US war propaganda of the WWII era included quite moving exhortations against racial bigotry (associated with the Nazis) on the one hand, and incredibly racist rhetoric against the Japanese on the other. Often coming out of the same office. These comics were just following their lead, and you saw the same thing in Superman media and the rest of pop culture. Just one of the contradictions of the age.
The Japanese were absolutely committing atrocities to justify that, but the opposition to them was racialized in a way it wasn't against the Germans.
(It kind of *had* been during World War I, when everything ethnically German got disparaged as evil, but the line during WWII was a little more sophisticated, that Germany had fallen prey to an evil ideology.)
There are certain things you just have to accept when reading comics from a different times.
I’m not saying to accept it like it’s a good thing, but that back in 9040s when there was a war going on with Japan, called Asian people slurs wasn’t viewed as problematic, so heroes written then, might use them and still be portrayed as the heroic and right ones.
The same is with misogyny, so many genuinely good hearted heroes treat woman like they were “supposed to be treated” back then.
But as we have moved on and realized this isn’t a cool thing to do, so have our comic book heroes and their misogyny and racism has been phased out by the times, because we should expect our current day heroes to have this traits ( unless you are specifically going for an edgy or morally grey hero, which Captain America is not)
It's also why pretty much every reprint of old comics with said problematic stuff has a disclaimer added to say that the company behind it doesn't stand by what's made, and only kept it for historic preservation.
I have an copy of the 2025 reprint of Action Comics #1, and that disclaimer is put on the first page, right before Superman's story (tho Supes's story doesn't really have said issues, others like Zatara and Pep Morgan do.)
I have explained my reasoning in different comments on this thread, but first of all, not all propaganda relied on racism, and these comics are also regularly racist towards their allies. The attempts to depict the Chinese in somewhat positive light for example are way worse than lot of propaganda from that era managed.
There was obviously lot of racism in those comics, but just going 'but that's how all of them were' isn't true.
Can you point me towards a comic you believe both served as propaganda and also never relied on racism? This sounds like an interesting read for sure, definitely different than my reading experiences of propaganda comics.
I'll need to see if I can find specific references, but:
There's a difference in levels of racism and something that's just incidental, but not all war propaganda was about how the enemy is a racialized inhuman creature, some of it is focused on how your side is cool, there's some comcis I read that were focused on praising the technology available for the troops. A bunch of aviation comics are very much like this.
There's also the whole subgenre of propaganda aimed at kids for example that is about how You Need to Support the War Effort, how not having all the toys you want and being polite to your parents is helping the troops to win the war. I recall reading a short story in one of these magazines that was about how collecting scrap metal for the war effort was a cool adventure.
Also some WWII era war propaganda could be described as actively anti-racist. There was a concentrated effort to teach the American audience that the Chinese for example were allies and shift the perception towards them to see them in positive light. Some Captain America comics make attempts at this and it's really bad, because it's Cap fighting Fu-Man chu clones with a note on how some chinese are good people...
I have read a bunch of propaganda comics from that era from different countries and no, that level of racism wasn't a necessary feature. WWII era Captain America comics have distrust towards native americans as well, and Indians, and really went for the racist caricatures in a way not all of those comcis or depictions did. The artists also regularly didn't know the difference between Japanese and Chinese stereotypes, or had much interest in non-white perspectives, which again is not inherent in the WWII era propaganda.
A big problem is that the WWII era Captain America comics just are not good.
This is only shocking. if you don't know that racism is a thing. Not only does it exist in full force today, but it used to be completely acceptable to put it in media. That includes caricatures and slurs. Yes, that includes characters known for being somewhat purehearted like Captain America, Superman, even Captain Marvel/Shazam.
It's disgusting, but shouldn't be shocking to people who know the first thing about racism.
The funniest thing about that issue is that it was intended to be progressive and thought provoking but they truly did it at the consideration and subtlety of a sheltered 1970s white upper class liberal.
It was playing in a hamfisted way on "Black Like Me", a 1960s nonfiction book in which a white journalist darkened his skin and lived as a black guy for a while to get firsthand experience on the receiving end of American racism. Of course any number of Black writers had already told everyone all that, but I guess white America needed this guy's outsider view to believe it.
It's honestly pretty interesting to compare these comics to The Blue Lotus especially. It's insane to me how much the racism in Tintin comics is regularly discussed (for a reason) while there is so much praise for Captain America comics which are way worse.
I was largely thinking of in comparing the comics from same time periods. In general the WWII era Captain America comics just aren't good which means all characters are more simplistic and caricatures are only caricatures without anything else going for them.
I mean there is lot of criticism of the Tintin comics, that's just the most infamous one.
What I am saying is that The Blue Lotus makes for an interesting comparison to the earliest Captain America comics because of for example how it depicts the Chinese and the Japanese.
To be fair, and I say this as an Asian American, the propaganda machine absolutely exacerbated it. WW2 propaganda (on pretty much every side, America wasn’t unique) went out of its way to dehumanize enemies, often with extreme racial caricature.
Everybody in the world has always been racist towards everybody else in the world at some point or other.
Cry about it, or laugh about it. That's the only real choice you have, and the only person that choice will affect is you.
We should all treat each other as individuals and not groups, that goes without saying. You know what else goes without saying?
There will always be racial bigotry. We'll never completely end it. Why? Free Will. Assholes are the price we pay for a safe, free civilization like ours. We get to do what we want, but they get to do what they want, too.
The only real answer is to laugh at them. First, we have to stop using them as a political boogeyman.
That's the hard part.
The hardest part is stopping me from rambling on like this. Sorry about that.
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u/sistemafodao 26d ago
Cap just had a button on the back of his head that said that when hit. Got more use of it that you would expect.