Black Condor
1904 - John Trujillo is born on the Navajo Reservation in Arizona.
1921 - 17-year-old John travels into the ancient Manitou caves with his father and uncles. He finds the Manitou Stone as part of a shamanic vision, which reforges him, becoming a rudimentary elemental of earth & sky. He goes into the wilderness.
1924 - 20-year-old John assumes the mantle of Black Condor, becoming a warden of the earth and a predator of evil.
1928 - 24-year-old John stops cattle baron Jasper Crow, thwarting his constant efforts to take Navajo reservation land.
1931 - 27-year-old John undergoes the trials of Nayenezgani, defeating the Anaye as they returned to the wilderness.
1934 - 30-year-old John protects Navajo territory from the encroachment of the Bureau of Indian Affairs as they attempt to take over tribal herding, and to pressure the tribes to restructure themselves into constitutional governments. He is labeled a 'dangerous agitator' by the FBI.
1945 - 41-year-old John sacrifices himself to save the imprisoned scientists in Vandal Savage's secret laboratories.
Sometimes part of the fun of a character is the strange journey they take over the years. All the Freedom Fighters have undergone essentially the same major beats in their journey to become modern comic characters, but in doing so they all underwent their own evolution, and I feel like Black Condor has gone through some pretty unique ones. Part of that MIGHT be because he's one of the only Freedom Fighters to not come from Police Comics, making him just a slightly left-of-center addition... but in any case I think he's a fun character to examine and that the version of him we've adapted is a very cool addition to out timeline.
Black Condor's Comic HistoryThe original Black Condor first appeared in Crack Comics #1 in 1940. (I know what you're thinking, but the closest slang term in the 40s was 'get cracking'. The 'crack' you're thinking of didn't happen until the 80s). There's actually a real charm to the concept; it's using a very of-its-era artistic style, evoking Edgar Rice Burroughs characters like John Carter or Tarzan, and occupying a similar sort of headspace. John Carter is introduced as a man who is essentially immortal with no childhood memories... It's not an origin you're meant to treat literally, or dwell on for long. Black Condor has a similar vibe; he riffs on Tarzan's origins in that he was orphaned as an infant, only instead of being raised by apes he's raised by condors, and by mimicking his avian brothers he learned how to fly. Not an origin you're meant to think about that hard. He's Richard Grey Jr, although when he is unable to save Senator Thomas Wright after an accident, who happens to look exactly like him, Richard takes over the Senator's Identity. Again... don't think about it. Just go with it.
I'm including all this because the Richard Grey Black Condor, as he appears later, is a pretty oddball, out-of-place character that's easy to dismiss, but I really do GET Golden Age Black Condor. I don't think you could do him now, but I really like the idea of this classic superhero operating solely on vibes. |
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Black Condor was one of the Quality Comics characters brought out of retirement in 1973's Justice League of America #107 as the Freedom Fighters, a new team of heroes operating in Earth X. Of the characters here, I really think Black Condor might have been the most square-peg inclusion; He wasn't a character you could just transpose to a new setting and get the same result. As he moved with the other Freedom Fighters to their own series, and then later appeared in Roy Thomas's All-Star Squadron, I think Black Condor was treated as more of a weird relic of comics' past than a viable character. Still, he was a Freedom Fighter, and therefore remained part of DC's cast of characters.
After the Crisis of Infinite Earths, several members of the Freedom Fighters were reinvented with totally new characters. The new Black Condor was Ryan Kendal, a Native American hero with his own 12-issue 1992 series, with art by the incomparable Rags Morales. He was a pretty cool character; a reluctant hero empowered by a secret cult-like organization, and even got a brief stint on the Justice League. He would eventually join the newly reassembled Freedom Fighters, where he was killed along with the rest of the team in Infinite Crisis in 2006. In the grand scheme of things, He wasn't a long-lasting character, but I happen to really like him. He had a cool 90s edge without being over the top and a great design, and I think that carried over into the new Black Condor who borrowed some of the cooler parts of Ryan. |
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When Justin Grey & Jimmy Palmiotti created a new Freedom Fighters team a few years after Infinite Crisis, the reveal of the new Black Condor, John Trujillo, was held back by a few issues, and it really built him up. When he arrived... a towering, mohawked, warpainted Native American warrior, an elemental of the Earth and Sky... I mean he was very cool. He went on to be one of the most powerful members of the new Freedom Fighters, a team that includes a walking nuclear bomb.
There was an image of this take on Black Condor in one of the series sketchbooks where he was shirtless, which I think would have been cooler (and a bit of an homage to the Black Condor legacy), but otherwise I think this is a character concept and design that really delivers on the Black Condor legacy in a compelling way. Notably, there actually has been one more Black Condor since the introduction of John Trujillo. Like all the Freedom Fighters, a new version of the character was invented for the 2018 series Freedom Fighters, set in the new Earth X of the new Multiverse. As this series leans heavily into the concept of the team being resistance fighters against a victorious Nazi regime, the new Black Condor, Marcus Robbins, is simply a man from an enslaved city who built a winged flight suit and used it to escape. It's a tidy origin for a great character in a great series that really needs to remain self-contained, but it is absolutely one I recommend you check out. |
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Our Black Condor StoryWe're going to keep Black Condor as a part of the World War II era Freedom Fighters, but we're going to use the modern character. Honestly, the idea of this giant Earth & Sky powered shamanic warrior smashing Nazis feels like a premise I would watch a full HBO series about. We've tied his empowerment to a legacy of other Native American heroes through the Manitou Stone, including Manitou Raven and Manitou Dawn, Saganowahna, Super Chief... and the future hero Longshadow. This just feels like it connects him to the story we're telling in a really satisfying way. We're also peppering in just a little bit of Navajo folklore into his timeline.
We did actually consider possible creating a modern version of Black Condor using Ryan Kendall, but I think the main thing we really like about Ryan is his Rags Morales design, and a lot of those elements can be achieved with John; especially if he's actually shirtless in his normal costume... maybe even with a condor talisman on his bare chest. I should probably include here; I'm aware that its sometimes a little problematic to use actual real-life religions as elements in fantastical storytelling. The Navajo are a real-life people who have an amazing belief system that involves spirituality and shamanism, as well as some really fantastic parables that tell stories of their nation and people, and I was really grateful for this chance to learn a little bit more about it. |
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