Comanche Moon


By Jack Jackson (Rip Off Press Inc./Last Gasp)
ISBN: 0-89620-079-5

One of post war America’s earliest graphic novels, Comanche Moon was originally published during the 1970s as interlinked comicbooks White Comanche, Red Raider and Blood on the Moon. The forward-looking publishers were Last Gasp; a regular packager of work by underground cartoonists such as Jackson. This reworked and augmented edition appeared in 1979. So far as I know it’s not currently in print, although it’s another masterful graphic epic which really should be – even if only as a digital edition….

The collection details the astounding story of Cynthia Ann Parker and her son Quanah and the course of their lives among Texas Comanches and her own – white European – people. It all begins whilst the Parkers are eking out a living on the Southern Plains of Texas in 1836, when their homestead is attacked by a Comanche raiding party. Little Cynthia Ann and her younger brother are carried off and, separated from him, she is raised as a squaw, eventually marrying a sub-chief and birthing a son.

The folksy, unvarnished matter-of-fact story-telling reinforces the powerful truth of this documentary of the final downfall of the Plains Indians under the relentless expansionist pressure of the new Americans.

Quanah grew to be the last chief of the Comanches and as the old ways died he was responsible for winning all the meagre concessions his people managed to gain from the unstoppable white men. Quanah Parker was a Judge, a Sheriff, a huckster for Teddy Roosevelt and ultimately died a loved and respected political figure among both the Comanches and the settlers.

Tragically, my dry précis does nothing to capture the mesmerising skill of Jackson as he makes these little moments of history come alive. Comanche Moon reads as easily as the best type of fiction but never strays from the heartbreaking truth that underpins it and it is all the more potent for that.

Jack Jackson’s work is powerful, charming, thoroughly authentic, astoundingly well-researched and totally captivating. If only all history books could be his good. If only all comics this good were accessible to all…
© 1979 Jack Jackson. All rights reserved.