#rawhide kid: the sensational seven

[jasposeyblog]

My commission of Rawhide Kid sketch cover by Ryan Santos

[rezonan]

Marvel Old Comic Retelling Read Order

So I have a friend who's a big Marvel fan and wants to get into comics, he's willing to start from the late 70s and doesn't want to touch any Golden or Silver age material but does want to get the general idea of what happened at that point in the universe, so I've constructed this list for him, made out of retellings of older stories with modern art and writers to make it better for his style of reading.

**Pre-Golden Age Retellings:**

Thor: Ages of Thunder

The Mighty Thor: Loki

Thor: For Asgard

Thor: Son Of Asgard

The Rise of Apocalypse

Thor: Godstorm

Ghost Rider: Trail of Tears

Apache Skies

Rawhide Kid: Slap Leather

The Rawhide Kid: The Sensational Seven

Blaze Of Glory: The Last Ride of the Western Heroes

Stoker’s Dracula

X-Men: Apocalypse / Dracula

Wolverine: Origin

Wolverine: Origin II

**The Golden Age Retellings:**

X-Men: Magneto Testament

Captain America & Bucky: The Life Story of Bucky Barnes

Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze

Truth: Red, White & Black

Captain America: Patriot

The Marvels Project

Marvels #1

Captain America: White

Captain America / Black Panther: Flags of our Fathers

Captain America: America First

X-Men: Krakoa Lives

Sub-Mariner: The Depths

Winter Soldier: The Bitter March

**Silver Age Retellings:**

Fantastic Four: Books of Doom

Daredevil: The Man Without Fear

Daredevil: Battlin’ Jack Murdock

Wolverine: Weapon X

X-Men: Angel – Revelations

X-Men: Origins

X-Men: Origins II

Ororo – Before The Storm

Mythos: Fantastic Four

Fantastic Four: First Family

Avengers Origins: Ant-Man & the Wasp

Mythos: Hulk

Hulk: Gray

Storm

Avengers Origins: Thor

Thor: First Thunder

Iron Man Season One

Iron Man: Enter the Mandarin

Iron Man: The Iron Age

Mythos Spider-Man

Spider-Man: With Great Power

Spider-Man/Doctor Octopus: Year One

Untold Tales of Spider-Man

X-Men: Season One

Mythos: X-Men

Avengers: The Origin

Captain America: Man Out of Time

Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes

Hulk: Smash Avengers

Avengers Four

Thor: Blood Oath

Rise of the Black Panther

Black Panther: Killmonger – By Any Means

Daredevil: Yellow

Spider-Man: Blue

Emma Frost

Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes II

X-Men: The Hidden Years

Punisher: Born

Avengers Origins: Luke Cage

[tepkunset]

Rawhide Kid: The Sensational Seven Was Far From Sensational

Despite its flaws, I overall enjoyed Slap Leather a surprising amount. I had hoped that Rawhide Kid: The Sensational Seven would be better or at least on the same level. However, it turned out to be one of the strangest mixes of hate and love I have read from a comic in a while. I liked the good parts more and disliked the bad parts more. I’m not sure how else to say it.

TL;DR Synopsis:

Rawhide Kid recruits a gang to go rescue Wyatt and Morgan Earp, who have been locked up by a group of bandits led by Cristo Pike; relative of the baddie from Slap Leather.

The Good:

Two-Gun Kid. Honestly, that's all that needs to be said; he is the only character aside from Rawhide that I really liked. He is funny and sweet and genuinely nice. Also, he's apparently the only ‘Kid’ that has a legitimate job lol.

The best scene was easily when Rawhide Kid told Two-Gun Kid he thought he was also gay, and it’s really calm and not depicted as awkward or embarrassing, but rather two buds having a casual conversation. Two-Gun doesn’t act all grossed out or angry or nothing. Two-Gun then says how he guesses he has to change his appearance and Rawhide says--and this is my fave line--“Why? If you like it, wear it. You know what makes a man tough, Matt? Not being afraid of what anyone else thinks. Standing your ground. Being comfortable with who you are. If you can do that, then you're tough.” It’s a scene where a gay man and a Jewish man in the Wild West have a pep talk with each other, it’s nice.

In general I really liked how Rawhide has a group of friends that are all accepting of him and stick up for him against assholes who have a problem with his sexuality. Well, aside from one rude comment from Kid Colt; “kin we get on with this 'fore I puke” when Rawhide is flirting with a guy. 😒 (Colt is easily the most annoying of the three ‘Kids’.)

The first issue opens where Rawhide is able to scare a whole town into behaving nicely whenever he’s in view. I laughed.

I failed to realize last time that Rawhide is short? I'm not used to seeing male characters being short and not also Wolverine-shaped.

When Pike reveals he has Rawhide’s abusive shithead father captured like that was gonna be some big gambit... and then Rawhide’s like “why the fuck would I give a damn about him...” that was some good shit. I was expecting some moral attempt at “you need to forgive the people who abused you even though they have done nothing to work for it,” or “it’s your responsibility to fix your abusive and hateful parents,” but no. The series ends with Rawhide Kid planning on travelling to Hong Kong.

The Bad:

I don't really think this belongs here, because I think the writer might just be making playful fun at his own name, but FYI anyway: There is a joke about Two-Gun's surname being hard to pronounce. (It's not even though...?)

There’s some really gross things in this one. I don’t want to even go into detail, I’ll just say there’s piss, vomit and STD related ‘jokes’ that weren’t so much funny as they were just disgusting.

Red Wolf isn't quite as terrible as I was expecting... but mind you my expectations were six feet below, so I won't be giving any congratulations for being at least above ground. (Note: This is Johnny Wakely Red Wolf, not William Talltrees, in case anyone reading this and just got really confused.) He's still the most eye-rolling, cringey caricature you can imagine from a Western series like this one. Every time I think the writer plays with or subverts stereotypes--for example, Red Wolf talks about attending Harvard--he follows up by just diving right into them. For example, unlike the other protagonists, Red Wolf's only motivations are “killing pale-faces” and this is absolutely played just as you expect it to. And he’s literally called “the noble savage” in the blurb.

Like a number of the characters in this series, Annie Oakley was a real person. Unlike the other real people, the way Annie Oakley is treated and depicted in this comic is downright disrespectful. She is nothing but a ditsy pinup doll for male readers. Basically her only role is to be lusted after by the straight men. At one point she straight-up rips open her top ‘because she can’t stand the heat’ while Kid Colt watches lecherously. She’s even dressed like a pinup cowgirl.

I would like to also note that she’s only around 17-18 years old during the time of this series. So let that sink in as well. 

This series is much more plentiful with it’s slur use than Slap Leather as well. There’s a lot of derogatory comments against women (Annie), Natives (Red Wolf) and gay men (Rawhide). (Note: One such is the Q Word, which while I’m aware is a... hot debate... about reclamation in current times and don’t want to get into that, this the 19th century where it is purely meant as pejorative. It is also used in the same sentence as other pejorative terms. So despite me personally being fine with the word today, I am counting it.)

Billy the Kid is so often looked upon favourably in media, and this series depicts him as an irredeemable asshole in every way. I don’t know enough about him to know what the truth was, I just wanted to say I found this surprising. The problem I had with this is that I think it was supposed to be funny? Seriously, Billy’s like “dumb injuns, dumb fairies, slavery never should have ended” and Doc drags him away to beat him up like it’s all “haha, oh, that Billy.”

The... Weird:

I also found this really strange; the artist continuously drew a lot of downright claustrophobic close-ups of the faces. Not even the whole head, just the face. It was like a meme that continuously zoomed in on an image for effect or something lol. There didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason for this either. It would just at random have really, really close faces where entire pages looked just like this:

[dirtyriver]

The Thirty-One Days of Halloween: Weird West

The best moment of the cringeworthy Rawhide Kid: The Sensational Seven mini-series was that one-page cameo of the Ghost Rider subbing for the missing Earps as sheriff of Tombstone. Interestingly, while his general appearance is similar to the Trail of Tears Ghost Rider (black clothes, black horse, hellfire), he looks different enough to probably qualify as yet another incarnation of the character. 

Rawhide Kid: The Sensational Seven #1, August 2010, written by Ron Zimmerman, art by Howard Chaykin 

[ant-ifascottlang]

Actually, I don't think I've made a post specifically about this yet, but it's evil that the ONLY comic to actually engage with Matt Hawk being Jewish (after it was established in the 90s in Two-Gun Kid: Sunset Riders) is the fucking Rawhide Kid Sensational Seven comic. Which. Making Matt a wimp who isn't actually a good marksman is bad enough, but making not one but TWO "greedy Jewish Lawyer" jokes when the source material with Matt repeatedly goes OUT OF ITS WAY to show Matt not only working pro bono but ALSO that he is operating out of deeply held convictions is just so.... I hate it. I hate it here.

[tepkunset]

This series was Not Good but this scene was

(Rawhide Kid: The Sensational Seven #3)

[tepkunset]

(Rawhide Kid: The Sensational Seven #2)