![]() ![]() Which is why this first mission for Fury's team is a big one: ensuring that D-Day goes off without a hitch! As the comic opens, we see LaBrave, leader of the French underground, radioing US troops for aid - right before Nazi soldiers burst in and capture him! Since he knows the time and details of D-Day, Fury's superior officer explains, it's imperative that he and his Howlers track down and liberate LaBrave from the clutches of the enemy before they can torture the information out of him. Stan and Jack, being masters of their craft, knew the need to start off strong.Nicholas Fury is a take-no-prisoners kind of guy. Even with the wildly over-the-top style with which the action is portrayed, that distinction alone places the comic on a different level than all of the (nevertheless enjoyable!) superhero comics Marvel was producing at the time. But here, while good taste is utilized in the depiction - we see grenades launched and a Molotov cocktail lobbed, but no sight of flaming bodies or destroyed limbs - there's no denying that they're fighting for keeps here. The pre-modern superhero comics always made a point that heroes don't kill, and even their villains were rarely shown to engage in more than mere dastardly behavior the unintentional joke in reading a Rawhide Kid comic is how he always disarms his opponents by harmlessly shooting the guns out of their hands, rather than shooting the villains themselves. Perhaps the most shocking thing to the typical reader of Silver and Bronze Age Marvels is how the comic doesn't shy away from a soldier's obligation to kill his enemies. ![]() and then saved, miraculously, by members of the French Resistance! Can we truly believe that the person responsible for the "fix" really thought the colorist accidentally chose the wrong color on one character, in every panel that character appeared in, in the entire book?Ĭornered, boxed in, with nowhere to go. However, we're not talking about one panel being corrected, but a character's appearance throughout. That's the story, at least, but it seems somewhat suspect: After all, the idea that someone might have assumed this to be a mistake is perhaps plausible, if horribly naive ("Why would there be a black man in a comic book?"). In fact, in this first issue Gabriel Jones was famously colored the same hue as his companions the colorist who worked on the issue had colored the character correctly, but the printer noticed the "error" and "fixed" it. and that's it.) While there were thankfully few missteps as embarrassing as the Legion of Super-Heroes' Tyroc blunder in 1976, it's worth keeping in mind that, yes, even into the 1970s decision-makers at the big companies displayed questionable judgment on the issue of race. (In all the comics reviewed on this site so far, how many non-white characters have appeared? And how many of those as non-villains? Off the top of my head, I count Ho Yinsen, who helped Tony Stark build his first Iron Man. While this admirably reflects the reality of the enlisted men they served alongside, such ethnic diversity wasn't something generally portrayed in comics of the time.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |