Racism in comics

[HighAndMighty]

Ladybird print a number of different versions of classic fairy tales, banded to age/reading ability.

The two covers posted by Peter above are both availble for sale now. The simpler one is a "read it yourself" level 1 which is for kids of 4/5...

It does look "educational" and boring... it IS educational and boring. It's certainly not going to make kids love books or appreciate illustrations.

You're better off getting the "proper" version of the books (posted above left), reading them to your kids and giving them a good old fright (I remember the Red Riding Hood and the 7 Little Kids stories having terrifying wolves).

Not sure that these are the original illustrations but they're true to the spirit of them if nothing else.

[Kashgar]

I come from a generation who lived through the nightmare of having to watch the antics of the truly horrific dwarf in 'The Singing, Ringing Tree' and proudly survived to tell the tale, so this modern day namby-pamby troll offends my atavistic desire as child to be scared by genuinely scary things.
I remember having a book of Grimms Fairy Tales when I was a small kid that contained one or two full page illustrations, one of the witch in the Hansel and Gretel story comes immediately to mind, that used to scare the short pants off me, but they were also the pages that I would most often pore over with unabashed relish when I got the oppurtunity.
Do kids really need to have their sensibilities so considered that even trolls start to look like social workers?

[Cap Haggis]

Kashgar - I to remember the dwarf in the "Singing Ringing Tree" and was seriously freaked by it - brilliant stuff and a quality story - Is it not true that the original Grimms Fairly tales and illos were really shocking showing scenes of children (or the witch?) being cooked alive ? - Re comics, 2 strips that frightened me as a child were Steve Ditkos Spiderman in POW! - I found Ditkos art very creepy (in a good way - and I'am still a massive fan of his work today) the other featured the work of that twisted genius Ken Reid, especially his work on Fudge The Elf (Fudge and the Dragon in particular) where there are some beautifully horrific scenes in a forrest - and again I adore Ken Reid to this day (his Frankie Stein strip gave me nightmares at time as well). I Loved those strips and they made me want to read more on my own and I never got into sicko horror because of it or did anything bad it just sparked my imagination (although I regret joining the Church Of Satan at age 7 )

[Peter Gray]

from Lews super blog...
Is this wrong for todays comics?
Or is it just a comic and not real life?

I'd say its Tom and Jerry humour...so I'm fine with it...and much funnier

Itchy and Scratchy do this...even in the Simpson comics...so why are our Brits not doing this........
mind you America has problems with nudity while we don't so much..

[Cap Haggis]

Exactly Peter I just don't understand the UK comics problems with comic book violence in this manner it is obviously a cartoon - I'm not sure if DCT just self regulate themselves now or if its the family groups that monitor these books etc (ie media types) - I think the Simpson get away with it via Itchy and Scratch as they are parodying the genre either that or they don't care - as long as the violence isn't cruel I dont see a problem its just slapstick.

[Lew Stringer]

[img:400:350]http://bp1.blogger.com/_448y6kVhntg/RhI ... etail2.jpg[/img]
from Lews super blog...
Is this wrong for todays comics?
Or is it just a comic and not real life?

I'd say its Tom and Jerry humour...so I'm fine with it...and much funnier

Itchy and Scratchy do this...even in the Simpson comics...so why are our Brits not doing this........
mind you America has problems with nudity while we don't so much..

It may be worth pointing out that The Nervs, from which that panel was taken (last issue of the pre-IPC Smash! 1969), was considered by some to be unsuitable for yesterday's comics too! Odhams published the strip but when IPC arrived on the scene I understand they told their editors that under no circumstances was it ever to be reprinted. (IPC's humour comics were always far softer than the Odhams comics.)

Subsequently The Nervs has never been reprinted in any British comic. (Whether it appeared in Europe I don't know.)

Thing is; it's not a problem of how kids react, but how parents react. If an irate parent finds something offensive in a comic, complains to the retail chain, and the shops pull it from their shelves, the retailers then blame (and sometimes charge) the publishers for loss of earnings.

So the less violent comics of today are mainly to do with keeping good relations between publisher and retailer than worrying if kids might copy something. (We all know that most kids are more intelligent than that!)

It's also related to how society has changed. 40 years ago fart gags in comics were out of the question, but a punch in the nose was acceptable. Now violence is frowned upon but toilet humour is in.

I have no doubt that in 40 years time someone on a forum like this will be asking "Why can't we show great steaming turds in comics any more?"

Lew

[Kashgar]

It seems to me that most parents these days are becoming increasingly paranoid, thanks to a lot of specious do-goodery promolgated by the media etc, about what in fact makes them a good parent and as a consequence they are over-reacting in all sorts of ways to all sorts of rather innocuous things. After all if most parents grew up in a time when cartoon violence was the norm and, if they are being honest, were unaffected by it then why are they so vehemently opposed to their own kids being entertained by it. I can only assume that it is because they fear they will be judged as wanting when the good parenting 'gongs' are handed out.
One upside to this state of affairs does exist however and that is that vintage strips that flouted these new 'rules' now seem more edgy and even more rib-tickling than they even did at the time. As I write this I'm looking at a Dennis the Menace strip that has a 'shocking' denouement in the electrical current sense with lots of zig-zag lines denoting Dennis' dads attachment to the national grid and boy is it funny, but made even more so by the fact that it is the sort of thing that you wouldn't get away with today.

[Lew Stringer]

It seems to me that most parents these days are becoming increasingly paranoid, thanks to a lot of specious do-goodery promolgated by the media etc, about what in fact makes them a good parent and as a consequence they are over-reacting in all sorts of ways to all sorts of rather innocuous things.

Agreed. The public is so easily goaded into paranoia by the media. Also, I think that many parents forget what it was like to be a child. as kids we knew the difference between comic violence and real violence. Every kid does. As one grows older, and has experiences of violence or tragedy one becomes more sensitive to such stories perhaps, but those parents should remember that the innocence of childhood gives kids a different perspective on comics than the same stories seen with adult eyes.

Lew

[felneymike]

While not exactly a comic, i have a 70's reprint of a story from The Gem of 1929, and the reprints provided are complete issues, so also include the features, editorial and the 'second story' which was a serial in short instalments, the one in those issues is called "All on his own" and has some very very shocking racism, it's not just "oh look at the darkie, chaps", this is seriously mean-spirited propaganda painting black people as bullying, stupid, theiving, unsporting and cowardly. Oddly enough the same serial also includes very blatant product-placement for Ford cars, with a kid who's probably supposed to be about 10 spouting "That's what you get with a well-built, sensibly priced and reliable car under your command!"

[Kashgar]

In all the years that Valiant was published, 1962-1976, its only ever present character was 'Capt Hurricane' whose strip was nearly always spread over four to four and a half pages making him, despite the likes of the Steel Claw and Kelly's Eye, quite the star of the paper. Looking back and trying to assess Hurricane's success it is easy to see that his famous 'raging furies', a point of near apoplectic anger reached at the denouement of each story, obviously played a big part in his appeal and one particular feature of these 'raging furies' was the colourful language he used while dispatching the enemy whether they were German (Krauts, sausage munchers etc) or Japanese ( Nips, slit-eyes etc). My question leading on from this is, in this context, should we deride this language as being racist, given that we were at war with Germany and Japan at the time the strip was meant to be set and, if so, even in a rather cartoonish case such as Capt Hurricane which never pretended to be anything other than a comic strip set during WWII, what language could we have used instead?
I only mention this because earlier in this strand someone mentioned that calling Japanese 'Nips' in a war story was racist but surely in a war context the language of racism becomes rather secondary. I'm sure if I were being bombed and shot at by an enemy of whatever persuasion I would feel I had the right to call them any bloody name I felt appropriate.

[felneymike]

I always thought Capt. Hurricane's rants at Germans where hilarious myself. Some of the stuff he said ("You bratwurst-munching sons of brandenburg bootmakers!") was on a par with another captain's famous rants in Tintin XD

[colcool007]

.... I'm sure if I were being bombed and shot at by an enemy of whatever persuasion I would feel I had the right to call them any bloody name I felt appropriate.

If on the receiving end, it's one way of relieving your frustration when you can't do anything about it.

[Lew Stringer]

I'm sure if I were being bombed and shot at by an enemy of whatever persuasion I would feel I had the right to call them any bloody name I felt appropriate.

There's enough profanities to choose to call someone without insulting their race IMHO.

I never really liked Captain Hurricane and would usually skip those pages, as I did with most war stories in comics. Turning World War 2 into some gung ho punch-up never appealed to me at all I'm afraid.

Lew

[Peter Gray]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7092601.stm

Interesting piece...to join our debate here...

[Cap Haggis]

MMMMM I think its all very personal but for me Middle class "ENGLAND" (ie UK) means less than nothing (beinga Scot- who has just wartched his country lose to world champs Italy in the last 25 seconds after "pummeling " them fpr 44 minutes whislt England get a life line for doing nothing (ok I m bittr at the moment but trying to make kind of point re Janet and John) ie whats fair ????? still is this "universally felt among the UK readership ? OOR WULLIE ? etc its not really racism being addresed to me its socail acceptance / class. no????