One of the difficulties in writing about comics created during
WWII is what the
hell do you do about the racism?
When the creators of the day did cartoony caricatures of Germans or Italians with stereotypical accents, we still view that as
patriotic fun. Unfortunately, when you do that with
Japanese characters, well, you suddenly feel pretty damn squeamish about the racism.
So I tend to avoid stories where our hero fights the Japanese. Whether it's cowardly or over-sensitive of me, I just find it easier to skip those stories altogether. (Ditto, by the way, for the many, many
MANY jungle characters of the
Golden Age, 85% of whose stories are at least tainted by the racism of the day.)
But, I've been covering how
Tor The Magic Master was single-handedly winning WWII,
first by beating the Luftwaffe, and then by
beating the crap out of the German navy. So I kind of have to talk about how he defeated the Japanese.
Plus, really, how could I have skipped
this:
So, I'm just going to skip around the racist bits as best I can, especially what that damned turtle says. Still, you've been trigger-warned.
Photojournalist
Jim Slade has been sent to the jungles of
Panama, supposedly to cover the "
San Blas Indians"...
Sigh...yeah, there's racism against the natives, too.
Bad show,
Fred Guardineer!
But in reality, Jim's editor sent him there to keep an eye out for a Japanese attempt to seize the Panama Canal. And I'll be damned,
it happens!
Well, even though, as Tor, he has seemingly unlimited control over space and time, Jim manipulates the
natives into fighting the Japanese for him:
Then, and only then, does Tor show up:
What, you couldn't have done that
before some of the natives were killed?!?
Tor doesn't forget his day job:
Well, Tor's not going to allow for an easy escape:
Sorry, I just
had to white out what the turtle says there. Because if there's one thing that can spoil a backwards-talking-magician-created giant talking turtle gobbling up Axis forces, it's the turtle
making racist jokes.
If you
insist on knowing what the turtle said,
you can find it here.
Please don't do it, though. Really, you'll be sorry.
And that's how Tor routed the Japanese!
Too bad the turtle was
a racist bastard. And too bad about the racism against the natives. And sending them to die in your place. And...
From Crack Comics #24 (1942)