A Twice-Told Tale About Nazis Becoming Russkies...and Being SMASHED Both TImes by Different Heroines!

This is a "twice-told tale"...

...demonstrating how similarly WWII Germans and Cold War Russkies could be portrayed in pop culture!

First, a tale starring a long-forgotten heroine from Elliot's Spitfire Comics #132 (1944)...

Secret agent Spitfire Sanders made only two appearances, in successive issues of Elliot Comics' Spitfire Comics, which despite the high numbering of this issue (#132), only had two issues!
(And this was the first of the two!)
The art on this story about an extremely competent female spy is by journeyman artist Paul Cooper, working for the Iger Studios, who also supplied art to Ajax/Farrell (where the re-worked version appeared several years later) and Fox Comics.
It was scripted by "Rick Shawn", which was likely a pen-name since he's only credited with the two Spitfire Saunders tales!

Now we jump a decade to 1954.

The Nazis have been defeated.

Communism is on the rise.

A comic book publisher needs a story about a superheroine to meet a deadline, so Nazi-Crusher Spitfire Sanders becomes...already-existing Russkie-Smasher Phantom Lady!

Oh, and due to space limitations, the original story has to be cut by a couple of pages...

For this presentation in Ajax/Farrell's Phantom Lady #5 (actually #1) from 1954, the brand new (and extremely-restrictive Comics Code also required a reduction in gunplay and use of torture instruments like whips, so a number of panels were reworked...or deleted entirely!

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Phantom Lady

TPB Reprinting the Complete Golden Age Fox Comics Series, Mostly Illustrated by Legendary Good Girl Artist Matt Baker, and with a New Cover by Good Girl Artist Adam Hughes!

Asian Avengers GREEN TURTLE "The Vengeance of the Green Turtle"

We re-presented the Green Turtle's premiere adventure HERE...

....now we continue with his second appearance, with a cover that's not by the strip's writer/artist, Chu Fook Hing!

How do we know?

Because you can see the Green Turtle's face...which was never seen before or after this!

And, his sidekick, Burma Boy is wearing a costume which also was never seen before or after this cover!

So, who did the illustration?

The answer is sadly, lost to the mists of time...

The Green Turtle's revelation of his origin was always interrupted by an emergency through the strip's entire run!
Talks about a "masked mystery man"!

The Green Turtle WILL Return...

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Shadow Hero

(the award-winning revamp of Green Turtle by Gene Luen Yang and Sonny Liew)

Asian Avengers GREEN TURTLE "The Wrath of the Green Turtle!"

With all the negative "Yellow Peril" stereotypes in Western fiction about Asians like this guy...

...we're "counter-programming" by presenting heroic Asian and Asian-American characters in pop culture!

First up...The Green Turtle!

Created/written/illustrated by Chu F Hing, one of the few Chinese-American creatives in the Golden Age, The Green Turtle was the cover-featured character for the first four of the six issues of Rural Home's Blazing Comics anthology series.

Here's his premiere appearance (but not his origin) from #1 (1944).

May be NSFW due to mild racist stereotypes of Japanese characters common during World War II.

BTW, look carefully at Green Turtle's face throughout the story...

You may have noticed that The Green Turtle's face (even with his mask on) is never shown.

There's much speculation as to whether it was simply to create an aura of mystery about him or writer/artist Chu Hing's refusal to show him with White facial features rather than Asian.

His skin has the standard 25% Magenta/25% Yellow coloring used for Whites in comics while all the Asians have skin tones at 50% Magenta/50% Yellow.

At least the publisher didn't use the "Bright Lemon" 100% Yellow skin tone some other publishers used for Asians...

The Green Turtle WILL Return...

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Shadow Hero

(the award-winning revamp of Green Turtle by Gene Luen Yang and Sonny Liew)

SPY SMASHER "Crime of Pearl Harbor"

When Last We Left America's Greatest Anti-Espionage Agent...

...on December 6th, 1941, Spy Smasher discovered a huge Japanese submarine in the waters just outside Pearl Harbor.

Unfortunately, he was captured...

(NOTE: Considered NSFW due to racial stereotypes common to the era.)

Wow!
Those last two pages were a serious attempt at propaganda/revisionist history to an impressionable young audience!

Published in early 1942, this never-reprinted tale from Fawcett's Spy Smasher #4 was created just after the events of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, so the overt racism is somewhat understandable.

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Spy Smasher

the Movie Serial