Initially, I was horrified at what was being done to the hapless cephalopod, but then I saw the stereotype on the right, and realized the real crime was against the kids reading this tripe. (No, my name isn't Fredric Wertham.)
More like this
The pathetic thing is that it's the same old tripe. Emily Yoffe writes "Gloom and Doom in A Sunny Day" and rehashes the same tired old anti-GW tripe.
We start with the use of an idiotic example of misunderstanding climate change to mock global warming:
It was a mild January evening, and people…
I've been on Facebook since the beginning, in 2005. I explored it and studied it. I always spent minimal amount of time on it, though. I get e-mail notifications and perhaps once a day go there to click on all the "Ignore" buttons for all the invitations. So, I do not see is as a big time drain.…
Noted sockpuppet and sniveler Lee Siegel warns us that the new militant atheists may be closing the book on imagination. And for some reason the LA Times saw fit to publish this tripe.
In the last few years, so many books have rolled off the presses challenging God, belief and religion itself (…
I forgot to set up a Friday Cephalopod post before I left, and I don't have my scanner with me! Don't panic. Deep breaths. We can cope with this, by being as flexible as a cephalopod.
Here's what I've done. I've reposted an article on Gonatus onyx, which has lovely photos of a squid and its babies…
Look...
http://gizmodo.com/336635/tentacle-chandeliers-to-class-up-the-place
tentacle chandaliers.
If memory serves, the white-robed gremlins are supposed to be "dirty Japs," too.
Hmm... I think we're supposed to be rooting for the Young Allies (who presumably include that ghastly golliwog). But the gremlins' robes are emblazoned with a mighty 'pod -- PZ might have difficulty figuring out which lot are the good guys.
His name is Whitewash. No shit. The goblin-looking dudes are probably supposed to be Japanese.
Pretty typical for wartime stuff.
THIS is a little more out of the ordinary.
If you look closely, James Watson is in there.
If you look closely, James Watson is in there.
Damn. I hate getting beaten to a joke.
Looks like a stereotypical "Mick" there next to Whitewash.
Sarcastro, thanks for that link. I had no idea that Bolling's Godman had a WWII predecessor.
Weird, weird cover.
And here's my off-topic interruption for the morning: The Japanese, under pressure from the Australian government, have decided to not hunt humpback whales.
http://voanews.com/english/2007-12-21-voa17.cfm
I would call on the Japanese to now (ideally) stop the hunt, or at least reduce the size of the hunt.
The website that shows this cover thinks the guys in white robes might be KKK members. I just can't tell. It just doesn't look like the kind of thing I'd have bought when I was 10; not enough sports cars in the picture.
Another WWII comic: Exciting Comics, featuring The Black Terror
http://www.samuelsdesign.com/comics/pages/super-war/exciting35.htm
If it weren't for the racism, the cover of Exciting Comics #35 would be pretty awesome.
Perhaps the most iconic wartime dehumanization of the enemy: the WWI 'Destroy This Mad Brute' poster featuring a Hun so brutishly atavistic that he's an ape.
"THIS is a little more out of the ordinary."
You suppose that God is giving an eyeful to whoever is outside that window? Damn!
You can tell who the bad guys are: they're ugly!
Yes, this is a sure-fire method for enemy detection. It always works in Ayn Rand novels.
Good old Freddy Wertham made my childhood a living hell. I had to hide my comics in my father's office, on top of his Victorian porn, lest my mother find them and shred them in order to protect me from naked ducks.
Couldn't the Young Allies be prosecuted for animal cruelty? Blasphemy?
How weird is this?
Stalin and Hitler fighting? But they're both atheists, aren't they? How can they be fighting?
It's a Festivus Miracle!
Wanna see something more amazing? Check out what the value was last year.
Sarcastro, you win for funny but here's one that is a contender.
I have to wonder: had the cover artist ever actually seen either black or Japanese faces? These look like what happened when lions and tigers were depicted by medieval artists who'd never seen those mythical animals.
Ouch, a shot right to the crop!
For at least 30 seconds I saw the black man with the hammer as a lady cow's head on a dandy man's body and just assumed that was one of the Young Allies.
Wait, is that Bucky Barnes in the corner, with the bow and arrow? And the Human Torch? What the hell's going on here?
It's certainly Bucky in the corner, but the dude on fire is Toro the original android Human Torch's sidekick.
The "stereotypical Mick" in the flat cap is actually a stereotypical Brooklynite. I think one of those was a requirement for every comics team back in those days. The Young Allies also had a stereotypical fat kid and a stereotypical brainiac. Something for everyone!
As Golden Age war comics go, this cover is tame. There was an absolutely brutal 'Yellow Peril' racism in the covers of Timely (later Marvel) comics during the War. Check out this gallery of covers from St. Louis Comics for multiple examples!
There was a standard stereotype for representing the Japanese during the war: yellow skin, thick glasses, protruding buck teeth. Even Walt Disney Studios got in on the act (this from a propaganda poster):
http://bp1.blogger.com/_XOjDUIzHDXw/Rmxhp9LkmyI/AAAAAAAAAfo/tqXuoq1sX4U…
Here are some more Young Allies covers, several with the "Jap" stereotype:
http://www.coverbrowser.com/covers/young-allies
FYI. The Hitler/Stalin fight dialogue goes something like this:
Adolf (as he absorbs a hit from Stalin): Is that all you're capable of?
Josef: I proposed friendship to you, but you preferred to start a war. Now, I have come to destroy you.
Adolf: Caucasian untermensh! Now I am at peak power!
Here are some more Young Allies covers, several with the "Jap" stereotype:
What I noticed was that in 11 of the 15 covers on which he appeared, Whitewash is tied up by the bad guys. In only one, do they give him a gun.
Steve "The Fat white kid does about as badly." James
Thanks Kseniya!
I am dying to use the line "Now I am at peak power!" next time (and probably the last time) I have sex.
Do what you must, but I suggest you avoid prefacing that exclamation with "Caucasian unterwench!"
Humph. You're no fun.
:-D
It's just a suggestion!
Posted by: Kseniya (caucasian unterwench)
Kseniya, no one who's familiar with your writing would ever mistake you for an 'unterwench', Caucasian or otherwise.
Bol'shoye spasibo, tovarishch!
Dr. Strange could take both of those atheist clowns.
Bol'shoye spasibo, tovarishch!
Uh, you're welcome, I think.
(Boy, I'm glad I went with what I did in #30 and not the other, racier comment that came to mind.)
Racier comment? Uh-oh. (I imagine it had something to do with "unterwear".)
Hey, look! It's Bucky! Toro! Knuckles! Whitewash! Jeff! And Tubby!
Present day Mexican comics often have covers like that. But since they're not white...
Believe me, the civil rights movement in the 60s changed a lot of things. Now a character type like Whitewash, which came from Black culture BTW, is seen as obvious white racism. The true situation was not a simple as you might think.
Well, they are following an old and established tradition, so I suppose it's all right...
During the Napoleonic wars, the French were often represented as monkeys in the allies' (and especially British) press. With the result that, when at that time a boat sank off the English coast and the only survivor, a small pet monkey, was found wandering the beaches near Hartlepool, the locals assumed it was a French spy and organised a trial.
To this day Hartlepudlians are nicknamed "monkey hangers"...