Number 1155: Star Spangled Tomahawk

 

There isn't a lot of information available online about artist Edmond Good. He was born in 1910 (no death date listed; is he still alive at age 102?) Worked in Canadian comic books during WWII, then came to the U.S. to work on the comic strip, Scorchy Smith, and then comic books. He was the first artist on "Tomahawk," which began in Star Spangled Comics in 1947.

Tomahawk's first appearance was shown in Pappy's #985. Good worked for Fox, doing Dagar, Desert Hawk, and also at ACG in the 1960s, doing supernatural stories for editor Richard E. Hughes. He had a very pleasing style, which once identified, becomes immediately apparent when spotted.

In the answer to a question in Adventures Into the Unknown, Hughes further identified Good as a member of the Woodstock, N.Y. art colony.

 Joe Samachson wrote this tale, the second-ever Tomahawk story, in Star Spangled Comics #70 (1947):

Number 985


Tomahawk begins


For a non-super character, Tomahawk lasted a long time for DC Comics. He was featured in Star Spangled Comics as a back-up strip, but soon took as cover feature. His own comic book lasted over 20 years, until the early '70s.

I liked the idea of Tomahawk set in a time frame of the American Revolution, a white man trained by Indians. But as we've shown before, DC Comics, who never met a wild concept it didn't like if it involved dinosaurs or gorillas, went far afield of the original frontier concept. A typically wild Tomahawk tale of the Go-Go Checks DC Comics of the 1960's was shown in Pappy's #848.

But this is the original Tomahawk tale, shown in Star Spangled Comics #69, from 1947. It's written by Joe Samachson and drawn by Edmond Good. Later on Tomahawk was taken over by writer France "Eddie" Herron and artist Fred Ray, but this first story paved the way, establishing Tomahawk for the next 25 years.