For most of its run, Fawcett's WOW COMICS was probably considered a "girl's comic" due to the usual presence of Mary Marvel as cover feature. Certainly, Mary's own title was as it offered fashion tips and such to young female readers. Thus it was a tad unexpected to find what may well be one the most jingoistic examples of comic book propaganda ever published buried in the pages of WOW. This extremely violent story is perhaps the ultimate distillation of the wartime fantasy of the gung-ho All-American patriotic hero vs the inhuman, fanged and literally yellow Oriental villains. This COMMANDO YANK tale appeared in the Sept-Oct issue of WOW in 1945, meaning that due to the peculiarity of comics dating it may well have still been on the stands on V-J Day, August 15th of that year. GCD says Carl Pfeufer and I see it but that face on the splash page sure looks like a Win Mortimer face to me.




1 comment:
The racism of the era aside, bright yellow Asian characters but comics were war propaganda at test time, after all, this is some really good art by Carl Pfuefer, next known as the fill in for Bill Everett in Sub-Mariner, in which Pfuefer produced a very bizarre looking Namor.
Here, Commando Yank looks more like Batman without the ears and a star on his chest instead of a bat.
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