River City History: Duel with the Red Hawk

With speed and cunning on her side, Tomboy tracked down the Crime Crusader and Gail Porter just minutes ahead of her own father’s hit squad. Some accounts make out Charles Jackson to be a reluctant hitman at best and credit this with his daughter’s ability to get ahead of him. But Janie Jackson’s career in River City for decades after her career as Tomboy might mark a different story. Jackson never revealed the extent of her father’s association with the Red Hawk Gang, nor did she ever reveal the incriminating elements of her father’s activities for the Red Hawk.

With Tomboy’s warnings, the Crime Crusader and Gail were able to outrun the police hit squad without a gunfight. Though Jones was reluctant to trust a young girl, he knew Tomboy also offered him a chance to finally set a trap for the Red Hawk. They set out to lure the Red Hawk’s men into a false feint. Tomboy dressed in a wig, a dress and an over-sized pair of shoes to trick the gangs into thinking they were trailing Gail Porter.

At the same time, Jones and Porter used Tomboy’s knowledge of the Red Hawk’s whereabouts to confront the gang boss. No one exactly knows what happened for certain in the Red Hawk’s penthouse apartment. Porter’s news story says both men took gunshot wounds from one another, but the fight ultimately turned in Red Hawk’s favor as they both struggled to overcome the other. In the end, the Crusader perhaps only saw one way to beat the warrior known as Red Hawk. Both men tumbled from the twentieth story of the building and plummeted to an ignominious death.

River City History: Tomboy

Her name was Janie Jackson. Her father was a police lieutenant, Charles Jackson. Unbeknownst to his eleven year old daughter, Charles Jackson was on the take of the Red Hawk and his gang. An adventurous young girl, Janie liked to show up her brother Bill, but because she had to remain demure and proper publicly, she would often perform her adventures on the sly.

One night, she followed her father into a nightclub. She thought she would watch a raid by the River City police on the criminal enterprise. Instead she stumble into the middle of a meeting between her father and the Red Hawk. The Red Hawk had some kind of power over her father, that much was clear. Janie wasn’t happy with that realization, but she was even less happy with the next. The Red Hawk ordered Charles Jackson to hunt down a woman named Gail Porter and kill her.

Janie knew she could not just stand aside and let her father become a murderer. So she set out to do the only thing her young mind allowed her to do: she would become a costumed vigilante. Sewing a makeshift costume, she used her acrobatic abilities to become the heroic Tomboy. Years of trailing her father gave her detective skills she hadn’t even known she had. She used them to start tracking Gail Porter herself… and that path took her straight to the Crime Crusader.

River City History: Gail Porter

Gail Porter first rose to fame as a reporter during World War II. With much of the male staff of the paper gone to war, the Daily Star desperately needed new staff. At the age of seventeen, Gail took up her family’s camera and started a career of investigating some of River City’s toughest criminals. Being young and beautiful, she often could use her looks to get into situations others might not. The rest of the time, she mustered her never-ending fearless streak to work her way into even the hairiest situations.

After the war, she faced greater and greater competition from the returning workforce. Despite years of critical success at the Star that continued even into the end of the decade, the boy’s club at the newspaper ultimately worked against her. By 1950, she was back working at the smaller much lower profile Daily Chronicle. While at the Chronicle, she learned of the Red Hawk and his burgeoning criminal enterprise.

Against the orders of her editor in chief Glen Grant, she went into the Red Hawk’s many clubs and hangouts. Hiding her past as a reporter, she fell in with the girls of Red Hawk’s most trusted hitmen. Ultimately she dug up enough dirt to put most of Red Hawk’s empire away for a very long time, but not without exposing her identity to the criminals.

Forced into hiding, Gail Porter knew she would need help if she hoped to escape death at the hands of the Red Hawk and bring his gang to justice. Jonathan Jones became her saving grace. The drunken P.I. was a shadow of his former self, but when he stumbled upon an assassination attempt on Porter, he quickly found his old grace in combat. Seconds after meeting Porter, three men were dead, all at the hands of the Crime Crusader.

Jones found himself on the run with Porter. He initially tried to leave the city with her, but found that every attempt to leave met with more death. Police, traffic workers, firefighters and paramedics were all under the Red Hawk’s purview. Anywhere he turned, Jones risked his own death. Up against a villain with as firm a hold on the city as any of the monsters that tried to rule it in the past, the Crime Crusader found himself running out of options.

With some reluctance, Jones informed Gail they only had option left: they would have to take on the Red Hawk head-on. And the source of their entry into the Red Hawk’s world would be a twelve year old girl.

River City History: The Red Hawk takes control!

When he returned to the United States, his anger brought him easily under the sway of “Duke” Angelosetti. His services quickly made him a favorite of the Duke, but Redhawk had far more aspirations than his boss could imagine. As he consolidated power under the Duke, he also taught everyone to fear him specifically. Redhawk’s cunning mind knew this meant that he was the true power behind the Duke’s rise.

The Duke died in 1949 of an apparent heart attack. The crime boss was only forty-three, but weighed nearly four hundred pounds. Because of these facts, it is still hard to determine whether his death was truly natural or the result of poisoning. Whatever the case, his death left a void in the city’s underworld which Redhawk quickly stepped in to fill.

Whether or not, Redhawk actually wanted the position as crime boss of the city is still a mystery, but he quickly took to the role far better than even his surrogate father. He consolidated control over the gangs and formed a hierarchy that would allow the various gangs to rule over the vices of the city while also controlling much of the police force. Under his sway, money rolled in through businesses both legitimate and illegal, making hundreds of former legmen very rich.

River City History: The Red Hawk

With Yankee Doodle Jones removed from power over the city, the last few months of World War II were not good ones for the city’s leaders. The citizens of River City were none too happy about the mayor and city council giving in to the power-mad ex-hero’s demands. With so much animosity in the air and the disappearance of the city’s heroes, organized crime realized they could make major in-roads into the city. Ultimately they would all fall under the control of one man.

Jacob Redhawk Moore grew up among the Native Americans of South Dakota. Though she was white, his mother married a full blooded Sioux. A mixed breed boy not accepted by either group, he grew up on the reservation where he took to many outdoor activities. An expert hunter by his teens, he moved from his childhood home at eighteen. With limited calling for his skills during the Depression, he fell into petty crime. But his skills quickly came to the attention of one of River City’s crime bosses, Frederico “The Duke” Angelosetti.

The Duke was a childless but cunning leader. While many bosses fell to the city’s heroes, The Duke kept his profile low enough not to be noticed. As other criminals in the area were arrested and killed, he slowly moved into their territories. Jacob became his chief agent in his forays into other territories. He set out to convince the former lieutenants to come to work for the Duke. Wearing a mockup of Indian garments from movies, he used his own infamy to bring fear to his foes. If someone refused his offer, he killed those who stood in the Duke’s way.

Jacob Redhawk Moore’s criminal past connected to his days in the United States Army Air Force during World War II. He fought valiantly in the Pacific theater, but his mixed heritage often led to enmity with his commanding officers and other pilots. Some historians believe many of his kills were awarded instead to other pilots in the theater. Redhawk may have the most kills of any military-affiliated pilot in the Pacific theater, but his heritage kept him from receiving acknowledgement for that during his time.