Churchill in Four Colors - Review of 'The Happy Warrior'

The Happy Warrior: The Life Story of Sir Winston Churchill, as told through Great Britain's Eagle comic of the 1950s by Clifford Makins

This book is an interesting primary source material, but I'm having some trouble understanding exactly who the target audience is. The volume is primarily a compilation of comic-book style pages from the British boys magazine 'Eagle' from the 1950s. Pulled together into a single binding, 'The Happy Warrior' becomes a graphic-novel biography of Winston Churchill. This collection runs from his boyhood through adventures in India, Egypt, South Africa, the Western Front in WWI France, and British politics before spending the second half on his WWII leadership (leaving off his Cold War influences).

This graphical section is quite effective in showing how Churchill was viewed, especially in Britain, before more critical histories of his life and leadership were published. The problem with the volume falls in other sections. An overly long introduction gives the reader an history of the 'Eagle' magazine and a blow-by-blow description of what aspects of Sir Winston's life made it into the biography and what sections were omitted at the time, and perhaps why. From the tone, the author of this section doesn't seem to know whether he is speaking to the children (now grown) who read the 'Eagle' pages in their original form, speaking to those who had never heard of the 'Eagle' before (including me), or defending Churchill (and Churchill hero-worship) before some kind of historical jury. At the end is appended the entire Wordsworth poem "Character of the Happy Warrior" -- which I have to admit I couldn't bring myself to read. The net effect is a bit jarring.

As I've said before, I am a sucker for pulp, and Sir Winston's life sometimes reads like 'Alan Quartermain and the End of the Empire!' If you were trying to create a leader to lead a Britain who stands alone before Nazi Germany in the Fall of 1940, you really couldn't think of a better background than Churchill's.

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A Japanese POW's Pictoral Diary

A friend alerted me to this little treasure trove. It is very well presented collection of drawings made by a Japanese Air Corps soldier during his time as a prisoner of war in the Soviet Union at the end of WWII.

It amazed me how positive this artist seemed to remain throughout the time he spent in Russia. The drawings feel more like those of the American Bill Mauldin than a soldier from a defeated empire.

WWII Superheros Return

It sounds like Marvel is sorry for having killed-off Captain America. In recompense, they have dug through the company archives and revived twelve super-heroes from the last days of WWII. Like Steve Rogers, these heroes have been in frozen animation. Unlike Cap, it was no accident in the Arctic. Instead, the story is that all twelve were captured by the Nazis and placed in frozen stasis for later study. It is only new construction in Berlin that has located them, purely by accident.

Since none of these characters have seen print in over sixty years, it will be interesting to see what the Marvel writers are going to do with them. While we think of the superhero genre as well-defined, back in the forties there was a blurry line between supers of the four-color comics and grittier, less morally defined characters of the pulps, like The Shadow or Doc Savage.

Wiki Distractions

It has been too long since I have updated this all. My excuse is that I roped myself into building and maintaining a wiki for the bi-weekly GURPS WWII Supers RPG campaign I am in. I debated linking Doolittle's to that wiki, but most of the other players thought that it would be a boring read for you all.

In summary, it is now April 1943 and I am playing the character of a Polish cavalryman who has been turned into a perfect soldier ala Captain America through the use of a stolen Nazi serum. Now he is fighting the Axis alongside four American superheroes in North Africa, Palestine, Italy, and soon Germany! All in all, quite fun to take my historical knowledge and watch it bump up against the other players' comic-book based assumptions.

Captain America, Dead at 66

Marvel Comics has killed-off Captain America.

The patriotic character was created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby 9 months before America entered WWII and was centered around that conflict for his first few years. Later, Cap was used by writers to reflect on what they saw as an earlier era's morals and courage.

Of course, there is something ironically fascist about a blond-haired, blue-eyed, super soldier at the 'peak of human potential.' But the comics industry has always had a the problem of how to tell their epic stories without falling into the trap of supporting 'Big Man' theories of history. Captain America's problems are nothing compared to Superman, inspired by Nietzsche's Overman philosophy.