Native American Headdress Covers Pt. 1

Recently, Pharrell Williams was on the receiving end of criticism for posing on the cover of Elle magazine wearing a headdress. The thing is, he isn't the first person to misappropriate a headdress. It has been going on in the funnybook world for decades.

Let's start with Green Arrow from the cover of Green Lantern/Green Arrow #79 (September, 1970). Oliver Queen has always been one to stand up for civil rights and has never shied away from controversy, and yet here he is throwing political correctness to the wind and donning a headdress. Let's not even get into Hal's crucifixion here as we can only deal with one issue at a time.

The Three Stooges were never know for being culturally sensitive, so I knew I'd find a cover like the one to The Three Stooges #20 (1962) before I even began my search. The synopsis on the GCD states that "Disguised as Indians, blundering along, they scare off cattle thieves with "magic" and get a peace treaty signed". Not exactly Dances With Wolves.

Holy inappropriateness Batman! With all of the silly covers DC/National was putting out in the 50s, you just had to know that Batman would be sporting a headdress in at least one of them, and here he is on the cover to Batman #86 (September, 1954). What makes this one worse is that the dynamic duo step into the shows of two native heroes known as  'Man-of-the-Bats' and Robin is known as 'Little Raven'. If you look very closely in one panel of Crisis On Infinite Earths, you'll see that they don't survive. I kid. For the record, Superman also had a very similar cover.

Lucy, you have some explaining to do (sorry, if I typed in phonetically a la Ricky, I'd be just as bad). In particular, what the story behind the pink feathers in your headdress on the cover to The Lucy Show #3 (December, 1963). Like the Stooges, I don't expect much in the way of politically correct humour from Ms. Ball. I do wonder, though, why they chose that rather sultry black and white photo for the top right corner?

More to come later in the week, including headdresses on a pig and a dog!