Apache Kid Primer
Series Overview
Apache Kid was a series that showcase the character the Apache Kid. The series replaced Reno Browne, Hollywood’s Greatest Cowgirl with issue #53. Although it started with numbering borrowed from another series, the powers that be decided to reboot the number so the second issue is issue #2. Why? I have no idea. Maybe the publisher was high on printers ink. Anyway, the series was primarily Apache Kid stories with one or two one-off western tales.
Questionable Continuity
The Apache Kid series has a lot of issues that are problematic by the standards of today, particularly when it comes to the depiction of Native Americans. The Apache Kid character really crosses some lines in terms of cultural appropriate. The fact that he stains his skin to pose as a Native American is particularly offensive.
In the early 2000s, Marvel revived a lot of their old western heroes and revamped their backstories to make them more historically accurate and to get away from the campy 50s depiction of westerns that a lot of these stories were framed with. The series Apache Skies rewrote the Apache Kid’s history. Instead of being a white kid adopted by Apaches, he was of mixed race having had a white father and an Apache mother. This throws a lot of these older Apache Kid stories into question. The follow up series Blaze of Glory gives an “in universe” explanation that early adventures of Marvel’s western heroes (the items published in the 40s and 50s) were adaptation of dime store novels written about these characters. These Dime Novels were either changed elements and/or inaccuracies. So the general details likely happened, the “real” details are likely much different.
Index Scope
No on-off western stories are present in this index. In addition issues #11 and 12 were entirely reprints and so they have been skipped.
