahawk gets returned to the wrong time period after “The War that Time (and every writer save Bruce Jones) Forgot”
Something about that pose makes his tomahawk look like a microphone.
It’s all the Time Trapper’s fault!
Hey, there was a West in those days, too. First Western: James Fenimore Cooper, _The Prairie_ (1828, I think), featuring a Seven Years War veteran as the hero. Admittedly, Hawkeye was 108 at the time, but Cooper does admit that he was slowing down a bit.
He’s a hunka hunka burnin’ anachronism!
There’s a 1968 movie called Stay Away, Joe that stars Elvis Presley as a half-breed Indian.
You don’t suppose…?
As Johnny Bacardi mentioned, Hawk did first appeared in 1970. I should know, I have his first appearance. The stories are actually better than MGK let on, being well written by Bob Kanigher with well done by Frank Thorne and covers by Joe Kubert. However, he’s right about the Who’s Who entry making the character look silly. As for when it was set, it was never mentioned, but Tomahawk was depicted as elderly but spry.
You missed the bit that even Who’s Who couldn’t bring itself to admit (“Full name: Unknown”). Tomahawk’s real name was “Tom Hawk”. Which’d strongly imply Hawk’s name was, well, “Hawk Hawk”.
To Lawnmower Boy:
Yeah, there was a western frontier back then…but there weren’t six-guns until the mid-1830′s at the earliest, and that sure don’t look like a Colt Paterson in this dude’s hand. If it’s a Colt .45 Peacemaker (looks like it), we’re talking 1876 or so.
Sorry for the firearms nerdness.
I think he looks more like Christian Slater doing a bad Elvis impersonation.
Not that there are any good Elvis impersonations.
In the middle of a burlesque show Saturday, a song was sung by “Clownvis, King of Clowns.” This was admittedly more of a parody than impression.