Comic Book PSA: Luck Is A Puppy Named...Oops!

Luck Is A Puppy Named SchatziFrom Star Spangled War Stories #148 comes this tear-jerker written by Robert Khaniger & penciled & inked by Joe Kubert. Starring the popular WW1 flyer Enemy Ace aka Baron Hans von Hammer aka The Hammer of Hell, this tale is about a cute puppy. Oh, and horrible death in war.

In the process of landing his Fokker, the Baron accidentally runs over a stray dog. Saddened by the dog's injuries, the Hammer of Hell (nee Heaven) takes pity on the poor creature, names it Schatzi and bandages up it's little injured paw.

As one can guess from the story title, Schatzi is destined for reprint fame later in a 1970's DC digest of favorite stories. The cover is a bit of a tease, because comic book covers usually pull a bait-and-switch on readers in regards to content. Not this time...war is hell, y'know.

Exercising the inbred wisdom that made some Europeans worthy of being appointed as nobility, the Baron tucks Schatzi into his jacket and flies off into combat. During maneuvers, the Baron does a barrel roll. Inevitably, not having secured the puppy with a belt, it tumbles out of the cockpit and out into space. Sigh.

Overcome with grief and despairing the loss of innocent life, the Baron flips out and shoots six enemy planes out of the sky.

That'll teach them about the senselessness of war! After the battle, the Baron searches the countryside until he finds his pet. As the bodies of enemy pilots burn in the smouldering wreckage of nearby crashed planes, he gives Schatzi a proper burial.













Many people claim SSWS #148 is is one of their favorite stories, but I didn't care for it because it was sappy and manipulative. In the Hammer's pained and troubled life Schatzi obviously represents hope, which he clung to desperately, only to have his chance for redemption slip literally through his hands. No one ever accused DC of being subtle.

Of course, being drawn by Joe Kubert it is automatically better than pretty much anything else being produced by anyone that month.

Jesus, Buffy

"Jesus, Buffy! Ben Affleck was the bomb in Phantoms!"
...
"Jesus, Buffy! You better check your underwear after that one!"
...
"Jesus, Buffy...the rhythm method never works!"
...

Who's Buffy? Check out the whole story of of creepy little Suzy and her pal Buffy here.

- from a thread first posted on a forum by some guy named Abdul, back in 2004.

Tags: Buffy Religion

Fate Explosion

If Jimmy Olsen hadn't spent the last 30 years proving himself time and again a complete idiot, I'd almost think he's being clever at his phrasing.

Land of Esa

"Esa" must stand for Exceptionally Smokin' Alien!
Now that is how to generate a sale. Thank you, science fiction artists!

Tags: Pulp Art Science Fiction

Stuck-Up Alien Over-Lords

A little social commentary by DC, delivered in their usual manner with all the subtlety of a freaking sledge-hammer.

From Strange Adventures #119

Tags: Silver Age

Comic Book PSA: Make War No More

In the late 60's to the early 70's DC comics inserted into the stories of their successful line of war titles this Make War No More tag. Obviously, a response to the prevailing public sentiment about the Vietnam conflict.

As PSA's for comics go these are probably the ones I am most cynical about for a few reasons. The first being that the tags only showed up in the combat titles full of gleeful mayhem and nazi-smiting. I have not yet seen these in any other DC books of the era. The other reason is that everything I have read about Robert Khaniger is that he leans way to the right. So the addition of the MWNM tag only seems a shallow attempt, as a marketing ploy, to blunt the pro-war message the books had.

Also, the tag often would interfere or disturb the layout of the art, though this was mostly solved a few years later as editorial policy changed.

Great Joe Kubert panel, made claustrophobic by the addition of the tag to open sky

Less intrusive than many

The Unknown Soldier is wearing a protest button?

In reading the war titles during the Vietnam era I've been left with the impression they were allegory (like the film Aliens) of the Vietnam or Korean wars. In the early 70's many of the stories dealt with "reluctant soldiers" or "cowards" who nonetheless came through for their buddies or the mission. This was probably the best theme the writer could push through, having to balance the tone of the book with the effect of public opinion on the market. The reluctant hero aspect of many of the stories and anti-war tag would have satisfied those parents who bothered to check the content of their children's entertainment. Parents that were pro-conflict or didn't care would be satisfied by the exploding Nazi tanks.

After a few years of the tag being present in the final panel of stories it was exiled to the letters page.

Excerpt from a 1973 issue of Star Spangled War Stories, Bob Rozakis letter

By 1973 the United States had begun to pull out of the Vietnam conflict and soon after the MWNM tag was no longer included in the books. Many of the war titles also were eventually cancelled as interest in the subject material waned. Soon, the Star Spangled War title had covers that included a horror element in the title bar, and the letters page featured a ghoul on the header (the Unkown Soldier's true, ravaged face, apparently). This may not have been too unusual since that title also previously featured the classic War That Time Forgot "Tank vs Dinosaur" stories and The Haunted Tank, but it was more likely an attempt to boost sales by attracting the growing horror comic market by superficially resembling the Weird War Tales book also published by DC.

For those of you who can't get enough of Joe Kubert's combat-themed art, be sure to check out PS Magazine (a military preventive maintenance magazine originally founded by Will Eisner). Joe has been illustrating it for years.

Comic Book PSA: Bob Hope Explains The Golden Rule

Another PSA featuring funny-man Bob Hope! Looks like Bob was too busy lecturing to help that poor kid to his feet. It's good to be the King of Comedy.

From a 1964 DC comic.

Tags: Comic Book PSA

Comic Book PSA: Wanted: A Pal!

DC's Star Spangled War Stories #72, August 1958

This is a perfect example of a PSA being done right. The actual subject matter is covert, allowing it to be published, but the reader that this message is intended for will understand it perfectly. The more mature Bob seems very tuned in to what Frankie is feeling and may be speaking from experience. The PSA appears to be about sexual identity confusion, but it could be just about teen angst and feelings about socialization. It certainly seems to operate on a few levels. I have no idea how socially sensitive the editors were in 1958 or what the agenda was other than education. Like in my previous post, What Is Your B.Q.?, the PSA seemed at odds with the main borderline racist content of the book. The book this PSA appeared does also, which features traditional stereotypical male roles.

It would be nice to think that the editor was speaking out to kids on multiple levels and with a bit of subtlety considering the limitations of what could be said and shown in the Comics Code, but who knows? The PSA may be just what it appears to be or can mean what you want it to...either back in 1958 or today.

Tags: Comic Book PSA

Groin Injury Saturday: Love Hina

So tentacle violation is acceptable, but saving a life by giving CPR is rewarded by an assault on the groin.

I don't get Manga at all.

Tags: Groin Injury Saturday Manga

Not in front of the kids

I think this is Betty's only appearance in comics as a throw-away strip filling up unused ad space in an early 60's DC comic. That's a darn shame.

I'm starting to think that Krypton never exploded and Jor-El & Lara just sent the kid into space so they could be alone.

Tags: SOTI Silver Age

It's not a swipe, it's an homage

1942

1961

There is a long standing practice of pulps borrowing from comics and vice versa. Since many of the ideas were either duplicated or ran concurrently following trends in industry and popular culture, it is hard to say what came first and what followed. The line between the genres was often blurred back in the golden age of newsstands, as similar themes ran through both forms and publishers would angle for sales in the young and old market. As the pulp-industry waned artists would often duplicate their art in other mediums as variations on a theme.

The Jimmy Olsen cover has long been acknowledged as receiving inspiration from, if not being a direct swipe, of the Thrilling Wonder cover that appeared years earlier. It's an interesting theory that the generation of youths exposed to the hey-day of lurid, violent and fantastic pulp art would use similar themes later when working in comics as adults.


1942


1960

Use your own judgement, but you can probably tell the difference between something like a respectful Buckler, Giffen, or Velluto doing an homage to Kirby than the obvious swipe of a Ditko (et al) by a will-not-be-mentioned talentless hack who somehow keeps getting work.

Tags: Pulp Art Comic Book Art Homage

Glowing vagina sighting!

The deadly villainess the Cheetah wakes up from a shared nightmare in which the world was destroyed. I consider this scene a preview of what will probably be on the last page of Marvel's House of M.

From DC's Justice #1

Tags: SOTI

Comic Book PSA: What's Your B.Q.?

Here is another PSA from the pages of DC's Jimmy Olsen #36, 1959. This is another nice attempt by the DC company to impart a little education to their readers. The books were full of educational features like this at the time.

I do question the content of test A just a little bit. What do spiders, cabbage & alligators have to do with race-relations?

Unfortunately, as good as the B.Q. survey was for the readers, a Jimmy Olsen/Superman adventure featuring Super-Senor was published in the same book. Sloppy editorial control there. By the way, it gets worse than "Thees ees a job for Super-Senor!".

At least they were trying. Baby steps.

Tags: Comic Book PSA

You Picked A Fine Time To Burn Me, Miss Lee...

Great online archive of American Social Hygiene posters hosted by the University of Minnesota.

Tags: PSA

Comic Book PSA: Deep Dark Secret

Comics of the past were full of nifty little pages that gave the reader fun facts, science facts or history, among other things. This probably started as an attempt to show comics as educational to stem off the criticism (some deserved) of the content of comic books in general.

Some of the Public Service Announcements were well-meaning, but silly or even insulting by the standards of today's PC...but at least they were trying to spread a little wisdom. This page covering mental health issues is one of my favorite of the comic PSA's.

This PSA from DC's Strange Adventures #92, May 1958 stars Buzzy and his friends. He appeared in them for years, last seen by name sometime in the 60's. Idealistically drawn and realized, he always used logic and good old Ward Cleaver wisdom when counselling his often misguided pals on the road to to understanding. Buzzy had his own book also, but it was much lighter in tone and used zany humor in ridiculous situations.

Features like these went the way of the Silver-Age. Given current prices I wouldn't want to see these in today's books reducing the page count any more than the decompressed story-telling already has, and like seeing the old advertisements they are nice to read in back issues for the nostalgia.

I'd like to see a book showcasing a more realistically portrayed Cap (Hobby Hints), Buzzy and all the others as how they would be today. Kind of in the style of the updated Dial H or Vertigo Prez books. It wouldn't be much more than a gimmick, but Marvel successfully updated early characters like Patsy Walker and used them for several years. Given their ages in these PSA's, Buzzy's pals were probably dropping LSD at Woodstock a few years later.

It's also a happy bit of synchronicity that this was included in an issue that had The Amazing Ray of Knowledge for a cover story.

Who knows...DC has pretty much returned the Silver Age, maybe they will bring these back also.

Tags: Comic Book PSA

Jimmy Olsen: Overdue for a retcon, Part 2

Jimmy dresses up as a woman to solve a jewel heist...Ok, I can grok that. But after the case is solved and everything is wrapped up, presumably hours if not days later, why does he put the dress back on and go to work?

425,000 Allied and German troops were killed, wounded or went missing during the Battle of Normandy and Jimmy is 'thrilled'. Damn tourists.

Jimmy Olsen is really is too stupid to live, y'know?

Tags: Jimmy Olsen Silver Age

Jimmy Olsen: Overdue for a retcon

I've just read all the Jimmy Olsen books and all I can say about him is it is too bad that the Crisis on Infinite Earths didn't erase this ass-clown from comic history. A little Jimmy goes a long way, I can attest to that. If Jimmy Olsen was real, he'd be as hated as Rob Liefeld and for the same reasons: he is famous for standing on the shoulders of giants and never having an original creative thought. All his success comes from leeching off of others.

The only good thing about him is that his book gives lazy people like me lots of opportunities for juvenile humor.

As examples:

First: Hold camera away from body, especially head & groin.

Second: PUT THE CAMERA DOWN!

Brilliant scientists working on the Mystic Isle of Dinosurs get lonely, too

I'm too annoyed with Jimmy to go into all the whys of my dislike for him, but it is sufficient to note that the character of Jimmy Olsen is the result of some suit forcing him into the comics. That's right, Jim is a result of demographics! The character of Jimmy Olsen first debuted on the old Superman radio show, and was considered essential enough to the mythos to put in the comics. As readers of the Clone Saga, House of M and almost any comic published in the 90's will know...comics written by commitee under direction from the marketing department are a bad idea, and never work.

No one knew what to do with Jimmy the parasite, so until recently he was a super-hero/celebrity by assosciation. You think Wolverine is busy? Read the silver age Olsen books. Superman literally spent hours of each day helping, tricking or getting Jimmy into and out of all sorts of nonsense. With all the time spent in Olsen's messes you'd think Superman would miss a few earth-threatening meteors here and there. But comics just had to have kid side-kicks then even if they are annoying fan-boys. If I was Superman, I'd have long ago taken Jimmy into my mighty super-hands and crushed him into a diamond and given it to Lana as an engagement present. That's right...Lana.

The Neal Adams covers were pretty nice though.

I don't want to even think about the 4th World story-lines...

Then there is this. Somebody had the right idea, but it was too good to last...

Someday...

And now in an attempt to erase all those issues of Jimmy Olsen from my brain...

Yep, that worked just fine.

Tags: Jimmy Olsen Silver Age

Comic Book Propaganda: Are You A Red Dupe?

From the era of McCarthyism and the fight against the censorship of popular culture comes this equally manipulative, though informative, page from EC's comic The Haunt of Fear, from 1954.

The more things change...the more they remain the same.

Tags: SOTI Propaganda

Oh, Those Glowing Vaginas

There has been a lot of talk in the Internet and forums lately about Glowing Vaginas.

Specifically, the one belonging to mutant witch Wanda Maximoff in the Marvel Comics crossover event House of M. I won't go to into detail about the series because, well...it's written by the over-worked and stretched-too-thin Brian Bendis. If your search result didn't bring you here by accident then you know all about it. If you got here by clicking on what you thought was an "interesting" link, then look it up yourselves. But I'll give you a little background.

Wanda, aka the Scarlet Witch, is able to re-order reality at her whim. Unbalanced mentally, she had a breakdown when a group of poorly-written superheroes lacking their established characterization banded together to kill her to stop the alterations sweeping the world. At the end of House of M #1, everyone but Spider-Man and Wanda has blinked out of existence. Then Wanda opens up her Big Glowing Vagina and the world as anyone knew it ceases to exist in a wash of bright light and starts over from scratch, completely different.

Now word has come around (I assume from Marvel) that in spite of what everyone is saying, the image I'll show here a bit further down, is not a vagina. Please. Who are they kidding? Of course they have to deny it or else Hillary Clinton will divert federal funds that should be fixing schools to investigate comic book imagery.

So here they are....judge for yourself.

House of M #1 - Not too healthy-looking, young lady...

Mutopia #1 - Oh my, indeed

And in the same time period is a much prettier Glowing Vagina in DC's Return of Donna Troy.

'Starship of the Gods' Yep, that's what I usually call it, too

Unfortunately, as cute as it is, it doesn't belong to hottie Donna.

Nope, it belongs to this guy.

That's right. The best-looking vagina in a comic book belongs to a guy.

Here's a golden-oldie from DC, written in the time known as 'Pre-Crisis', from the Phantom Zone mini-series drawn by Gene Colan, featuring the Man of Steel, Superman.


Of course, Marvel, being a leader in the comic field, is not content to stop with vaginas. They plunge on ahead with this, from the X-Men.

What is she going to do with that, you suppose?

Just so comic books aren't left holding the bag, here are some more images and not just from comics.





I don't mind the writers or artists sneaking in a suggestive image or three. Just don't be so obvious about it, is all I'm saying.

Take an artistic hint from the Morrison/Van Sciver 'subliminal sex' opus in New X-Men #118 for the clever way to do it.

Don't forget that left turn at Albuquerque-6

Well, as long as it's on the way...

Tags: Silver Age

Call It A Day, Already

I'm a fan of Robert E. Howard and his characters. So I hope that the cover of this magazine doesn't accurately reflect the story inside. This is because I didn't think Howard wrote any dumb barbarians.

The hero depicted on the cover of this book is incredibly optimistic, horny or stupid. Actually, his thought processes here look to be a combo-meal of all three. Barbarians in fantasy literature often go through hell, literally, and usually it is for a few gold coins and a hot chick. My advice to self would be to head the other direction and find a witch-girl with a smaller, weaker guardian.

Let me tell you why our hero is going to lose the battle...
1) The creature is a demon, and has all kinds of demon tricks and ways.
2) The demon is part cat. All cats are irredeemably evil, capable of acts that make Satan seem as charitable as Bill Gates' wife.
3) It outweighs the hero by a few tons.
4) It is smart enough to know how to use a sword. This lends itself to the idea that the creature has likely spent about 10,000 years practicing against tumescent barbarians.
5) The demon shoots laser-beams from its eyes.

LASER-BEAMS! This critter can kill you just by looking at you. Okay, for me this is a deal-breaker. No matter what charms the little clawed hottie has, I couldn't enjoy them with Little Conan burned to a briquette with a sideways glance from the boyfriend from hell.

I like gold and hot chicks as much as anyone, but there have to be easier villages to plunder.

Tags: Pulp