Friday on my mond

[davemerrill]

Back to the plugged-in WORLD OF THE FUTURE after a long work week full of, well, working. New STUPID COMICS is a 1940 science-fiction version of "Boys Town", I think, minus Spencer Tracy and plus spies, cosmotocars, electric-ray zippers and Radio Hats!



This is one of those weird strips that drops you into a crazy world right from the start - this is from TARGET COMICS #1, 1940 - and just assumes you'll go along for the ride. Also it really looks like UG comics legend Justin Green's artwork, even though that's impossible. Check it out man.

LJ has been down a lot, and my suspicion is that it's because LJ is one of the epicenters around the new wave of Russian protest, and as such I don't feel so bad about suffering outages if it helps the Russians kick the authoritarian habit. Anyway I am on the Twitter as "terebifunhouse" and on the Google Plus and on the Facebook and there's the emails and the Let's Anime blog and there's also this which I post in occasionally and would likely be the replacement for this LJ if and when LJ ever goes away completely. So it's not like you can't find me.

Right now Caribana is happening this weekend right all around us, the neighborhood is fulla people, the Lamport Stadium is full of floats, Lakeshore is going to be full of parade tomorrow. We'll be down at CON BRAVO in Burlington doing the Mister Kitty's Stupid Comics Live Show! http://conbravo.com/ That's Sunday. Monday is the civic holiday, Tuesday I think we're going to try to go to the beach somewhere.

Tonight I don't know what we're going to do, but it's going to involve dinner of some kind.

We did get to see CAPTAIN AMERICA last Tuesday and I enjoyed it. About as good as these things get, which I know isn't saying much as the bar is so low, but I liked it fine and I'm picky about movies that involve Jim Steranko's HYDRA logo.

Comments

[kikaiju.livejournal.com]

Holy shit, that hat is better than bluetooth!

[tochiro998.livejournal.com]

The Captain America movie was pretty amazing, and there was a lot of love in that thing, seems to me.

I did have to laugh at how hard they worked to not show a Nazi Swastika at all, except for a bit in a newsreel. Man, this movie been made in the '70s that dang hooked cross would be DRIPPING from every wall and flagpole and uniform of the Hydra goons...

(of course the Red Skull pretty much declared himself an independent power once he got the Cosmic Cube. So there's that I guess.)

[davemerrill.livejournal.com]

They didn't work THAT hard, all the Hydra uniforms had swastikas where they should be, before Hydra went its own way. There weren't any shots of Nuremberg rallies or OKW.

Remember the Marvel Super Heroes cartoon from the 60s, they did a lot of Captain America stories set in WWII and they carefully excised any mention of Germany, Nazis or Hitler. It all became 'the enemy' or 'the leader'.

[(Anonymous)]

I never quite understood the reasoning behind de-Nazifying the Red Skull in that cartoon. Was there some sort of problem with showing Nazis as the bad guys that America fought, seeing as that's what we did in real life? In 1966 a lot of kids would have had dads or uncles who fought the Nazis, and whom, presumably, the kids were supposed to be proud of. For that matter, I wonder what veterans (who had grown up with the original comics) would have thought of the change.

--Carl

[davemerrill.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't do it myself, but I can understand that Nazi Germany is a pretty heavy trip to be laying down in a children's TV cartoon in 1966, and I can see where they'd err on the side of not dredging up any more bad memories than they had to.

[(Anonymous)]

You may be right, but this was also the era of "Hogan's Heroes" being a hit (and I gather it was considered family fare) so it seems a little out of step. If I were to guess, it might be not that Nazis were considered a no-go for the American market, but perhaps for potential sales in foreign markets.

A bigger mystery is why, in the 1960s comic, the Red Skull spoke German perfectly, whereas Hitler spoke it with a thick accent ("VOT? VOT ist DAT?"). Was it because he was Austrian?

--C.

P.S. This is one reason I like the HELLSING manga--the German characters all speak like proper comic-book Germans. "In 1943 Hell Island wasn't the place to be if you were wearing jackboots. And Sergeant JOHNNY DEATH hadn't gone there for a vacation. He meant business..."