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Post by dans on Dec 3, 2022 12:00:08 GMT
I have been reading 'Four Favorites' from the 40s recently, looking for stories I can adapt. I have consistently been horrified,by the casual slaughter of the people the heroes are supposed to protect and the depictions of Germans and Japanese. OK, we were at war... but the casual slaughter of civilians carried over for several years after the war. Dr. Wertham wasn't totally wrong...
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Post by redsycorax on Dec 4, 2022 22:49:40 GMT
I think there does need to be a line drawn between active combatants on the one hand as well as the politicians who enabled them, and the rank and file soldiers who were only following orders. Added to which, in the case of Japanese characters, there certainly was some reprehensible racism from US sources which infected some of the imagery and characterisation within comics of that time. In the case of Nazi Germany, things are more complicated. The Third Reich was responsible for the Holocaust and slaughtered six million Jews, one million Gypsies, and numerous gay men, vagrants and the mentally ill or intellectually disabled. In such cases, the responsibility and guilt for what happened stretches wider than just military personnel and political leaders. Which doesn't excuse events like Dresden's firebombing, as I intend to explore in a future UK Victory Legion story. Thankfully. as time went on, we became more aware of the complexities and ambiguities of those situations. Not all German and Japanese citizens agreed with their leadership. For that matter, there were some Axis sympathisers on both sides of the Atlantic.
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Post by dans on Feb 16, 2023 11:52:16 GMT
I have been reading the Nightmare and Sleepy series to try and plagiarize some golden age plots for the Volunteer and Raptor, and none of the stories I read are really worth retelling. Later in their careers, they moved to Clue Comics, which also featured Gunmaster and the Iron Lady. Clue Comics had some incredibly gritty, bloody, violent stories and should not have been sold to kids.
In his two final adventures, Nightmare was totally made over into a magical genie who was called into existence when a bumbling detective lighted special cigars. Yup, just what you want your kid to read...
Gunmaster was a modern man trained in his martial art by an ancient Korean he called 'Little Father'. This sounds very familiar to me...
The crooks in Gunmaster stories would kill anyone any time - in one story they killed a dying man in a sick bed after he gave them the information they needed.
The Iron Lady wore exoskeleton gloves that gave her super strength in her hands. She got the bad guys to talk by crushing their hands and she killed a lot of bad guys by choking them. And we got to watch!
Dr. Wertham was at least partially right. This shouldn't be kids stuff...
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Post by johnreiter902 on Feb 16, 2023 12:16:35 GMT
Of course, like nearly every fan of comic books, I despise Wertham, and everything he said. However, I can't argue with results. I think the stories created under the comic book code authority in the 50s and 60s were the best in comic book history.
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Post by redsycorax on Feb 16, 2023 22:29:31 GMT
Despite the moral panic against them in the United States, Canada, Britain, Australia and New Zealand, EC horror comics especially had excellently written stories... just not for children, or only for intelligent children and adults.
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Post by dans on Feb 17, 2023 3:22:01 GMT
Well, that was the problem. Adults didn't read funny books, and they were sold to kids. I can see where the stories came from; they are very like pulps. But most kids didn't read the gory pulps.
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Post by dans on Mar 28, 2024 23:42:30 GMT
Re-reading the Fearless Flint series in Famous Funnies Comics (issues 88 - 109) and the art is pretty good in relation to other comics of the time. They try to end each issue with a cliff-hanger. Jack gets his powers from (fairly violent) contact with steel (or other metal if steel isn't convenient); when he is impacted he instantly turns to Fearless Flint, who is invulnerable to anything he meets in the series. The usual cliff-hanger is a powerless Jack, about to be stabbed with a dagger, or slashed with a sword, or hit by hand grenade shrapnel, or smashed into a rusted machine on the bottom of a raging river, or hit by a sledgehammer, or pushed into the spinning propellor of an airplane... funny, I have never once been worried that he might not be back next issue... Jack originally became Fearless Flint when he impacted with steel. Later, it became any metal, and once he was changed by an impact with granite. I have to believe there was a vein of some metal in that granite boulder, lucky for him. His series ran for 21 issues at 6 pages per issue and his adventures covered a span of about a year, probably. During that time, he figured out that being struck by metal would activate his powers, so he often encouraged bad guys to stab him with a knife, shoot him, or even run into him with a vehicle. But... he never once tried to activate his powers by striking himself with something metal. Why not? A full time Fearless Flint would be awesomely powerful - while he is in his Flint form, his physical prowess is perhaps a bit superior to the early Superman, except he can't jump long distances. But he survived a plane crash and subsequent explosion without even slowing down, he muffled the explosion of at least 17 sticks of dynamite with his body without a chip, and his physical strength was astounding. But he never had his powers for more than a few minutes at a time, sometimes no longer than seconds.... His origin sort of implies that his powers are mystical in nature (they call him a supernatural being) but no mysticism is ever mentioned, instead the claim is that an explosion drove flint particles into his skin which caused this strange reaction. I made the mystical nature explicit in my own rewrite of his origin. His powers were given to him buy a bunch of spirts (some Native American, some European) who happened to be throwing dice in a mystical dimension near Stone Mountain while Jack was helping carve the Mt. Rushmore who were impressed by his patriotism and courage. So it could be something about the spell that prevents him from changing that way - or maybe it prevents him from even thinking about changing that way. What do you think? Do you think he might eventually realize he can change himself? If so, what kind of limits should there be? Couple of other questions - what determines how long he remains in the flint form? It is usually 3 to 5 panels. Doesn't seem to be determined by the violence of the impact. And, do you think he might learn through practice how to better control how long he remains as Flint? Here's my AI version of Jack Bradley, Fearless Flint...  |
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Post by redsycorax on Mar 29, 2024 23:42:12 GMT
And as for western outlaws (and for that matter, even the iconic Robin Hood perhaps), they weren't altruistic souls who held a moral code about who to rob or not to rob, nor did they have any inhibitions about killing or using aggression or injury to get their way. When it came to the popular depictions in movie westerns in their heyday and their comics adaptations, one suspects that punches were pulled (because of the Hays Code and the analogous Comics Code Authority). When that lapsed, although western stories were declining in popularity, there was welcome interest in Native American history, culture and perspectives during the same era as an antidote to kneejerk racist depictions of Indians that commonly prevailed beforehand. However, and by the same token, nineteenth century western US territories weren't called the 'wild' West just for effect. Perhaps its depictions of both outlaws and law enforcement officials were unrealistically sanitised... And I think you can guess what one of my favourite western series is, can't you? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadwood_(TV_series) |
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