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Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Number 1439: Tomahawk under the black flag

Tomorrow is the annual Talk Like A Pirate Day, so practice your best Robert Newton Long John Silver impression, and holler “Yarrrr!” and “Arrrrr mateys!” at work or school tomorrow. Everyone will love it. NOT.

I never need a reason to show a story about pirates, but it seems more appropriate today to feature Tomahawk and Dan, the buckskin Batman and Robin, and their encounter with buccaneers. Pirate Cap'n Henry Gannon makes Tomahawk walk the plank! Yarrrr!

From Star Spangled Comics #80 (1948), with artwork by the fabulous Fred Ray. To demonstrate how fabulous, look at that splash panel.











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Clicking the thumbnail will take you to Tomahawk’s first appearance in Star Spangled Comics.





7 comments:

Alicia American said...

OMG wen I saw Black Flag I thot this was guna B punk rock yo! Speakering of witch, tha new Sprinkle Genies vid amin8ed by our managr feetures Fletcher Hanks charactars: http://youtu.be/DtR9okvC4Vo
Fantomah Sings! Or raps or sumthing I duno Yay! OMG We luv u Pappy! XOXOXO

Pappy said...

So nice to hear from you, Alicia. I wondered where you'd gone.

Tell Peter he gets two thumbs up from Pappy for a cool animation job and if I had more thumbs they'd all be up for using Fletcher Hanks and FANTOMAH! Excellent, and very, very cool.

Nauga said...

Sure is a great animation by Peter and awesome to see FANTOMAH!

Pappy said...

Daniel, wasn't Robin inserted into the Batman strip so kids could identify? It set a trend in comics where grown men were running around with minors, putting them in danger.

Daniel [oeconomist.com] said...

Yup.

And, honestly, how many kids identified with these boy sidekicks? If you're ten years old, then you still have time to become the Batman. It's too late to become Robin; you could get the elf suit, but the acrobatics would take years to learn.

Pappy said...

Daniel, as I remember Jules Feiffer's comments on Robin in The Great Comic Book Heroes, Feiffer could grow up to be Batman, "there was still time to prepare," he said. "But Robin the Boy Wonder was my own age. One need only look at him to see he could fight better, swing from a rope better, play ball better, eat better, and live better -- for while I lived in the east Bronx, Robin lied in a mansion, and while I was trying, somehow, to please my mother -- and getting it all wrong-- Robin was rescuing Batman and getting the gold medals. He didn't even have to live with his mother."

As a boy I didn't think that way, but I didn't care for the kid sidekicks either, thinking them just annoying.

Daniel [oeconomist.com] said...

Right. Same here. But if, for some reason, the suggestion had been explicitly presented, then the practical impossibility would have confronted us — or, at least, most of us. (I don't know what your talents were at 10!)

Honestly, though, when I was ten years old, there wasn't really any comic-book character, adult or otherwise, who really resonated with me. Had I been born a few years later, that might have been different.