Jack
Jackson, fiftysomething, wears glasses, has white hair and a white mustache and a moon tan. As I pull up
to the curb and park behind a faded blue VW Beetle with an Oat Willie’s “Onward
Through The Fog” bumper sticker, Jackson comes out on the porch to holler my
name. He’s bright-eyed and friendly. It’s early in the day for a man who gets
up in the afternoon, hangs out with his son, Sam, when he gets home from
school, then sits down at his drafting table in a nook just off the kitchen and
works all night.
Jackson, better known to some by the pen name of Jaxon, should be a household
name in Austin. In the early Sixties he was a member of that iconoclastic cadre
of artists which included Gilbert Shelton, who worked at the University of
Texas humor magazine, Texas Ranger. In 1964 Jackson published what was
probably the very first underground comic, God Nose, then headed for San
Francisco, where he, along with Shelton and numerous other Austin expatriates,
became the founding fathers of the underground comic revolution. Returning to
Austin in the 1970s, Jaxon also produced art for the Armadillo World
Headquarters and later was one of the first illustrators for The Austin
Chronicle.
Even before returning to Texas, Jackson had begun turning his talents and his
inquiring mind to writing the history of his native state — with a difference.
Jackson applied the same spirit of rebellion and freedom that had energized his
previous work to telling the untold, true sagas of Texas historical figures
Quanah Parker, the last chief of the Comanches (Comanche Moon), a
Mexican-American hero of the Texas revolution named Juan N. Seguin (Los
Tejanos), and other stories with common threads: historically important
figures whom conventional histories had marginalized or conveniently forgotten.
Like American pulp fiction, blues, and jazz, comic books are taken a lot more
seriously in Europe than in the United States. And that’s a shame, because
people in this country, especially, need to read and appreciate Jackson’s
history comics. In his work, Jackson borrows and expands upon some techniques
originally pioneered in Texas History Movies (the idiosyncratic and
clever Texas history books in comic strip form that originated in the 1920s),
such as using slang dialogue or humorous thought-balloons to humanize
historical figures. His artwork is stunning, ranging from voluptuous renditions
of Cynthia Parker (the white captive of the Comanches who became the mother of
chief Quanah Parker) to extra-wide panoramic landscapes that call to mind John
Ford westerns.
We aren’t talking about mere illustrated versions of the same old story. For
example, Jackson’s Comanche Moon was, in all likelihood, the very first
time the story of Quanah Parker — a character in the same league as Teddy
Roosevelt or George Washington — had been told from the Indian point of view.
And try looking in your high school history books for the strange and bizarre
saga of the naked march and massacre of the Spaniards at the hands of the
cannibalistic Karankawa tribe on the Gulf Coast (God’s Bosom). And if
Newsweek‘s photos of the My Lai massacre brought home the gobbets and
gristle of war for you, check out Jackson’s story of the Sand Creek Massacre
(Nits Make Lice). and then we’ll have a little chat about the glories of
Manifest Destiny.
Above and beyond all that, there’s the fact that Jackson’s history comics are
actually only a small sampling of his extremely prodigious output. He’s written
books on historical cartography (Flags Along the Coast). the history of
Spanish ranching in Texas (Los Mestenos). and obscure Texas pathfinders
and explorers (Philip Nolan and Texas), to mention just a few. His works
are found in public schools and libraries and they’re published by prestigious
university presses, The Book Club of Texas, and the Texas State Historical
Association — the organization that made him a Lifetime Fellow in 1991. So
Jackson has not only helped make comics more respectable, he’s earned quite a
bit of respect as an independent, self-taught history scholar.
Jack Jackson grew up in South Texas, picking up arrowheads, wondering what
happened to the Comanches and Tonkawas and Apaches, wondering what their lives
were really like — questions that weren’t really answered in his history books
in school. For the past 25-odd years, Jackson has been hard at work answering
those questions. His passion for his work jumps off the page — whether it’s a
history comic or a treatise on archaic maps — and it sparkles in his eyes as
we sit at his drafting table eating Oreos and talking about history, his work,
and other things on a recent rainy night.
Austin Chronicle: Let’s start with the history of history comics. The way I understand it, it
began with Texas History Movies back in the Twenties, then the history
comics of Classics Illustrated and E.C. comics, and then the underground comics
of the Sixties set the stage for your history comics. Oh, and I forgot to
mention MAD Magazine.
Jack Jackson: Right, that’s it, that’s the link-up right there. Harvey
Kurtzman, who was doing war books with EC Comics, was doing a lot of fairly
authentic history, and a lot of great artists were illustrating these things
and I think several of the books later on, after Two-Fisted Tales and
the other books that were subsequently banned by the Comics Code, kind of dealt
with history themes, too. And the freedom of the underground was that you could
do anything you wanted to do, to tell a story any way you want to tell it. But
once you get bored with doing the clean-up crew, all the rank kind of stuff
with guts hanging out and all this, you think, Jeez, am I gonna keep repeating
these things over and over or am I going to try and do something half-way
interesting?
Before I left San Francisco in the Seventies I was commissioned to do this
Indian chiefs coloring book. The deal fell through but it was eventually
published as Long Shadows. One of the chiefs was Quanah Parker of the
Comanches and another was Satanta of the Kiowas, for example. And in the course
of doing the research I thought, God, these guys are really interesting
stories. So even before coming back to Texas, while I was still in California,
Texas history started appealing to me.
So I got more into history and started researching the Quanah Parker thing and
I did it in a series of regular comics, which were published in a single book
in 1979 as Comanche Moon. Before I knew it I was deep into Texas
history.
AC: A similar thing happened to me when I lived in Los Angeles for seven
years. I’d always been interested in Texas history, but at some point, it
became more than just a casual interest, it became a real obsession. Something
about having to go away before you can come back…
JJ: Maybe it’s nostalgia, you think? Because I missed Texas, even though
I came back a couple of times a year for business. I really got to missing it
and wasn’t really aware when I was here of the full spectrum of interesting
things that have gone on. And I was always really drawn to Indians.
The whole hippie trip out there [in San Francisco] — the American Indian was
a big motif. All the light shows at the ballrooms and stuff, were using imagery
from American Indians, doing the light shows and all, the swirling colors all
around some somber portrait of an American Indian. It figured real highly into
that whole hippie thing. A lot of people even compared the Ghost Dance religion
to the hippie phenomenon.
AC: Oh really? I hadn’t heard that.
JJ: (laughs) You haven’t? Yeah, the hippie phenomenon was the Ghost
Dance of our culture trying to recapture some of the things of value before
plastic took over society. Anyway, it was a major motif. And then Bury My
Heart At Wounded Knee came out, and that was a real blockbuster, boom. It
really got to me, and I did a strip called Nits Make Lice which was
about the Sand Creek Massacre, and that really blew a lot of minds.
The thing is, it’s such a depressing story. The object became to find
something a little more gratifying and uplifting. And Quanah Parker’s story, I
think, fit the bill very nicely. Because try as hard as I could, I could not
find where he had sold out, or really done something at the expense of his
people.
AC: He did cut deals, though.
JJ: Yeah, sure he did, that was the only way they could survive. And I
can’t say how much money he made in some of those deals was turned over to the
tribe, as opposed to what went in Quanah’s pocket. But I think his role was
really influential in a difficult transition period from wild life to
reservation life.
AC: So it all goes back to Nits Make Lice, which was a real watershed
for you.
JJ: Yeah, basically I was in a position to do what Harvey Kurzmann did
with the E.C. war books, telling true stories. Except now, with the freedom
that came from the underground, you could do it with no holds barred. You got a
massacre scene, hey, you’re free to show it. You know, all the real violent
stuff, the racism that went on, how the West was won, all of a sudden you’re
free to deal with these themes. Whereas all these other people, back in the
Fifties, oh no, they wouldn’t suggest it, even.
For example, with Geronimo, they didn’t show you how Geronimo and his people
were shipped off to jail in Florida. The worst possible place they could have
been sent from the desert, dying of fevers and stuff. They just didn’t go into
any of the gruesome details.
AC: What about Juan Seguin? How did you become attracted to his story?
JJ: Well, I grew up in Stockdale, which is below the town of Seguin, and
we went to Seguin because it had the only swimming pool in that part of the
country. People said, Oh yeah, it was named for Juan Seguin. Gee, that’s great,
I thought, let’s find out what happened to this guy. Then, oh God, you find
out, here’s the guy who fought for Texas independence and then got shat upon,
so to speak. When the fighting was done, he and all his friends and all the
others who fought, became the enemy, just because they were Mexicans by birth.
Everything was forgotten. Basically, people were trying to get their land.
AC: But wasn’t there a series of specific incidents that precipitated Juan’s
downfall?
JJ: What was happening was the same as in Santa Fe. You had a Tejano political
rule, or hierarchy, from the beginning. Then you had the prosperous Anglos
coming down, and taking over, after the Revolution. And the first thing they
wanted was all these juicy tracts of land. Juan found himself in the position
of being the defender. He had to go down and say, No, you can’t take this guy’s
property, over my dead body. So he had to go. A spokesman like that, especially
with a record for fighting, a military man, a ranking officer in the Army of
the Republic, then he became a Senator…
So they really had to get rid of him, in order for the chicanery to go on down
there. So when he felt that his position was simply untenable, then he joined
the Mexican Army. So he was in a double bind. He’d been branded as a traitor
just a few years earlier, for siding with the Anglos in the Revolution, now all
of a sudden he goes down there and says, Hey, I can’t handle it, they’re
robbing us blind. So he’s in a double bind, now he’s a traitor to the Anglos,
too. So he had what you call your basic tragic life.
AC: But an interesting one.
JJ: Oh, yeah. In fact, during Reconstruction, he was an acting county
judge for awhile, at the same time he held a commission in the Mexican Army!
The reason is because that county was so deeply Southern that nobody qualified
to be a politico on the county level except somebody like a Mexican who hadn’t
fought in the Confederacy. The Reconstruction forces came down and said, You’ll
do for the time being. It’s fascinating stuff.
AC: I like the way you write about the notorious Mexican Robin Hood, Juan
Cortina, in Los Tejanos. He gave the Texas Rangers a lot of work to do.
He was kind of like our Noriega of the time.
JJ: Oh, yeah, exactly, he was the number one bad guy for awhile. And any
kind of violence against Tejanos in South Texas was justified in the wake of
his raids on the border. You could claim, Hey, this guy was one of Cortina’s
bandidos, and so you could simply run these people off their land and claim it
for yourself.
AC: Seems like you’re really attracted to ambiguous areas in Texas’
past, whether it’s cartography, feuds, racial conflicts… Is that a conscious
effort or what?
JJ: I don’t go looking for these things, but whenever you examine
certain events and you know something strange has gone on, and you don’t quite
know what, then there comes that urge to know. So those ambiguous periods are
the most fascinating. They really are. Because the answer is there, you’ve just
gotta look hard and find it.
Jackson is currently working on a Texas history comic called The Lost Cause, to be published
by Kitchen Sink next year. It focuses on the Reconstruction period in Texas —
a period that was racked by violence, repression, vigilantism, and the revival
of old feuds that had been temporarily quieted during the Civil War. John
Wesley Hardin, a product of those times and one of the killingest folk
characters ever spawned by Texas, is also the central figure in The Lost
Cause.
The problem with writing about Hardin is that he comes with a lot of baggage.
During his lifetime, and even in some pockets of Texas to this day, he was/is
seen as a victim of Carpetbagger oppression. Just last summer, I attended a
performance of a play about Hardin’s life in Trinity City, and there I heard
several different people proudly and loudly proclaim, “Hardin never killed a
man that didn’t need killin’.” As far as I could tell, none of the descendants
of the more than forty victims of Hardin’s violence were in attendance to give
an opposing point of view.
It’s not just a coincidence that most of Hardin’s contemporary supporters had
less than enlightened attitudes about equality of the races; on the other hand,
that’s only part of the story. Jackson hopes to tell the whole story in Lost
Cause, including Hardin’s role as a participant in the bloody Sutton-Taylor
feud, and the way the sweeping changes of Reconstruction affected the lives of
Texans of all colors.
It isn’t hard to steer the conversation around to Hardin. Part of the reason
is my own interest and research. Another is that Jackson is clearly worried
about how the new book will be received.
AC: Can you imagine an African-American writing a book about Hardin?
JJ: Yeah, I mean, I can understand why a black person would want to understand
John Wesley Hardin because so much of his violence was directed against blacks.
Then there’s our friend in Chicago, Dr. Richard Marohn, who’s a psychiatrist,
who wants to address it from the… what is it? Narcissistic…
AC: Narcissistic behavior disorder.
JJ: Yeah, something like that, the violent youth, the kid who never
grows up, who keeps directing his violence toward some acceptable target, as it
were. Although, I think, in the long run, Hardin killed more whites than he did
blacks and Mexicans.
AC: Yeah, he did. I did an inventory once.
JJ: But still, that was the mentality at the time, and people don’t want
to acknowledge it now. That it was considered no great crime to shoot Indians,
Mexicans, and black people. They just weren’t considered fully human, or
something, in that white philosophical range.
Imagine yourself in an era where some guy comes home laughing because he’s
blown away some black guy who had the nerve to order a drink at the same bar he
was standing at. And yet this went on time after time.
But people don’t want to go back in the time machine and relate to that kind
of mentality. And that’s understandable. But I think that when you do a book
like this Hardin book you almost have to, you have to try to see the world as
they saw it.
AC: It’s not a pretty sight.
JJ: Though all these historian types seem to agree that Hardin was a man
of high principles, and the courage to back them up. Now how do you jibe that
with this murderous record he had, blowing people away for small offenses? I
mean, it just doesn’t seem to stand up.
AC: I don’t know that I buy it. I mean, if he only killed people who needed
killing, it sure seems like he had awfully strange luck, always landing in the
right place at the right time to kill someone who needed killing.
JJ: (laughs) Yeah, a lot of ’em. I mean if you applied his same rules
today, you’d be blowing away people who cut in front of you in traffic. If you
apply his code, as it were, to modern-day situations, people would be shooting
each other all the time. And maybe to a certain extent that was more
permissible back in Texas in the 1870s. But even so, you have a hard time
justifying that behavior, or even making it appear sympathetic. I mean, in my
other books, Juan Seguin comes off as more or less heroic, as does Quanah
Parker.
Well, it’s a lot harder to make John Wesley Hardin look heroic, even though
you’re trying to tell the story walking in his boots, looking through his eyes.
It becomes a lot more difficult, and also more controversial. Because when he’s
blowing people away for whatever reason, then the reader will say, Does Jackson
support this? Is he getting a chuckle out of this? Does he expect us to laugh
because this happened? Then all of a sudden you put yourself on the line as an
artist where you’re asking the audience to look at this era through the eyes of
someone like this who’s clearly a bad man.
The book is called The Lost Cause, but when you usually hear those
words, you’re talking about the war, but in this case, I’m talking about the
way people thought — their lifestyle, their ideas about who was going to run
the show. And in that sense, Hardin is on the wrong side. So he’s fighting for
a lost cause.
AC: There are definitely some similarities in the sentiments of the modern
right-wing extremist anti-federal-government crowd and the people we’re talking
about in your book. Do you think, for example, the extremist property rights
folks might relate to Lost Cause?
JJ: Well, I was kidding Dennis Kitchen, the publisher, the other day. I was
saying that every militia and gun nut in the country’s gonna want three or four
copies of this book, because Hardin saw himself as fighting against all odds,
as it were, to maintain the prerogatives that white people had always had
before slaves were freed and the political control was topsy-turvy.
AC: I read somewhere where you said you don’t consider your work to be
political.
JJ: I don’t consider myself political in terms of climbing into the
arena of modern-day politics, and doing like (Austin American-Statesman
cartoonist) Ben Sargeant, a here-and-now type thing. I think people should
take the long view, and this is why these early periods of Texas history are so
interesting — you can look back and you can find parallels in almost any
earlier time period for stuff that’s going on now. So, knowing history helps
you take the long view, and break these modern things down into how it all fits
and why it happens.
AC: I also read somewhere that you don’t care to be called a revisionist
historian.
JJ: It’s almost like a slur, it’s like you’re tampering with something
that ought to be left alone. My view is, if they’d have told it right the first
time, if they’d told it truthfully, you wouldn’t have to revise it.
It probably goes without saying that Jackson’s history comics, with their hard-riding heroes, shapely
women, and hard-boiled action, are easily his most accessible work. But I find
his non-comic books on such subjects as eighteenth century Spanish ranching,
obscure pathfinders, and Texas rivers just as interesting. His books on
historical cartography are also strangely appealing. As I suspected, Jackson’s
interest in historical maps was sparked by his admiration of them simply from
an artistic standpoint. But his own interest quickly becomes contagious, as he
communicates his own fascination with the reader by illuminating the human
drama and epic adventure that these archaic images symbolize.
AC: You really have a gift for making this material interesting and
engaging.
JJ: Well, historical cartography has always been considered elitist and very
pedantic. It’s totally outside of any mainstream interest. You don’t figure
you’re going to sell more than a couple hundred books, no matter how
beautifully they’re done. There’s just not that big of an interest for maps. So
what do you try to do to combat that? You set out to enliven the story and to
do just the opposite of what most map studies do.
My favorite saying about this is “Maps are like windows to the past.” They’re
visual documents. You can see on that map where these people’s heads were at,
what they were thinking about. Oops, here’s a reference to gold mines, silver
mines, abundant pastures, droves of wild cattle, all the types of things that
people were after. Then, at the end of the seventeenth century, you start
seeing on their maps, “All this coast is inhabited by fierce cannibals.”
(laughs) Some guys had a shipwreck there and there was maybe only one survivor
out of 35 or 40 people that fell into the hands of the Karankawas or whatever.
So they’re really fascinating documents, and taken one at a time, they’re like
a joke. People laugh at them and say, Look at how stupid our ancestors were.
But when you look at all these maps sequentially, step by step, and each
increase in knowledge, they built upon that. And this is what a map is. It’s
nothing but an accumulation of knowledge, everything that went before. And I
don’t care if it’s the USGS map that we go down to Miller Blueprint and buy
today, it’s the state of the art thing, they all started out that way. And so
it becomes a great, entertaining bit of detective work to find all the pieces
of the puzzle, and linking them together.
We’ve talked for over three and a half hours, and we’ve only talked about a fraction of his work. Talking
about Hardin all night would have been easy. But talking about maps is probably
more revealing about what drives Jackson — the illustrator, the writer, the
history explorer — to do the things he does.
Jack Jackson today is clearly the same boy who grew up picking up arrowheads,
daydreaming and wondering just what happened in Texas’ oftentimes obscured and
distorted history, then blazing his own trail, opening new windows on the past,
by probing the shadows and secrets of maps, trails, lives — whatever
particular puzzle he happens to be interested in at the time.
Someday, say a hundred years from now, other historians will be trying to put
together the puzzles of history — including our present, and the history that
we’ve assembled from the puzzles left by our forebears. And I wonder what those
future custodians of the past will say when they come across things like Los
Tejanos, Comanche Moon and Nits Make Lice — especially when they
compare them to the shallow and shadowy versions of the historical record that
preceded them. I have a feeling that Jackson’s passion and commitment to tell
the story of Texas in bold, dark strokes will burn just as brightly over the
gulf of years as it does today. n Austin native Jesse Sublett’s most recent mystery novel is Boiled In Concrete.
He also writes for film and television.
This article appears in November 15 • 1996 and November 15 • 1996 (Cover).