Golden Age Nazi Comics

I was reading a website not long ago (www.lucifereffect.org) which makes
mention of comic books the Nazis produced.

It's a bit like finding out the evil anti-matter universe exists.

Near as I can tell, there were three types:

--> "educational" comics made for the school system.... "educational" only if you want your kid to grow up to be a Nazi. A lot of 'em tried to justify Nazi racial policies

--> "regular" comics sold on the news stands. These seemed to
parallel American combat comics ("German and Japanese Soviet POWs
secretly repair a Panther tank at a panzer scrap yard and attempt to
escape from their GULAG deep within the USSR!")

And they did get around to super-heroes.

Not that they were original.

Ciclone was, for the most part, copied and minimally changed Siegal & Shuster Superman strips. There was some original stuff done, mainly towards the end of the run.

What was interesting is, if I understand it correctly, Ciclone was upholding the same values as Superman for most of the run. But there was pressure on the "creators" and the publisher to have a more pro-Italian government message.

So towards the end, he had adventures like this one: "Their enemies are plutocratic American villains who, without any scruples, try to shoot down the airplane."

More about Ciclone

Mr. Terrific vs. The Shark?

Not happy with Checkmate #20.

After a lot of action and intrigue in this arc and a lot of intellegence in the writing, we get a crap ending. It rushes to a conclusion that makes little sense.

Mr. Terrific and the Good Guys can either resign from Checkmate or potentially be fired by the UN for apparent impropriatey. They risk the firing.

After a PAINFUL scene where Terrific et al explain how frickin' smart they are and that they had a plan all along, they give Waller an ultimatium.

Amanda Waller, now revealed to be a meta with nano tech related to Chemo(!?!?), has a choice of resigning and having one of the President's major initiatives (Salvation Run) made public in 24 hours
OR
potentially risk being fired by the UN and having Salvation Run go public now.

If she goes with choice #2, there's every chance that she may not be fired and that Mr. Terrific and his crew will be.... leaving Waller virtually in control of Checkmate. And enough authority and fire power to have Terrific and the others killed before they can tell anyone anything.

She takes the less attractive choice to buy the President 24 hours.

The telling of this was just incredibly awkward and poses the question:

Have Mr. Terrific and Checkmate jumped the shark?

Certainly Mr. T is close after his run in JSA Classified.

Captain Desmo

Pretty non-existant connection to the JSA in today's post but I couldn't let this pass by without comment.

Captain Desmo was a strip that started in either Adv #26 or #32 (I found conflicting references) and finished in More Fun #72. It was also in Flash Comics and who knows where else.

Written (?) and drawn by Ed Winiarski (signed "Win"), I wasn't able to find out anything about the man himself other than other strips he did and his Wikipedia entry which largely talks only of his career. But do these four panels from Adventure Comics #32 give some insight into how his mind works? Would he have been a precursor to Hunter S. Thompson or the Village People? Does anybody know anything about Winiarski? Is he still alive?

And notice that Gabby the Sidekick has the nerve to ask that question while bathing in a bowler hat. In that fourth panel, it looks like he's dropped the towel.

Of course, back in 1938, this was all innocent and no one thought twice about subtext. We're totally reading stuff into these panels.

Aren't we?