Right: Super Comics (Citren News Company, Canada) #1 (c. December 1941); retouches on Shield's costume by unknown artist
(Click picture to men's 21 extra-wide-size)
Pep Comics #22 is cover-dated December 1941, but was put on sale on or about October 15, 1941: seven weeks before Pearl Harbor and before the USA declared war. And the famous Hitler-sluggin' cover of Captain America Comics #1 was published in December 1940, a year before.
My point, and I do have one: be like Kirby and Novick: resist early, resist often, folks.
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQenrY-T9_-EUVG2XBTW-ZiSnvw_V3JFU-8tiFlhrdgKCUBaE56ekbiILucymY9gA-xa4zdGy_z1Njojw78Z-YnlUiN4PIRRurK7GzqoEg3B-PmXl2RJaS1ZaVKVCEHP-m-WVr2xjqailLu1jlzylysiBGc3sVXLXNMFDzAURyrHhKBfcqyO4/s1600/button-libertybellmarch.jpg" "It's...")
3 comments:
It really is interesting to me how there was this movement in US pop culture against the Axis before the country actually joined in. There was already some American policy to subtly help the Allies (Lend-Lease, and of course the Japanese oil embargo which led to Pearl Harbor to start with) but it was still a controversial thing to do (look at what happened to Chaplin.)
Both covers are by Novick. For the Super Comics cover, the art was altered by the production department to better represent Canada. The US was not allowed to import comics into Canada during WWII. So they shipped the printing plates and presented the comic as Canadian from a Canadian publisher. The interior has the standard US Shield costume. Only the cover was touched up. But this isn't a reprint of Pep #22 it's a mix of different stories from MLJ.
Also, many of the comic publishers and creators in the golden age were Jewish and that was true at MLJ comics as well. So anti-Nazi sentiment was high even before the US entered the war.
Thanks Evan and First Comics News! And especially for the background info, FCN. I didn't know the history behind shipping the printing plates and I've seen few actual Canadian comics from that period!
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