TUROK REBORN Tim Truman takes tb e Dinosaur Hunter back to his roots. BY DARCY SULLIVAN According to Tim Truman, the muscle-bound Indian in the first three issues of Valiant Comics’ Turok, Dinosaur Hunter isn’t Turok. No, this isn’t another wild Valiant continuity tangle. Rather, call it a matter of interpretation—one might even say of principle. “He worked reasonably well as an Indian character, but he wasn’t the Turok I remember,” says Truman, an artist/writer known for his powerful portrayals of Native Americans. “I guess it would be OK if they wanted to pass this off as a new character. I personally would have found that more acceptable. I’m coming across as a typical Turok fan boy—I don’t mean to, but I had an interest in the character.” The Turok Truman had an interest in held his ground without a gun against prehistoric beasts in the Lost Valley for nearly 30 years in the Western Publishing/Gold Key comic Turok, Son of Stone. When Valiant acquired the rights to such Western heroes as Magnus, Robot Fighter and Solar, Man of the Atom, Turok was one of the prime catches: a Native American hunter who brought along his own Jurassic Park style supporting cast. But something happened to Turok in the translation to Valiant's Unity storyline and eventually his own best-selling book. Turok, the teacher who loved the land and helped other tribes sort out their squabbles, turned into one mean fella. The kind of guy who would tell you where you could put your peace pipe. “He was grim." Truman says in his hickory-smoked West Virginia accent. "Grimrok." Truman was actually offered first crack at Turok, Dinosaur Hunter, but was too busy doing a five—issue Jonah Hex story for DC. By the time Truman came on board with issue #4, writer David Michelinie and artists Bart Sears and Bernard Chang had worked Turok into a gun-toting grunt. A panel dead center in Turok #2 even aped the Rambo poster—the Son of Stone had become the Son of Stallone. Job one for writer Truman and artist Rags Morales: Get Turok to lighten up. “The Turok I remember was a very friendly character,” Truman says. “He had an essence of nobility. but he still ran from the dinosaurs whenever he could. He really used his ingenuity, skills and intelligence, rather than just being macho.” The Turok transition wasn’t hard to spot. In the first three issues of his own title, Turok engaged in a massacre of genetically-engineered bionosaurs; he capped it off by waving a machine gun in each hand and finally sticking a bomb into one creature’s skull. In #4, he didn't kill, stab. punch or shoot anything. About the most action he got was hugging his now-aged ex-pupil Andar. Since then, Team Turok has been working under Truman’s direction to bring a sense of humanity to the character—and a sense of history. Truman is a Native American buff and ardent researcher; besides comics work like The Spider (CS #19), Hawkworld (CS #8) and Wilderness (CS#12, about Simon Girty, an American “traitor” who sided with the British and Indians against the colonies), he has written a book profiling 24 frontiersmen and Indians of the eastern frontier, Straight Up to See the Sky. Truman and company have given Turok a tribe, a new pupil and even a smile or two—along with more than enough dinosaurs and villains to keep things moving. As Morales says, “You have to understand the warrior behind the bullets.” For Truman, it was important to lend a touch of Native American veracity to the book, something that had only been done erratically before. Alberto Gioletti, who drew many of the Gold Key Turok comics, seemed to mix elements of the plains and Southwestern tribes in fashioning the dress of Turok and Andar, the two unlucky braves who stumbled into the dinosaur-stocked Lost Valley (called the Lost Land in Valiant stories). “Gioletti also drew the Dell series Tonto,” Truman notes, “and showed a remarkable amount of research in depicting the tribes Tonto interacted with. I think a little bit of that carried over into Turok, although Turok was very stylized.” Not as stylized as the Valiant Turok, who in issue #1 faced death with the prayer. “Great spirit, take me into your lodge!” Um...great spirit? “That’s a white invention,” rebukes Truman. “To a Native American, when you say ‘great spirit,’ that's like saying ‘ugh’ or ‘Squaw.’ It’s a real yawner to them.” Truman, unable to find Turok’s tribe identified in the Gold Key issues, decided to make his hero a Kiowa Apache. “The Kiowa tribe was originally a plains tribe,” he explains. “It became a Southwest tribe in the 1700s, and intermingled with other tribes. I decided Turok and Andar were Kiowa Apache, based on the plains and Southwest influences. “The Southwest tribes were noted for their adaptabi1ity. I try not to make Turok too surprised by stuff. I show him flying in an airplane and he's not too taken aback. The Southwest tribes had that sort of ‘Well, here I amʼ attitude.” They also had what would appear to white people as a certain reserve, and very strong ideas on etiquette, one reason Turok occasionally lambastes people as “rude.” As the artist on Truman's first three issues (Truman later drew three himself), Morales quickly learned that the rumors about his collaborator's work methods were true. “When I got the package with the first script, I was surprised at how thick it was," Says Morales. “When I opened it, the script was just normal length—but there were a lot of reference materials." And that was a good sign, says Morales. “We both attended the Joe Kubert School of Cartoon Art," he notes. “We were taught to research a project. That’s what separates the men from the boys.” Morales’ own research included “watching Dances With Wolves until my eyes bled. But the plainsmen there were Sioux, the enemy of the Kiowa, so I'm careful about how much I steal from that.” To ease Turok's Valiant-induced stiffness, Truman explained that the warrior had missed his old pupil Andar. No sooner are they reunited in #4 than Andar dies and his grandson. Andy, becomes Turok’s new pupil—one schooled not by the Kiowa “rabbit society” but by the considerably fiercer folks in the American Indian Movement. That group, Truman notes, “is to Native Americans what Black Power was to the African-Americans.” One key early moment in the Turok-Andy relationship came in #8, when Turok gently took back his pistol after Andy “borrowed” it. Turok's caution stood in stark contrast to his early Valiant issues, when he fired off more rounds than words. But then, Truman has a ways to go to make up for glamorizing guns in comics like Grimjack and Scout. “When I was growing up, I would read these comics where Thor would get a building thrown on him," re- members Truman, who enjoyed recreational gun use growing up in West Virginia. "I would say, ‘Hell, why doesn't he just shoot the Wrecker?’ ” But that was then, and Truman has had some second thoughts about guns, violence and comics. In real life, he and his father accidentally killed a fawn’s mother years ago, souring Tim on hunting. In comics, he watched the firearms he helped bring into vogue fall into. as they say, the wrong hands. “Most comics creators have never fired a gun in their lives,” he announces. “Ninety percent of them have never been in a fistfight. That’s the dangerous aspect, ’cause they don't know that this stuff hurts. My son was real keen to get in a fight at school. I said, ‘Ben, if you make that decision, it ain't gonna be fun, buddy.’ He found out that was true. “So, Turok taking Andy's gun away was sort of a commentary on that whole thing. I couldn’t let Andy keep the gun—he’s a teenager, and we have teenage shootings around here all the time.” Classic Turok The idea of a lost Valley, island or even continent still inhabited by prehistoric animals has given us The Lost World. King Kong, The Valley of Gwangi and Countless other films, books and TV shows. In comics, the chief playground for this fantasy was Turok, Son of Stone. Turok and his young charge, Andar, first stumbled into the Lost Valley back in a 1954 anthology, Four Color #596, published by Dell. They quickly got their own title, which ran until 1982; it was published by Western Publishing, and hit its peak in the 1960s under the Gold Key imprint. Several things made Turok special. Like other Gold Key titles. it had painted covers, which—with James Bama’s Doc Savage covers and Frank Frazetta’s work on Conan and Edgar Rice Burroughs paperbacks—featured some of the most evocative fantasy images around. During one of pop culture’s periodic dinosaur crazes. Turok provided a steady supply of the creatures. (Turok and Andar called them “honkers" after the sound they made.) The Lost Valley could always cough up a good twist—a race of giants, an alcove of deadly plants, a swarm of pterodactyls that could pick a Tyrannosaurus rex’s bones bare in seconds. In fact, this must have been the biggest “valley” in New Mexico, harboring as it did several dozen Native American tribes, at least one river and enough dinosaurs for a Ray Harryhausen retrospective. The authors themselves explained that the area was formed by “vast limestone caverns whose roofs fell in, long ago,” creating a hothouse climate “heated by smoldering volcanic fires.” If the science was shaky, the characterization of Turok was rock-solid. “Turok wasn’t a good man Friday to a white character,” says Tim Truman. “That was very unusual in that period. He was a person who stood on his own two feet—it almost didn't matter what race he was.” For young readers. Turok’s search for a way out of the Lost Valley was a quest of mythic proportions, rivaling Number Six’s scramble to escape “the Village” on The Prisoner. No one could foresee the twists this odyssey would take in the 90s, beginning in Magnus #12. Poor Turok: He finally got out of the Lost Valley, but he never made it home. —Darcy Sullivan The Turok turnover—two writers and three artists in the first four issues-—has slowed but not ended with Truman and Morales’ arrival. Issues #10-12 were written by Mike Baron, another Native American buff. Years ago, Baron and Truman brainstormed a character they called War Shaman—the title alone later appeared in Trumaan’s Scout (CS #5). Truman returns to write #13-15 and will serve as the book’s “culture expert” in the future. He has already fielded questions from Tony Bedard, who is writing #16-18. Morales will draw nine issues or so a year, he says, “because that’s about my pace.” He and Truman are also slotted to handle Turok #0, a summer '94 book that will explore Turok‘s background and his relationship with Andar. “His people gave him Andar as a pupil because Turok was such a grumpy SOB,” Truman says. “He was the Son of Stone. His relationship with Andar made him a little more human.” But until then, there's plenty to keep Turok, Dinosaur Hunter from turning into Turok & Andy’s Campfire Bonding. “I wanted to get away from fighting dinosaurs every issue,” says Baron, who has taken Turok to Los Angeles in an effort to stop a rogue who trades in rare animal parts and keeps a bionosaur as a pet. “This guy sells ground-up tiger pizzle to superstitious rich people who think "it makes them more virile,” says Baron.‘ Pizzle is, in case you were wondering, about the last part of your body you might want mashed up into somebody else’s Wheaties. Turok emerges with his pizzle intact, and in #13 Truman will take the reins again, introducing a bionic buccaneer named Captain Red. “Rags just wanted to draw a pirate,” shrugs Truman. Red teams up with two “reject bionosaurs,” also created by the evil Mothergod who once employed Turok. The group's mascot is a human services droid from Magnus’ era named OU82. This motley crew makes its way to the present day, naturally. If you’ve been wondering why all these time-wanderers keep turning up in North America circa right now—instead of ending up in, say, 18th-century France—you’re not alone; Truman has too. “I’ve been trying to establish with [Valiant editor] Kevin VanHook a reason why these characters keep bumping into each other,” he says. “I came up with this system of physics, where the timelines are like a timestream, and the people traveling in time are in bubbles in the timestream. There happens to be a disruption in the wall of the stream. and when the bubbles pass near it, they’re drawn in and end up in our modern day. The way I’m figuring it, people who’ve been through the breach are attracted to each other like magnets. I touch on this in #13-15, and I think Kevin’s going to play with it in Solar.” If he has his way, Truman will bring back the Spider People, favorite characters of his from the old Turok books who reappeared in #7-9. “These primitive tribes, if thrown into the modern era, would be like an indigenous native culture,” Truman says. “After the government rounds them up, what is it going to do with them? Its analogous to the way tribes were rounded up in the 1800s and early 1900s and reindoctrinated. I would come back to them, and show how the state and federal authorities have messed them up.” For a guy who has studied-the injustices visited on ‘Native Americans by white society, Truman has introduced a number of sympathetic white supporting characters. These include cultural anthropologist Regan Howell and rascally scientist Darwin Challenger, who Truman’ says is “probably” related to Professor Challenger from Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World, the literary template for the original Turok. "I don’t like to play with totally good or totally evil characters,” he says. “Adolph Hitler taught that there were totally evil people, and the Nazis were totally good. I can’t believe that Nazi superman ethic. It’s relied on too much in comics. It’s really weird to look at Nazi statuary and see how much it looks like the X~Men.” As that statement suggests, Tim Truman prefers heroes and stories with a more down-to-Earth bent, rather than cosmic slugathons involving idealized figures of Us and Them. As a kid, he says, his favorite comics were Turok, Kona [another Gold Key book} and Sgt. Rock—low tech fare with a man-against-the-odds flavor. This year, he’ll be lending his own talents to some similar projects. If the right contracts exchange hands, Truman will draw The Lone Ranger for Topps from Joe Lansdale's scripts. “What makes a successful tough guy story is a lot of humor," says Truman. “These writers who graduated from high school and lived with their moms in an apartment, they miss that. A lot of tough guy stories today are just so darn grim and self-conscious. Joe's stories have this rip-roaring humor. Probably, if I wrote it,” he adds, noting Tonto’s presence, “I would make it very self-righteous.” Count on another Jonah Hex mini- series too, one that draws on a mixture of Old West history and silver-screen hokum. “I’m doing a singing cowboys story,” Truman explains. “These guys are good old boys who went to lectures Oscar Wilde put on. [In 1882, the flamboyant aesthete and author gave a lecture tour in the U.S., charming everyone from sophisticates to miners.] So they're putting doilies on toilet seats and stuff like that. They decide to do art for art's sake. and many of them are musicians. Hex doesn’t really like the notion of riding across the prairie with seven guys singing in harmony. “Then, they meet this underground civilization. It’s a tribute to those Gene Autry Western films, where when the cowboys aren't singing, they‘re dealing with an underground empire that just happens to be a couple of miles away." Truman‘s heart is closest to a book he's doing for Malibu’s Rock-It line of rock music biographies. It seems musical legend Carlos Santana asked for Truman personally. “Carlos was in a comic book store one day," Truman recounts. “and somebody said, ‘Did you know there’s a comic book character with your name?’ ” That was Scout’s Emanuel Santana. who in fact was named for the guitar player. “Carlos really responded to it,” says Truman. “He’s fond of comics anyway; he learned to read English by reading Spider-Man when he came up from Tijuana.” The respect is mutual. “Carlos was one of my big influences, man. musically and creatively. perhaps even spiritually,” says the axe-playing Truman. The book will be drawn, painted and written. by Truman, based on his interviews with Santana; Tom Yeates will also pencil a few pages, being another big fan of 19605 San Francisco music. “You have this kid who at age 13 was playing strip joints in Tijuana with a rock band." says Truman, de scribing the book, “and in his 40s, he's playing stadiums in Russia and Japan. Carlos and 1 wanted to Show what a poor kid can do if you apply yourself. and make use of your inspirations.” Truman hopes this approach, a departure from the gutter-gossip style writers have tried to foist on Santana in the past will land him the job of collaborator on Santana’s biography. What about more Valiant hooks? Do any of the company’s futuristic heroes appeal to him? “Not really,” Truman admits. “If they could bring back Kona or Mighty Samson, that might tickle my fancy.” So after his busy 1994, a more reasonable bet would be that Truman will bring out a new Scout storyline. With Emanuel Santana dead, his two sons grow up at opposite poles of the Native American spectrum. “The youngest kid. who narrated Scout: War Shaman, becomes the personification of the true, unadulterated Apache, which is what his father wanted to he," says Truman. “The other boy lives in white civilization under a religious man, and so is very indoctrinated. The story is what happens when they meet in the middle.” More Native American stories, on top of Turok and Tonto? Doesn’t Tim Truman worry about getting typecast as "that Indian guy"? Not at all, says the artist—in fact, he sounds a bit pleased with the idea. As he says. “We need more Indian guys.”