Saganowahna
1525 - Flying Stag is born to the Wolf Clan of the Iroquois Nations.
1542 - 17-year-old Flying Stag exhibits great bravery by tracking and trapping a mountain lion, and becomes a warrior and hunter of the Wolf Clan.
1547 - 22-year-old Flying Stag Wins the Wolf Clan's games, first catching the eye of White Fawn, the daughter of the Medicine Man.
1556 - 31-year-old Flying Stag is chosen to compete to become the Royaneh, the Supreme Chief of the Iroquois Nation. He is caught in a trap laid by warriors intent to lead the Iroquois on the warpath. Intent on saving the Nations, he beseeches the Manitou Spirit, offering to relinquish all personal honor. He is empowered by the Manitou Stone, constructing a buffalo mask to disguise himself, competing under the name Saganowahna, which roughly translates to 'Super-Chief". He wins the role of Royaneh and devotes himself to protecting the people of the Nations, but loses all favor with the Wolf Clan as Flying Stag because he didn't compete, including the hand of White Fawn.
1562 - 37-year-old Flying Stag confronts the Black Dog Clan, who have found hidden medicines that allow them to grow to twice their size.
1567 - 42-year-old Flying Stag saves the Iroquois people from an alien invasion, strengthening the bonds of the Nations. White Fawn discovers his identity, choosing never to marry but to keep his secret.
1595 - 70-year-old Flying Stag, aware that his life is ending, chooses to walk across the Nations as Saganowahna one final time. He finds the lost caves of Manitou Raven, returning the Manitou Stone to it's seat of power, and returns to the Wolf Clan, dieing in the arms of White Fawn.
Originally, we used a modern-day version of Super-Chief in our timeline, but over time it became clear that we were missing out on the opportunity to craft a long, historic legacy in our timeline that stretched back along our history in a way that truly made our timeline come alive. On the surface, Super-Chief seems like he might be a funny character, but within the world of comics he can represent something really special
Flying Stag's Comic HistoryIn the mid-fifties, the comic-book superhero began to return to popularity and dominate the industry. The western had once loomed over pop culture in a way that, for a modern reader, is really only analogous to modern-day superheroes, but as the decade went on you started to see something of a passing of the torch. In the last three issues of All-Star Western, which ran from 1951-1961, Gardner Fox & Carmine Infantino, who were themselves responsible for a lot of the superhero stories of the era, created Super-Chief, a character that managed to draw from both storytelling styles.
His story followed the classic superhero beats; but they were set in pre-colonial American, and built around the history and culture of the Iroquois people. These old western comics were always meant to be fantastic-but-at-least-passingly-accurate versions of the history of the west. While the comic's rendition of the culture of the Iroquois was pretty anglicized it still represented a pretty bold feat of representation for the era, and for a culture that is criminally under-represented. Super-Chief really only appeared in those three issues, Although he (along with dozens of other historic characters) showed up in modern times in tie-in issues to the Crisis of Infinite Earths in the mid eighties. |
Our Flying Stag StorySuper-Chief DID appear in later stories, but in other incarnations. We're going to be mixing up some of those later incarnations in an effort to build out a longer Super-Chief legacy that connects right to the modern day, but that's not what this particular page is about. This is about Flying Stag, the original Super-Chief (or Saganowahna, in his native language). We debated if we wanted to actually dig this deep into such an obscure character, but ultimately he just works so incredibly well to expand the overall mythology of our DC Timeline. The notion that there was an honest-to-god superhero that existed all the way back in pre-colonial America is just SUCH a good idea.
We've taken the three original comic stories that featured Super Chief and extended them across his time as the Royaneh of the Iroquois, giving him specific fantastic adventures that serve as the major events of his life. Part of his story was always that he had to hide his identity and therefore basically sacrifice having any legacy of his own, and that feels like such a great, unique take on the idea of a hidden heroic identity. We added a definitive end to his story as he returns his powers at the end of his life, making the tale of Flying Stag and Saganowahna feel complete in a way comic book characters don't usually get to achieve. |