User blog:Inferno Pendragon/PE Proposal: Kid Cassidy

time for another round of obscure PEs from comic books and I'm going deep in the obscurity files for this one, into a media of comic book that didn't really last long but ironically still has massive influence on certain hero and villain subtypes in comic books.. the Old West.

after Scottish-Terror made a few articles on Rawhide Kid I began to remember more about this particularly odd sector of Marvel multiverse and how goofy it was.. until Kid Cassidy was recreated.

This article needs updating and correcting but it still sells the character enough, he's not complex but that frankly makes him even worse..

so let's get ready to go back to the Wild West and face off against Kid Cassidy himself, a former gunslinger, anti-hero and.. oh yeah.. would-be-genocidal prototype of a Klan leader..

main article : Kid Cassidy

Who Is He / What Has He Done?
Kid Cassidy was born to a plantation owner and was childhood friends with one of the plantation slaves named Reno Jones, he would later fight in the Civil War and returned to find his family's home ruined - despite their differences Jones and Cassidy would form a strong alliance and travelled the Wild West as heroes (by standards of the Old West, which is brutal by today's "hero" standards).

For a long while Cassidy seemed to be a hero but he and Jones were both unpredictable anti-heroes and different races, an extremely volatile mix in the Old West - even moreso as Cassidy clearly never stopped supporting the idea of slavery and White Supremacy (in fact it was noted by an older Jones that many of the adventures told about himself and Cassidy were tamed down and that the pair were not truly as close as these tales made out).

Anyways, eventually Jones and Cassidy got into a particularly brutal disagreement and as was often the case in the West they engaged in a gunfight, Cassidy seemingly died in this conflict and had that been the end of it he'd of been nothing terrible special.. but this was far from the end of Cassidy.

Years passed by and eventually a town known as Wonderment was formed, it was largely populated by African-Americans and other minorities such as nearby American Indians - the area of land was rich in resources and the villain known as Tarantula wanted the town removed from the maps so he could profit from said resources : to this end a revived Cassidy was hired alongside several horsemen to raid the town and ensure it was destroyed, one way or another.

Kid Cassidy led the group, known as Nightriders, into Wonderment and showed his true colors as he embraced the genocidal hatred of said Nightriders (note: Nightriders are basically what would eventually become the KKK).. Cassidy proudly led the group on a massacre of Wonderment and intended on lynching the town's population.

It required the combined efforts of many of Marvel's Old West heroes to defeat the Nightriders and save Wonderment from utter destruction, in the process several of Marvel's Old West heroes were killed and the event was considered one of the most brutal and large-scale battles of the time.. ultimately Cassidy and Jones would fight again and this time Jones strangled his nemesis to death as vengeance for the lives Cassidy had taken.

Heinous Standards
Marvel's Old West was pretty goofy until the events of Wonderment, which re-envisioned the setting and stated that many of the more light-hearted tales were folk-stories rather than actual historic fact - regardless of this crime was still rather small-scale and consisted mainly of gunfights, train-robberies and the occassional alien invasion (..gotta love comics..).

the attack on Wonderment was much larger-scale than most of the above (aliens aside) and the motives are far more brutal and heinous, Cassidy was willing to lynch an entire town simply for the color of their skin - that's some deeply heinous stuff even for Old West, especially as it took the combined forces of many of the Old West heroes to stop him succeeding, some of whom paid the ultimate sacrifice.

The battle of Wonderment was rather potent as well since it has a diverse cast of Old West heroes (White, African-American and Native American among them) fighting and in some cases laying down their lives not for petty glory, disputes or the usual Western ways but for sheer humanity.. not too often you can say an Old West battle is about facing an enemy of life itself (which Cassidy definitely became).

Migating Factors
not many, he may of been a hero at some point but even this has been heavily disputed as Jones tells people who enquired about his past with Cassidy not to believe everything they read and this basically confirms that Cassidy and Jones never truly had a strong friendship (..I'd also say the fact the guys literally shot each other is also kind of a give-away..).

he may of been similar to many Old West anti-heroes and villains but he pushed it to a whole new level in wanting to massacre an entire town - thus I'd find it very hard to find a reason to justify that level of violence, even in the West.

Verdict
Kid Cassidy seems like a fitting contender for Pure Evil because to me anyway the act of genocide is a sign that a character is not just an evil villain but also that they have become an enemy to everyone.. once a character goes into genocidal territory they become an enemy of life itself and I believe that is a special kind of evil.