Three Quick Reviews
May. 8th, 2009 10:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jeriendhalDr. Seuss Goes to War: The World War II Editorial Cartoons of Theodor Seuss Geisel, by Richard H. Minear: Before he hit it big as a children's author, Geisel spent the period from 1941 to early 1943 as an editorial cartoonist for the NYC leftist daily newspaper [1] PM. This collection is a survey of his cartoons, done in his signature Seuss style, but focusing on such diverse topics as American isolationism and the internal problems of racism and anti-Semitism.
Given this decidedly liberal bent then, it's rather shocking to come across his cartoons attacking the Japanese (several months prior to Pearl Harbor even.) Hitler and Mussolini are depicted as comic figures, utter blowhards and dangerous idiots, but human. "Japan" (never actually identified as either General Tojo or the Emperor) is a generic cartoon Asian, with the stereotypical buck teeth and glasses. Perhaps the worst of the lot is one post-Pearl Harbor cartoon depicted Japanese west coast residents lining up to get sticks of dyunamite to act as Fifth Columnists. This, from the man who later wrote "The Sneetches" and the "Great Butter Battle Book".
Still, it's a good survey of his work, marred by analysis text that doesn't really analyze which is stuck in four big lumps in the book instead of broken up to explain the context of the individual cartoons, which would have been user friendly and useful.
Secret Identity, Kurt Busiek: The story of Clark Kent, a small town boy. No, not that Clark Kent. For one thing, he's not an orphan from another planet, and he grew up in Picketsville, not Smallville. In this universe Superman is just a comic book, his parents just had a poor taste in name choices and he's really quite sick of the "Superboy" jokes. It's the real world, there's no Lex Luthor, no Lois Lane, and he doesn't have any powers.
Except that one evening, he figures out that he does.
A lovely little mini-series, examining what life would be like for one kid who has Superman's powers in the "real" world, as he grows to adulthood, gets married (to a lovely lady named Lois, but her last name isn't "Lane" and her parents are east Indian), has kids and gets old. There is an evil lab and government conspiracy, but that isn't the center of the plot and it gets resolved in a very non-comicky fashion. Highly recommended.
Star Trek, the Manga, Mike Barr: A series of ST:TOS stories drawn in the typical Japanese manga style. Which is a neat idea, but the stories themselves are terribly weak for the most part and not worth the price of the book. The second volume, written by a variety of authors (including TNG's Wil Wheaton) is much better.
[1] This isn't an insult. It was unabashedly partisan in its politics.
Given this decidedly liberal bent then, it's rather shocking to come across his cartoons attacking the Japanese (several months prior to Pearl Harbor even.) Hitler and Mussolini are depicted as comic figures, utter blowhards and dangerous idiots, but human. "Japan" (never actually identified as either General Tojo or the Emperor) is a generic cartoon Asian, with the stereotypical buck teeth and glasses. Perhaps the worst of the lot is one post-Pearl Harbor cartoon depicted Japanese west coast residents lining up to get sticks of dyunamite to act as Fifth Columnists. This, from the man who later wrote "The Sneetches" and the "Great Butter Battle Book".
Still, it's a good survey of his work, marred by analysis text that doesn't really analyze which is stuck in four big lumps in the book instead of broken up to explain the context of the individual cartoons, which would have been user friendly and useful.
Secret Identity, Kurt Busiek: The story of Clark Kent, a small town boy. No, not that Clark Kent. For one thing, he's not an orphan from another planet, and he grew up in Picketsville, not Smallville. In this universe Superman is just a comic book, his parents just had a poor taste in name choices and he's really quite sick of the "Superboy" jokes. It's the real world, there's no Lex Luthor, no Lois Lane, and he doesn't have any powers.
Except that one evening, he figures out that he does.
A lovely little mini-series, examining what life would be like for one kid who has Superman's powers in the "real" world, as he grows to adulthood, gets married (to a lovely lady named Lois, but her last name isn't "Lane" and her parents are east Indian), has kids and gets old. There is an evil lab and government conspiracy, but that isn't the center of the plot and it gets resolved in a very non-comicky fashion. Highly recommended.
Star Trek, the Manga, Mike Barr: A series of ST:TOS stories drawn in the typical Japanese manga style. Which is a neat idea, but the stories themselves are terribly weak for the most part and not worth the price of the book. The second volume, written by a variety of authors (including TNG's Wil Wheaton) is much better.
[1] This isn't an insult. It was unabashedly partisan in its politics.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-05-08 02:32 pm (UTC)Remember the time frame. The liberal Democratic president, FDR, was doing everything he could to resist the isolationists, help the British, and get America involved in the War. It took Pearl Harbor before we could act directly; but the liberals of the 1940s were by no means pacifist, anti-war, or anti-interventionist. As for the blatant racism, it was the Democrats at the time who were passing Jim Crow laws and joining the Klan. Some of it might be personally upsetting, to see the beloved Dr. Seuss writing some of this stuff, but it's not by any means inconsistent for the era.
his parents just had a poor taste in name choices
I know someone named Kent Clark.
no subject
Date: 2009-05-08 07:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-08 09:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-08 04:14 pm (UTC)It's amazing, with several longer pieces, a bunch of cartoon shorts, and the incredible movie rendering of Major Alex de Seversky's Victory Through Air Power, credited with getting Churchill and Roosevelt on the same page with regards to the need to move the war focus to strategic bombing of the Germans, that Disney finished on his own dime.
no subject
Date: 2009-05-08 07:56 pm (UTC)Another Disney Classics set I like a lot is their Man in Space series. Fascinating stuff, to see what people thought about how the US space program ought to proceed.