Is this racist? | Airboy hates cephalopods

I debated using this cover for an Everyone Hates Cephalopods post. My first reaction was that it's a racist caricature and that I shouldn't. Not that I never feature racist imagery on this blog, but when I do it's always in the context of trying to learn from it. The cephalopods posts are just for fun, so I don't want to just throw out an offensive image in that context without commenting on it.

The more I look at it though, the more I wonder if this is racist. The human head on the octopus is relatively realistic and doesn't have the exaggerations that usually appear in World War II depictions of Japanese people. Also, the Rising Sun symbol on the octopus' back implies that it represents an entire political entity; not a stereotyped individual. In other words, it's depicting Japan as a dangerous, frightening enemy with a long reach, but one that Airboy (and, by association, the Allies) is prevailing against.

I understand that my own race can get in the way of my interpreting these things though, so that's why I throw the question out to you. Is this a racist image, an accurate depiction of WWII events, or both?

[Image from Golden Age Comic Book Stories]

Art Show: Who gets the blues?

Cowgirl Action



By Allen Anderson. [Golden Age Comic Book Stories]

The Outlaw



By Alberto Vargas. [Golden Age Comic Book Stories]

Spicy Western



Artist Unknown. HJ Ward, maybe? [Golden Age Comic Book Stories]

After the break: a swashbuckling count, a deadly valkyrie, and a black canary.

Art Show: No jacket, Adam. You didn’t think it through did you?

Pirate Girl



By Katie Shanahan. [Art Jumble]

Undersea Agent



By Gil Kane. [Golden Age Comic Book Stories]

It's Valkyrie, Airboy!



By Fred Kida. [Golden Age Comic Book Stories]

After the break: Sandmen, Shang Chi and Friends, Wonder Woman, magic, creeps, and a space barbarian.

Comics: The God of the Green Death!

Never Call a Ghost



Especially a pirate ghost. [Pappy's Golden Age Comics Blogzine]

Vampire of the Deep



[The Horrors of It All]

Creature from the Amazon



Not so much an adaptation of Creature from the Black Lagoon as a rip-off of it. Still lots of fun though. [Part One and Part Two at The Horrors of It All]

Judy of the Jungle and the Treasure of Lobengula



[The Comic Book Catacombs]

The Screaming Skull



[It's the second story down at Golden Age Comic Book Stories]

Airboy vs Valkyrie



Maybe it's her name; maybe it's her hairdo; maybe it's something else. Whatever it is, Valkyrie's one of my favorite villains. [Pappy's Golden Age Comics Blogzine]

Cleopatra in Space



Mike Maihack's webcomic is now updating regularly.

Futura vs the Market of Forbidden Treasures



Go for the art, but stay to check out Sleestak's insightful analysis of Futura and her actions. [Lady, That's My Skull]

And Now the News: A Tough Nut to Crack

I'm waaaay behind (like months behind) on news, so I'll need some time to catch up. Here's a little bit to get started with...

Captain Daring



Pappy's got a Golden Age pirate comic. Funny; it's nothing like Tales of the Black Freighter.

10 Pirate Comics



I always love Bully's Ten of a Kind features, but I especially loved the Talk Like a Pirate Day one.

The Airfighters



From the press release I got:

Look! Up in the sky! It’s not a bird, it’s a plane! And what a plane it is! Airboy’s “Birdie” returns this January and he’s not flying solo.

Writing legend Chuck Dixon once again mans the stick for the adventures of Airboy in Moonstone’s all new Air Fighters #1.

Flying in Airboy’s squadron you’ll see Sky Wolf, Black Angel, Flying Dutchman, Bald Eagle, Flying Fool, Iron Ace and Captain Midnight as they take on the original Axis of Evil in the air, on the ground and anywhere else their fight for freedom takes them.

With stories navigated by Tom DeFalco, Martin Powell, Jeff Limke, Len Kody, Mike Bullock and Joe Gentile, the Air Fighters will once again earn their wings by making the skies safe for liberty!

I've read some of those old Golden Age Air Fighters comics and they're completely nuts with their pilots in wolf-skins and medieval armor. They're also completely racist, but I have no doubt that'll be corrected in the Moonstone version. Looking forward to seeing these characters work together in the same squadron.

Atomic Robo and the Shadow from Beyond Time



Got another email - this one from Red 5 - about the release of the third Atomic Robo collection.

This December, the third volume of Atomic Robo debuts with the trade paperback Atomic Robo and the Shadow from Beyond Time. It collects the acclaimed five-issue mini-series, with bonus stories and art… and the web-short “Atomic Robo vs The Yonkers Devil” in print for the first time.

Atomic Robo TPB Volume 3 (Diamond Order Code: OCT091062)
It is 1926 when H.P. LOVECRAFT comes calling to warn ATOMIC ROBO of imminent doom. But the SHADOW FROM BEYOND TIME escapes into the future, intersecting with our world through the 20th century. The future and history of the universe hangs in the balance as ATOMIC ROBO teams up with, uh, ATOMIC ROBO in a last ditch effort to protect reality itself.
152 pages, $18.95, 2009-12-09

Why we won't see an Alpha Flight comic again soon



Tom Brevoort explains why Marvel can't figure out how to make a successful Alpha Flight comic:

Alpha Flight is a tough nut to crack, and in all honesty we haven't quite cracked it yet. So at the moment, there isn't any active Alpha Flight series in development. The problem with Alpha Flight is that the two things that really drove interest in them in their earliest years were the fact that they were these exciting, mysterious new characters who mixed it up with the X-Men (and in some ways resembled them as regards the tenor of their team), and the fact that their series was being written and drawn by John Byrne at the height of his powers and popularity. But when you drill down, the core concept of the series is based on geography, which is very limiting -- they're like the Avengers, but in Canada.

That's disappointing mostly because - except for the part about John Byrne's being a huge part of the team's popularity - I absolutely disagree with him. The secret of their early success wasn't their mystery. The mystery was dispelled almost immediately in Byrne's initial stories and I'd argue that those stories are the reason fans have such powerful fondness for the team.

What no writer has been able to recapture (as much as I liked Steven Seagle's X-Files-like conspiracy angle in Volume 2) is that focus on those original characters. Every single time the concept has been re-launched, it's been with one or two originals and an otherwise all-new cast. Until Marvel tries a series with the original team and that fails, I don't think they can argue that the concept itself is the problem.

Ghost Rider vs. the Orb



Know what's cooler than the Orb in a Ghost Rider comic? Absolutely nothing.

Karl Kerschl's Awesome Announcement



Accompanying the above picture, Karl Kerschl said, "I’m thinking of doing a book of animal paintings like this. Possibly a children’s book.

"Possibly an Abominable Charles Christopher children’s book…"

Oh, yesyesyesyesyesyesyes!

Action Girl Gallery: Valkyrie (Airboy version)

By Gene Gonzales.

Sorry for barely posting today. Got a couple of articles to write, one of which is a review of Air Fighters Comics #2, the first appearance of Airboy.

Links: Shannara movies, Kill All Monsters!, and Captain Action

Still catching up.

Mystery

• CBS rules. Jericho has been renewed.
• Play Dead -- about a dog who witnesses a murder and the lawyer who tries to keep him safe -- isn't at all the kind of mystery I usually read, but that might be part of the attraction I'm feeling.
• I don't know anything about Domino Lady, but I do love a crossover and a good femme fatale, so Moonstone's collection of Domino Lady stories -- featuring her meeting folks like Sherlock Holmes, The Phantom, and Airboy -- sounds worth checking out.

Spies

• My Kill All Monsters! collaborator Jason Copland has an interview out on Newsarama about the thriller he and A. David Lewis did called Empty Chamber. The first issue was fantastic and the second one should be out soon (next week, I think?). Update: In the comments, Jason says that he just heard from Silent Devil that it'll be out July 27.
• I'm not expecting much from it, but Paul W.S. Anderson (Alien vs. Predator) is directing a movie based on the Spy Hunter video game. The Rock was previously attached as the film's star a couple of years ago when John Woo was going to direct it. No word yet on whether he'll still be in it.

Horror

• Horror novelist Peter Straub is writing a graphic novel for DC/Vertigo.
• The trailer's out for Will Smith's I Am Legend movie. It's very coy about whether the threat is vampires (like in the book) or zombies (yawn) or something else, but it looks good so far.

Fantasy

• Warner Brothers wants to turn Terry Brookes' Shannara books into a movie franchise. Wisely, they plan to skip the first novel in the series, the Tolkein rip-off Sword of Shannara, and begin with the second book, The Elfstones of Shannara. As much as I complain about Brookes' style and the derivative plot of Sword, I really do have a fond place in my heart for these books and I'd love to see them done well as a series of movies.
• It's been a while since I'd heard news about the next Narnia movies. Sounds like the next one, Prince Caspian, comes out next summer, with the third one, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, coming out the summer after that.

Blogger's acting weird, so I think I'm going to have to finish this in a separate post.