Captain Thunder and Superman 276

[TELLE]

Canadians are bad swimmers for the same reason!

[Permanus]

You know, I'd never heard this stereotype before. I'm a lousy swimmer, which is a bit of a pity considering the fact that I live on an island that suffers from erosion.

[Lee Semmens]

From a CC Beck interview:

Steamboat was created to capture the affection of negro readers. Unfortunately he offended them instead and was unceremoniously killed off after a delegation of blacks visited the editor's office protesting because he was a servant, because he had huge lips and kinky hair and because he spoke in a dialect. He was always a cartoon character, not intended to be realistic at all, but he was taken seriously by some, sadly enough.

I had read these views of C.C. Beck before (in Alter Ego, I think), but I find it rather disturbing he still held them many years after Steamboat was featured, and didn't - or wouldn't - seem to understand why any offence may have been taken.

But then, in just about every thing I have read by (and about) Beck he came across as a very obstinate and strongly opinionated man, usually not willing to admit he could ever be in the wrong.

Wing, the Crimson Avenger's Asian (Chinese?) sidekick of the 1940s, is depicted as a very grotesque caricature in the Seven Soldiers of Victory stories, in my opnion.

[Gangbuster]

This myth, like all stereotypes is sooo stupid, that it is amazing that people actually believed it and some still do, even some congressmen..
see: http://digg.com/videos/people/Congressman_Blacks_Can_t_Swim

To say that blacks can't swim is sort of like saying that blacks can't play golf. In the town that I grew up in, for example, the city pool was privately owned and membership was very expensive. While middle class white kids all took swimming lessons when they were children, black kids couldn't afford it, and never learned to swim. So there is actually a grain of truth in this, but not because more pigment makes you less buoyant or some other nonsense. It's because there is still an economic gap between the descendants of former slaves and their peers, and because of privatization of certain resources, like water.

As for Ebony... on the one hand, it was a shock to open up the first volume of The Spirit and see this minstrel show character in it. On the other hand, he was the first black superhero in an industry that ignored black people for even 30 years after that. (This article has the order wrong, Ebony came first in June 1940, which would have still been the spring.) If you read The Spirit in historical context, (but not too much historical context) then it's still a good read.