Taking the coward's way out

Several years ago (early-to mid ‘90s) So youngster got his hands on a Marvel trading card for the Red Skull that identified him as a Nazi. Well being a bright and curious lad, he asked his father what a Nazi was. Well, surprised and shocked the father took exception to Marvel having the audacity of using something so innocuous as a trading card and supervillain to teach his precious, and innocent youngster about the worst villains from the 20^th Century (especially something that he would eventually learn about in history class), and complained to Marvel.

Well, as you can imagine, Marvel chose to — instead of standing on principal and who the character had been for half a century — chose instead to whimper and cower in the corner. They issued an edict that — moving forward — The Red Skull would simply be referred to as a really bad man, and any trace of his former atrocities would simply be wiped from his history.

Well, move forward 20 years and, yep, it is happening once again, and (interestingly enough) once again in the pages of Captain America:

In issue No. 602 of Captain America, the hero and his ally the Falcon find themselves at a rally where protesters hold signs that read “Tea Bag the Libs Before They Tea Bag You!” and “Stop the Socialists!” Captain America remarks that the assembly appears to be an “anti-tax thing,” and the Falcon, who is black, says he probably would not fit in with “a bunch of angry white folks.”

The sequence incited complaints from Tea Party officials who say it is an unfair criticism of their movement. In an interview with FoxNews.com, Michael Johns, a board member of the Nationwide Tea Party Coalition, called the characters’ apparent jabs “juvenile,” adding: “The Tea Party movement has been very reflective of broad concerns of all Americans. Membership is across ethnic, religious and even political lines.”

Some irate Cap fans have pointed out that during his heyday, Cap’s comic upset members of the German American Bund (in 1941). At that time everyone from publisher Martin Godman (who was usually given to flight rather than fighting when profits were involved), to NYC Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia encouraged creators Joe Simon & Jack Kirby to stand their ground and not compromise.

Unfortunately, these days the company has chosen to swallow its corporate and creative pride over what amounts to a single throwaway panel that (save for the accurate spelling of all the words on the various protest signs) accurately depicts the sentiments and slogans of the Tea Baggers.

One can only hope that Stephen Colbert (to whom Joe Quesada himself once Captain America’s fallen shield), will become aware of this, and lampoon it for the idiocy that it is. Go get ‘em Stephen!

Telling Tall Tales

So, last night I went into NYC to attend an interview/lecture with Al Jaffee. If you don’t know Al, then you are way too young, or simply did not have the same ill-spent youth as did I. Al is one of the premiere cartoonists from Mad Magazine.

In fact, he’s the reason that I’m a smart ass to this day. After the event I was able to meet him and tell him that. I said that my father hates him, my wife hates him, but I think that he’s great. The evening was hosted by MoCCA (the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art), and moderated by Danny Fingeroth and held at Columbia University.

Al, you see, gave us (among many other things), Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions, the Mad Fold-in Page, and well, a whole bunch of other iconic gags. In fact, I purchased his book Tall Tales, which is a collection of his syndicated work from the mid ‘50s to the early ‘60s. Back then one of the surest ways that a cartoonist could stay employed was to have a syndicated strip. Needless to say, the newspaper space for cartoons was limited, and if someone got their strip in, then it meant that someone else got booted out.

Al worked around this by developing a cartoon that was one newspaper column wide by 7" tall. In this fashion, he wouldn’t have to supplant some other struggling cartoonist, but would allow newspaper editors the ability to use his strip as a “filler” of sorts, and place it anywhere in the paper. Al took it a step further and made the strip wordless so that he could syndicate it overseas without having to have it translated.

This worked for some six years, when (according to the story that Al tells), some junior exec at the syndicate informed him that “Americans don’t like wordless cartoons”, and forced him to add words, which he did and was promptly dropped by 35 overseas papers. As could be expected, this caused some damage to his relationship with the syndicate, and they parted ways.

Well, with the publication of Tall Tales $14.95 (Abrams), several of the best cartoon from that series have been reprinted, and man are they still very funny. The cartoon I’ve reproduced here is one of my favorite in the book.

So if you are looking for a gift for someone this holiday season who had an ill-spent youth readingh Mad Magazine, you’ll want to check this out. Oh yeah, and if all that isn’t enough to get you to buy the book, it has an (all too) brief introduction by Stephen Colbert.