After losing his parents to a murderous villain trying to purchase Cheyenne land, William Talltrees becomes the legendary Red Wolf, an honor passed down through the generations by the wolf spirit Owayodata. He defends his people and becomes a licensed Super Hero, fighting alongside the Avengers and joining the Rangers as a full-fledged member.
Red Wolf Lineage
The Red Wolf is the champion of Owayodata, hunting god and wolf spirit of the Cheyenne, part of the Manidoog (aka Anasazi, the Native American gods). Owayodata would manifest to the Cheyenne as a wolf-headed man and, in the 1700s, chose the warrior Wildrun to become the first Red Wolf. In the 19th century Wildrun’s descendant Johnny Wakely became the Red Wolf and the mantle was subsequently passed on to several others, including Thomas Thunderhead in the 1970s; the exact lineage of the Red Wolves is unclear.
In recent years, William Talltrees was a Cheyenne boy raised on a reservation in Montana. His family believed themselves to be descendants of the earlier Red Wolves, and he honored their beliefs, but disliked the contempt white people had for them.
Will grew up hearing the legends told of Red Wolf but left those legends and the reservation behind, becoming a soldier in the United States Army. Talltrees serves on a mission to Southeast Asia, working alongside men including James Rhodes, Willie Lincoln and Michael Janes. At one point, they assault a village full of apparently innocent people. A young boy, Duc No Tranh, the sole survivor of the massacre, tries to leave with them aboard their helicopter as they depart, but Talltrees’ comrades kick the boy off the helicopter midair. Traumatized by these events, Talltrees leaves the military, becoming a construction worker in New York and avoiding the reservation.
When William finally returned to the reservation, corrupt tycoon Cornelius Van Lunt was pressuring the Talltrees family to sell their land. William’s parents refused to sell and Will helped drive Van Lunt away. In retaliation, Van Lunt had William’s parents killed by his operative Jason Birch. Outraged, William swore revenge and donned the garb of Red Wolf. Ascending to the peak of Wolf Point, William performed rites to summon forth Owayodata and claim vengeance. Although Owayodata did appear to him, he declared that instead of taking vengeance himself, William would become his new champion as Red Wolf.
Will receives an enchanted coup stick by Owayodata, and while descending the mountain, Will is attacked by a wolf and slays the beast with his tomahawk, but then discovers it was a mother protecting her cub. He adopts the cub and names it Lobo, just as the previous Red Wolves had been accompanied by a Lobo. They spend many months in seclusion in the desert but then set out to expose Van Lunt, tracking him and Birch to New York City. As Red Wolf, he attacks Birch first but gets interrupted by the Avengers’ Vision, derailing his vengeance.
Superhuman Strength
Red Wolf has superhuman strength enabling him to lift up to 3 tons, as well as enhanced speed, durability and senses. He occasionally obtains prophetic glimpses of the future through meditation. Red Wolf is an accomplished tracker, horse rider, and master of armed and unarmed combat. His chief weapon is his coup stick, a versatile tool that can be used as a bo or javelin; the coup stick was originally designed to demonstrate bravery by confronting a foe directly, rather than from a distance with arrows or other weapons. He has also wields tomahawks, a hunting knife, and bow and arrows.
Talltrees wears the hide of his first wolf ally Lobo and has Lobo’s claws fitted to his right wrist. Red Wolf is accompanied by his second trained wolf, also named Lobo; he sometimes rides the horse, Ranger.
Family, Friends, and Foes
Born in the Cheyenne Nation to Thomas and Rebecca Talltrees, Will grows up learning of his shared ancestry with the original Red Wolf, Wildrun. He loses his parents when Cornelius Van Lunt, AKA Taurus, kills them for refusing to sell their land to him. He takes the land anyway and dams up the rivers, while Will becomes the Red Wolf to protect his people from such colonialist criminals like him, Van Lunt, as well as Joshua Plague, and the mercenary Rat Pack. He later allies with the Avengers, joins the Initiative, and the Super Hero team, the Rangers, to face off with Jackson Day, AKA Corruptor, the Skrulls, and the influential oil company Roxxon.
William Talltrees’ Tales
Brought to Avengers Mansion to explain himself after his attack on Birch, Red Wolf convinced the Avengers to aid his efforts. Clint Barton, AKA Goliath (later Hawkeye), Vision and Wanda Maximoff, AKA Scarlet Witch, returned to the reservation with him to face down Van Lunt, who proved to be connected to the Zodiac crime cartel (in fact, Van Lunt had helped found the Zodiac as Taurus). Together, Red Wolf and the Avengers drove Van Lunt away from the reservation, and Birch was apparently killed. William decided to continue to serve as Owayodata’s champion on behalf of his people and occasionally offered his services to the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
Subsequently, when Joshua Plague and the mercenary Rat Pack attacked the reservation and stole the mystical Soul Catcher from the Cheyenne, Red Wolf pursued Plague with the Super Hero Greer Nelson, AKA Tigra’s aid. Plague was ultimately revealed as the Super-Skrull and inadvertently trapped his own soul within the artifact, which Tigra turned over to the Fantastic Four for safekeeping with Red Wolf’s permission. Tigra was disturbed that the Soul Catcher had failed to work on her because of her feline body’s twin souls, but Red Wolf encouraged her to believe in her humanity.
Later, when the Super Villain Corruptor captured Rick Jones and mentally controlled Rick’s monstrous friend Bruce Banner, AKA Hulk, he forced Rick to send out a distress call to the Avengers, hoping to control them too, but technology inside the Corruptor’s base inadvertently kept the signal from reaching New York. Instead, it was intercepted by a number of heroes operating within the American southwest, including Red Wolf, Bonita Juarez, AKA Firebird, Hamilton Slade, AKA Phantom Rider, Drew Daniels, AKA Texas Twister, and Victoria Star, AKA Shooting Star. The five heroes came to Rick’s rescue and helped defeat the Corruptor, removing his influence over the Hulk. They decided to remain together as a group not unlike the Avengers and called themselves the Rangers. Shortly afterwards, they attended the Hulk’s federal pardon when Bruce Banner briefly gained control over the Hulk’s personality.
When the Jicarilla reservation was invaded by Asgardian trolls who accessed Earth through a portal within the property’s silver mine, Red Wolf investigated the problem alongside the Defenders, who at that time were operating in the West. The team’s de facto leader, Hank McCoy, AKA Beast, suggested membership to Red Wolf, but Talltrees said he preferred operating solo. After discovering the trolls, the heroes escaped them and collapsed the mine to cut them off from further contact with Earth.
The Rangers had quietly disbanded, but Firebird called them back together after her ongoing efforts to join the Avengers’ new western roster had stalled, largely overlooked by team leader Hawkeye. Firebird hoped to restart the Rangers instead, but Shooting Star had been possessed by the demon Riglevio, which placed the other Rangers under its influence and made them attack the Avengers. During their possession, Lobo developed demonic powers including the power to grow in size. Firebird ultimately exposed Riglevio and the Rangers regained their free will, though they soon parted company again. Hawkeye and Texas Twister later teamed up to force the demon out of Shooting Star, who helped Hawkeye trap it within a statue after Riglevio briefly possessed Texas Twister. Red Wolf was later led by visions from Owayodata to Nevada, where he helped prevent terrorists from detonating nuclear weapons.
Red Wolf was eventually tracked down by the assassin Bengal, who turned out to be the now-grown Duc No Tranh, whose village he had helped assault years earlier. The Bengal killed Lobo and near-fatally wounded Red Wolf. While doctors fought to save Talltrees’ life, he succumbed to guilt over what he had done to the Bengal’s family, believing Bengal was justified in wanting him dead. Owayodata appeared in a vision to Talltrees and encouraged him to overcome his guilt and use it to make himself a greater warrior. When Talltrees accepted this, he fought back from the brink of death and lived. After recovering, Talltrees found he had obtained new superhuman abilities from Owayodata including enhanced physical and sensory capabilities.
To keep Lobo forever bonded to him, Talltrees skinned Lobo’s corpse and made his new uniform from the wolf’s hide. When he found a band of drunken hunters mercilessly killing a she-wolf and her cubs for sport, Will fought back viciously and drove them away. He adopted the sole surviving cub as his new Lobo. The new Lobo bonded to Talltrees quickly and would even follow him on missions, despite being too young to aid him in battle. When the Cheyenne trickster god Nanabozho, war god Hotamitanio and combat arbitrator god Calumet sought revenge upon humanity for the mistreatment of their worshipers, Owayodata interceded on humanity’s behalf and the other gods imprisoned him and Red Wolf for disagreeing. Dr. Stephen Strange, AKA Doctor Strange, and the Navajo mystic Black Crow came to Owayodata and Red Wolf’s aid and finally convinced the Cheyenne gods to let humanity try to overcome its problems, to which the gods grudgingly agreed.
In another adventure, Red Wolf exposed the Roxxon Oil Corporation’s efforts to frame Blackfoot near the U.S.-Canadian border for sabotaging their pipeline. Later, when a reservation was rumored to have set up illegal casinos and taken arms against the authorities to prevent their removal, the FBI called in Red Wolf (via the Bureau of Indian Affairs) to help them deal with the situation. Red Wolf found himself battling Jack Monroe, AKA Nomad, who had been hired by the reservation for protection. When the FBI stormed the reservation only to find that the reported casino was a fake, they were publicly humiliated, giving the reservation the leverage they needed to argue for self-determination. Red Wolf also fought members of the criminal Maggia syndicate who were setting up casinos on Mashantucket Pequot reservations. Red Wolf was one of many heroes immobilized by the villain Franklin Hall, AKA Graviton, when he made a bid for world conquest, but all the heroes were released when the Thunderbolts bested Graviton.
Following the adoption of the federal Superhuman Registration Act, the Rangers were reunited by the Fifty State Initiative and the team officially charged with defending Texas. The original lineup all returned, joined by Miguel Santos, AKA Living Lightning, and, briefly, Antonio Rodriguez, AKA Armadillo. The Rangers were soon tested when a Hydra invasion force assaulted the U.S. president’s Texas ranch, but with the added firepower of other Initiative heroes, the president was saved.
As the shape-shifting Skrulls worked to prepare an invasion of Earth by planting one of their people in each Initiative team, Lobo was abducted and replaced by a Skrull imposter. Talltrees had a vision of Lobo in chains, but could not understand its meaning. When the invasion began, Delroy Garrett, AKA the 3-D Man, helped expose the Lobo imposter, which was killed by Shooting Star. Following the Skrulls’ defeat, the real Lobo was reunited with Red Wolf.
When Talltrees and the Rangers have a tussle with Kaine Parker, AKA Scarlet Spider, at Roxxon Energy Corporation, they realize it was all a misunderstanding and they end up discovering together that Roxxon had been conducting experiments on human test subjects. They face off with Roxxon’s massive monster, Mammon, and Scarlet Spider saves Talltrees from the monster’s wrath.
