The big shock to me was the wording in the upper right panel (PDF, p. 14) when Zacco says, “Those Nazis have a smart, fast outfit, but we won’t let ‘em muscle in on our territory.” This may well have been damning with faint praise or offering begrudging praise, but it sounded a little too much like certain U.S. citizens who have spoken admiringly of both historical fascists and current dictators. In proper context (publication date), it was probably a way of saying not to underestimate an enemy that was all too successful in the early part of WWII, but the wording sure unnerved me.
Just how inhuman the NAZI's were was not understood until the camps were discovered at War's end.
Those comments were written in the middle of a war. Which means that at the time, the writers and artists had no idea that the allies would be victorious. That's why the US didn't enter the war until after Pearl Harbour.
Yes, read it as History, but in context, judge the writers and artists by the context of the times in which they created the work and don't judge them by 'current' standards.
Germany was winning, so that statement was observation, not praise.
Blitzkrieg ( / ˈblɪtskriːɡ / BLITS-kreeg, German: [ˈblɪtskʁiːk] ⓘ; from Blitz 'lightning' + Krieg 'war') or Bewegungskrieg is a word used to describe a combined arms surprise attack using a rapid, overwhelming force concentration
That was just the reality of the situation, not praise for NAZI's.
What does the word mean anyway?
During the years that led to WWII, the word “Nazi” was used as a derogatory term against the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP, translated in English as National Socialist German Worker’s Party.
https://www.warhistoryonline.com/instant-articles/the-origin-of-the-term-nazi.htmlOh, and for the record, I'm no more a NAZI than I am a little green man from mars.
Of course, I’m sure more people would be offended at the anachronistic, racist portrayal of Ebony than the comment which I addressed in the previous paragraph. It’s interesting that one simply expects the minstrel-show caricatures in that era while other things jar one’s sensibilities even further. I try to look at these differences as history lessons, much like the endpaper assurance that the book was printed within the guidelines of government rationing. There are so many things we take for granted.
Ebony was created at a time when Negros in film were portrayed only as servants or comedy figures. Ebony was neither. At that time, Neither DC or Marvel or any other comic company portrayed Negro characters in their work, there were very few in Movies or in TV until the early 70''s.
The Visual portrayal of Ebony grates, certainly, but looking at it another way, Eisner could be commended for including a negro character as a regular, as something of an innocent, surely, but not as as buffoon.
Ebony was often an integral part of the story and not in a negative way.
I can't buy Eisner who was Jewish and an enlisted man who used his skills as a cartoonist to contribute to the war effort against NAZI's as a racist.
Take a look here.
PS Magazine (PS, The Preventive Maintenance Monthly)https://comicbookplus.com/?cid=1500and here
When Will Eisner Went to War
https://medium.com/war-is-boring/when-will-eisner-went-to-war-e7182c1fb516 Since boxing is no longer as popular as a sport as it was even when I was young, it’s fascinating to see how many comic book stories, movies, television shows, and detective novels used the fixed fight tropes even up through the 1960s. Of course, that makes sense because the old Gillette Cavalcade of Sports television show that featured boxing on Friday nights ended in 1960. Still, it’s a comfortable trope to deal with as the observation by another poster about the Bowery Boys movie makes clear.
Boxing was enormously popular for most of the early 20th century.
Up into the mid-70's due to
Muhammad Ali.
His fight in '74 against Frazier.The fight was watched by a record estimated television audience of 1 billion viewers worldwide.It was the world's most-watched live television broadcast at the time.
So what happened to boxing? I think three things,
1/ It became increasingly obvious that Boxing was physically damaging to the practitioners.
2/ The promoters of the sport became increasingly corrupt, and the standards went down.
3/ Other physical contact sports became popular like Judo, Karate [from the 50's] and then later via Bruce Lee, Kung Fu and other Asian martial arts.
4/ In the US and it's Media markets, Wrestling became the dominant physical contact sport in TV and the media.
