#29 of SCALPED came out this week, which is the final part of the “High Lonesome” arc, an arc that was really just a collection of character-driven stand-alone issues that loosely tied together. Up next is “The Gnawing,” which is very much a plot-driven arc. Lots of big happenings in that arc. Some of our various long-running plot threads finally start to come together. Folks die. Relationships change. By the end of “The Gnawing,” a lot of the characters will be in very different places, setting the stage for everything that’s to come in the next couple years of the series. As a sort of palate cleanser between arcs, here are some little-known or never-revealed facts about SCALPED for you to ponder.
–Chief Red Crow was originally called Chief Crow Dog, and before the reservation was the Prairie Rose Rez, it was called Jumping Bull.
–In the original pitch, Dash Bad Horse was not the undercover FBI agent on the rez. He was the same sort of disgruntled rebel-without-a-cause, but he came back to the rez only after his mother’s murder, looking to collect whatever money she’d left him in her will. The undercover fed was a completely different character, and it was editor Will Dennis’ idea to combine the two. I won’t say much about that other character, since I may still bring him into the series, though in a different role.
–Looking back over my original emails with Will from 2004, when we first started bouncing the idea around, our main reference points for how we wanted the book to feel were Michael Mann’s “Crime Story” series and the Phil Joanou film STATE OF GRACE. At the time, I hadn’t yet started watching “The Wire,” which of course turned out to be a major influence on what I wanted to do with SCALPED.
–When I first conceived of SCALPED, it was going to be a relaunch of the old DC western hero Scalphunter. I can’t find the document now, but if I remember correctly, the book would’ve been split between stories set in the Old West, utilizing the original Scalphunter character, and stories set in the present, focusing on Scalphunter’s descendant, who was caught up with a crime boss running a casino on an Indian rez. Not sure how I would’ve ever made that work, but I would still love to write some straight-up western stories set within the world of SCALPED. And I know Guera would love to draw them.
