Super-Chief

1833 - Standing Bear is born of the Shoshone people.

1850 - 17-year-old Standing Bear performs his first vision-quest, hearing the call of the Manitou Stone. He starts to travel the country, looking for what he believes is his path, seeing the treatment of the Nations people.

1855 - 22-year-old Standing Bear finds the Manitou Cave, and pledges his life to fight for the dignity of the Nations. He is given the powers of Saganowahna, which the white men translate to Super-Chief

1861 - 28-year-old Standing Bear appears in several major battles in the American West as the Civil War begins, protecting the Nations people from the ongoing war.

1863 - 30-year-old Standing Bear is unable to stop the Bear River Massacre, witnessing the murder of his own people. He begins openly fighting against the US Army, assisting in the ongoing Apache Wars.

1871 - 37-year-old Standing Bear and Jonah Hex confront each other when Hex takes a bounty on him. After an extended game of cat and mouse, they come to an understanding, and Hex helps him finish a raid on a group of kidnappers.

1878 - 44-year-old Standing Bear allies himself with the Justice Riders to stop Vandal Savage from using native slave labor in his mines.

1886 - 53-year-old Standing Bear has his final confrontation with the US Army, holding off thousands of men as they chased the Apache Raiders following Geronimo. His body was returned to the land of his people, and the Manitou Stone hidden.

1 year ago - Standing Bear's spirit is contacted by Manitou Dawn through a fragment of the Manitou Stone to help Tye Longshadow control his powers.

Super-Chief didn't actually operate during this era of DC's Continuity. The original version of the character was active in the mid to late 1500's, and any other appearances he (or any spin-off versions of the character) might have made were all in modern continuity. We originally followed suit; our original take on Super-Chief was an entirely modern character.

I think this new version speaks for itself, though. By taking the two versions of Super-Chief and moving them to two very distinct parts of history, we get two drastically different characters that I believe build a really amazing legacy, all of which will pay off in the modern day in the person of Tye Longshadow. This feels like we're really earning something special.

Super-Chief's Comic History

After the stories featuring the classic Super-Chief, you don't really see any updates to the character (save for a single completely-out of character appearance as a Superman villain in Adventures of Superman Annual #9 in 1997) until 52 #22 in 2006 by Grant Morrison, where we meet Jon Standing-Bear, a modern-day ex-marine who inherits the mantle of Super-Chief from his grandfather. In a blink-and-you'll-miss-it storyline, he joined a new Justice League in issue #24 and was immediately killed. He was clearly meant to be a cautionary tale, but it was hard not to take notice of the cool design potential in this new modern Super-Chief.

Fast-forward to the modern era, as Grant Morrison created Multiversity, a miniseries mapping their newly created Multiverse. Here, and in several series tying into it from 2015-2017, we see regular references to Earth-18, which features a fantastic new design for the classic Super-Chief.

Our Super-Chief Story

Once we decided we wanted to make both the Flying Stag and Standing Bear characters to extend the idea of Super-Chief into a character legacy, our first instinct was to make Standing Bear a modern-day hero, and Flying Stag part of DC's pantheon of classic western heroes like Bat Lash and Jonah Hex. The problem there, though, was that Flying Stag is actually meant to exist in pre-colonial history, not the 1800's. Also, since we plan to make the new Titan character Tye Longshadow part of the Super-Chief legacy, we don't really need Standing Bear to be a modern day hero... which lead to us exploring the idea of Standing Bear actually being the character that operates in the 1800's.

This, as it turns out, opened up so much for just who this character can be. It was pretty impossible to create a Native American Superhero in that era and have him do anything but openly battle the US Army. The story of this character is so vastly different from the original Super-Chief, but that winds up being a huge benefit, giving us something that fits into our world in a unique way but also connects to real-world history that feels really authentic.

Because we want to connect the characters with the Super-Chief legacy, Standing Bear is going to be the spiritual mentor to young Tye Longshadow, able to guide him from within his vision-quests. The idea that his mentor is someone that openly fought the government to protect his people is going to go miles to make Longshadow a unique character. This is a new part of our timeline that we really enjoyed building.

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