Superman VS the Ku Klux Klan

[Super Monkey]

Famous story but worth revisiting with this new article:

http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/2007/01/11/comic-book-urban-legends-revealed-85/

[jamespup]

This article from a WW2 propaganda website links back to the Superman ending the war story as seen on superman.nu

http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/superman.htm

[JulianPerez]

Hahahahaha. I always thought it was gutless of adventure fiction writers to never use real-life organizations that are so nasty and antisocial it's hard to imagine any reader getting offended.

Doc Savage, in novels like THE MAN WHO SHOOK THE EARTH, quite clearly battled the Nazis, but they were never called such. Just "agents of a European power that might be aggressors in a future war." You could just hear the writer going, "hint, hint, guys."

I wonder, though, if Superman ever battled Howard P. Lovecraft:

Speaking of the last novel, is not the title somewhat misleading? In the United States the name "Invisible Empire" is forever associated with that noble but much maligned band of Southerners who protected their homes against the diabolical freed blacks and Northern adventurers in the years of misgovernment just after the Civil War -- the dreaded Ku-Klux-Klan.

See for yourself:

http://www.erbzine.com/mag11/1137.html

As Howard Phillips Lovecraft wrote the above letter, I wonder if he ever imagined that one day his own ability as an author would outrank by far the very men he was praising!

Lovecraft...greater than Edgar Rice Burroughs?

NoooOOOoooOOOOOOOOooooOOOO!

PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH


Though Edgar Rice Burroughs was himself a klan sympathyser - check out PIRATES OF VENUS, where he praises the Ku Klux Klan. "Kung Kung Kung" my fanny. According to one source he owned a copy of MEIN KAMPF - though if he had any pro-fascist sentiment, he shed it around the time of BEYOND THE FARTHEST STAR, a very, very strange story for a man that always glamorized war, military life, and seemed at least pre-1939, more than a little on the side of the fascists.

One of the most cowardly and amusing shifts in American history was made by Americans who previously admired the efficient, anticommunist Nazi regime, and their distancing themselves from it when war broke out.

In all honesty, it's always bothered me that ERB, who was a charming archconservative, certainly, is known as a big racist...whereas Robert E. Howard, who was an even bigger one, gets a free pass. This, despite the fact that racism, implicit or otherwise, never made any Burroughs novel unreadable, whereas the Solomon Kane story, "Moon of Skulls" is so racist it's really hard to read for a modern reader. Race pseudoscience, of how race-mixing leading to petrified, dead civilizations, is fundamentally a part of how Lovecraft built the history of the world he created, from the Hyborian Age to the days of Bran Mak Morn.

God? Is it possible we can have one, ONE great adventure fiction writer that isn't an insane racist? Pretty please?

Oh yeah. Moorcock.

[Uncle Mxy]

Hahahahaha. I always thought it was gutless of adventure fiction writers to never use real-life organizations that are so nasty and antisocial it's hard to imagine any reader getting offended.

Doc Savage, in novels like THE MAN WHO SHOOK THE EARTH, quite clearly battled the Nazis, but they were never called such. Just "agents of a European power that might be aggressors in a future war." You could just hear the writer going, "hint, hint, guys."

That story was written in 1934.  At the time, there were lots of isolationists who wanted escapist fantasy and didn't want to be reminded of real-world bad stuff.  It was the editor/publisher who would tone things down as often as the writer. 

[JulianPerez]

That story was written in 1934.  At the time, there were lots of isolationists who wanted escapist fantasy and didn't want to be reminded of real-world bad stuff.  It was the editor/publisher who would tone things down as often as the writer. 

I'm not sure if MAN WHO SHOOK THE EARTH was toned down because it was escapist and supposed to be removed from bad stuff, because Doc Savage did indeed take on real world social problems through his philanthropy lots of times, like in THE CZAR OF FEAR (my personal favorite Savage novel) and that one where Doc battled the man responsible for the Great Depression (!).

[Super Monkey]

Yes, ok but it is rather assured for a comic book hero to fight real life villains.
See the reaction to Frank Miller's new Batman project: Holy Terror, Batman.

[Great Rao]

In all honesty, it's always bothered me that ERB, who was a charming archconservative, certainly, is known as a big racist...whereas Robert E. Howard, who was an even bigger one, gets a free pass. This, despite the fact that racism, implicit or otherwise, never made any Burroughs novel unreadable, whereas the Solomon Kane story, "Moon of Skulls" is so racist it's really hard to read for a modern reader. Race pseudoscience, of how race-mixing leading to petrified, dead civilizations, is fundamentally a part of how Lovecraft built the history of the world he created, from the Hyborian Age to the days of Bran Mak Morn.

Julian, I was following you up until this last paragraph.  The Hyborian Age and Bran Mak Morn were creations of Robert E. Howard, not Lovecraft.  Was that a slip of the keyboard, or were you trying to say something else?  Just how does Lovecraft fit in to this argument?

[JulianPerez]

Julian, I was following you up until this last paragraph.  The Hyborian Age and Bran Mak Morn were creations of Robert E. Howard, not Lovecraft.  Was that a slip of the keyboard, or were you trying to say something else? 

My mistake - in that paragraph I meant Robert E. Howard, of course. I segwayed from Howard Lovecraft to Robert E. Howard, connected by the thread of ERB comparisons and race/politics.