The methods used by women suffragettes, working to gain their right to vote, varied amongst the different movements. In the U.S., the women’s movement used mostly peaceful protest, while in Britain, part of their movement was becoming increasingly militant. They threw bricks, smashed windows, engaged in arson, and even bombed public buildings. Emeline Pankhurst was a leader of this militant approach.

In October & November 1913, just recently released from prison, Pankhurst visited the U.S. for a speaking tour. While British authorities were more than happy to see her going, there was a debate in the U.S. prior to her arrival, on whether she should even be allowed entrance. Their fear was that Pankhurst would persuade U.S. suffragettes to take up the more violent approach of their British counterparts.

Today’s post presents Cartoons Magazine‘s coverage of what was labeled as “Pankhursteria”, surrounding her U.S. tour. First, we have the five pages on Pankhurst, from Cartoons Magazine‘s November 1913 issue. Cartoons accompanying this issue’s article, were taken from Jay Norwood “Ding” Darling (above), W.A. Ireland (below left), and Nelson Harding (below right).

Click on the above & below pages, to see the cartoons in fuller detail, and be able to read the text.

Above, the last two pages from the November 1913 issue, including art by Guy Spencer and E.A. Bushnell.

Beneath, the opening pair of pages of December 1913‘s Cartoons Magazine article, with a full page cartoon by Daniel Fitzpatrick, at right.

Additional cartoons: above, by Robert Satterfield and Winner; below, by Billy Ireland and Ole May.

Click on Women’s History to view prior postings of that subject.

Doug Wheeler

Women’s History Billy Ireland

Today for Native American Heritage Month, we have a second extract artist L.P. Thompson‘s 1929-published collection, The Daily Oklahoman’s Outline of Oklahoma History. Like last week’s set of pages (this time from near the center of the book), they deal with the forced removal of Native Americans from their lands, into the confined borders of less desirable land, within Reservations set up in Oklahoma.

Click on the below pages, to make them large enough to read.

Doug Wheeler

NativeAmericanHistory General Custer George Custer

Here at Comics Tunes Tuesdays we like to mix it up a little when we talk about the nexus of comics and records. Sometimes we focus on a topic that’s current, like the new Thor movie or the 75th anniversary of Superman. Sometimes we spotlight a character or an artist who deserves special recognition, apropos of a recent event. Other times we share a song for no good reason at all. This is one of those times.

Today’s focus is on Tweety Pie. Yes, I said “pie.” There has been a sinister movement by Warner Bros. to retroactively change this character’s name. Just the way Hanna-Barbera took the word “gay” out of The Flintstones theme song and pretended it never happened, those revisionist Warner boys have been trying to convince the public that their little yellow bird is, and always has been called Tweety Bird. We know that’s not true, don’t we cartoon fans?

The fact is, the first official cartoon appearance of the baby bird was in a cartoon called “Tweetie Pie,” released in 1947, the first Warner Bros. cartoon to win an Academy Award. You can look it up. Obviously, “Tweety Pie” is a clever word play on “sweetie pie.” While “Tweety Bird” isn’t a play on anything. It’s just dumb. It’s like Barky Dog or Grumpy Cat. Why bother?

And yet, Warners insists it’s bird and not pie. Why? What are they covering up? That’s why, I, DJ David B., have been campaigning relentlessly over the past 66 years (on and off) to right this wrong and restore Tweety Pie as the official name of this beloved (and delicious) bird.

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Never-before-seen art by Mark Mayerson

By the way, in “Tweety Pie” the cat’s name is Thomas, not Sylvester. Don’t have a canary, Warner Brothers! Relax and enjoy this hit record by Mel Blanc.

Click the link below and know the truth!

I TAUT I TAW A PUDDY TAT - Mel Blanc

Here’s another example of The Spirit Section from earlier on it’s run when The Spirit still had his “autoplane”, a flying car, and Ebony White was positively inhuman looking.

And here’s a very odd Mr. Mystic story that deals with a Dr. Gadasky who in a past life was a Cro-Magnan man on a world where early an coexisted with dinosaurs. What makes this one even odder is that as drawn and colored Dr. Gadasky could either be an (a) African-American, or (b) a Pacific Islander or (C) a contemporary Cro-Magnan-American. Which would mean this story also takes place on a world where Cro-Magnan co-existed with modern man.

The 1920′s and 30′s saw a trend of certain newspapers creating and publishing original educational comic strips chronologically presenting local history. The best known example of these strips, was Texas History Movies. Most of these histories — created by whites for their paper’s majority white audience — quickly gloss over the treatment of Native Americans, if they deal with the subject at all. Typical of that approach was the 1930 published Pictorial History of New Brunswick (shown here last year), in which Native Americans are depicted welcoming European settlers, followed almost immediately by a series of land exchanges from one European settler to the next, with zero explanation of how it got into white hands in the first place.

This year, for Native American Heritage Month, we have a few extracts from one of the rarer collections of these types of strips: The Daily Oklahoman’s Outline of Oklahoma History, created by the Daily Oklahoman‘s Art Director, L.P. Thompson. It ran in that paper from September 1928 to February 1929, with this collection published that same (1929) year. It was undoubtedly influenced by the slightly earlier Texas History Movies, just south of its borders.

While the comic strip histories from other states/territories only briefly took note of the presence of Native Americans, Oklahoma — a state into which many tribes were forcibly relocated, could not do so as easily. Yes, Outline of Oklahoma History is still written from the white perspective, but it at least touches on a number of events involving the interaction between white and native cultures, and including some of the atrocities committed by the conquering whites (albeit presented in a bland, non-threatening way). More than half of its pages includes Native Americans.

In today’s extract, I’ve skipped to Page 22, because I wanted to show the pages involving the forced Cherokee relocation to Oklahoma Reservations (known as the “Trail of Tears”).

Click on the above & below pictures, to view the pages in detail, and be able to read the text.

To find prior years’ posts involving Native American History, click here.

Doug Wheeler

NativeAmericanHistory

This is old news already but we’d be remiss if we didn’t cover it. (And if there’s one thing we don’t want to be, it’s remiss.)

Superman has been around for 75 years! It seems like just yesterday that Action #1 appeared on newsstands and here it is 75 years later. Wow. Although I don’t actually remember 1938, I do remember Superman’s 25th anniversary in 1963, and the 50th anniversary in 1988. It seems like these anniversaries happen every 25 years or so.

A lot has changed over these last 75 years. I could go through and list all the changes but someone cleverer than me created this wonderful graphic and a picture is worth a thousand words (or so they say).

Click to see the big picture

The temptation is to show that first cover of Action #1 but we’ve all seen that a million times. Likewise the first issue of Superman. But what you rarely see are the first five issues all in one place. You’re welcome.

Click the picture and it blows up real good.

What can be said about Superman that hasn’t already been said? Not much, that’s why I prefer to let the music do the talking. This Tuesday I’d like to share with you the theme from the Superman movie of 1978, back when we were celebrating the mere 40th anniversary. It still holds up well, particularly because of the three-note da-dada that has the same rhythm as “Su-perman.”

Ugh. I can’t do it. I can’t end this without including that first cover, no matter how many times it’s been seen. As a special treat, I’ll show a giveaway reprint instead. This way it’s not technically Action #1 and it’s not quite a cliché.

Click the link below and you’ll believe you can fly!

Theme from Superman movie - John Williams

When I started writing this blog back in 2007 (has it really been 6 years already?) the process involved meticulously going through my massive record collection in search of comics-related tunes. On more than one occasion I hunted down a record on eBay and paid dearly for an album with an appropriate song on it. I scoured record stores, asked record-collector friends for input, even went so far as to petition the government for a grant to research the nexus of comics and records! (Okay, that last one isn’t true, I was just trying to impress you.) Once the particular 45 or LP was in my sweaty little hands I painstakingly transferred the desired song to CD-R, then ripped the song from the CD to the mp3 format where it was then uploaded to the powerful Super I.T.C.H. servers for your listening pleasure.

These days, thanks to Google (the subject of my first blog!) and Amazon, I can find a song for just about any purpose and – bingo! – it’s ready to enjoy. Sure, it’s not as much fun as scrounging though mildewed boxes of records in search of an elusive piece of vinyl, but it’s a lot faster. Which leaves me more time to listen to music and less time spent on fruitless record safaris.

Which brings me to this week’s spotlight on Thor: The Dark World. The film just opened last Friday and already I have the soundtrack to share with you. No fuss, no muss. But first, some classic covers featuring Loki, Thor’s half brother, who co-stars in the movie, albeit without those giant horns on his hat.

Click the link below and listen!

Thor - The Dark World - Brian Tyler

I’ve been reading Will Eisner’s legendary The Spirit since the Warren Magazines reprints came out in the 70′s, but one comic I’ve always wanted to read for myself were the actual Spirit Sections from whence the character sprang. Mostly because the idea of a 16-page Sunday newspaper supplement that appeared in Sunday newspapers was absolutely mindblowing to me growing up, but I must confess writing about it gives me the opportunity to acknowledge something the average compulsive comic book guy refuses to; most of the stories featuring The Spirit weren’t done by Will Eisner and weren’t all that great. Not that they were, you know, terrible exactly, depending on which artist was ghosting for Eisner while he was int he army they could be breezy little crime thrillers, an inoffensive mix of action and pretty girls with touches of low comedy provided by a grotesque sidekick. In short, they closely adhered to the formula seen in 40′s B-movies or radio shows featuring professional Saint knockoffs The Falcon and/or Boston Blackie.

While he started out as a pretty conventional masked comic book vigilante like those fellows he quickly evolved into a laughing Robin Hood type plainclothes adventurer who in spite of having no visible means of support never got paid for fighting crime. Aso like them The Spirit managed to maintain a fairly chummy relationship with a police official in spite of the fact said official was regularly compelled to pursue him for crimes he didn’t commit. He had a usual suspect supporting cast consisting of a semi-regular girlfriend who saw his career as competition for her affections, when she wasn’t inserting herself into his adventures, and a foul ball sidekick with a mouth made for malaprops. The radio/B-Movie sleuths preferred doughy ex-convicts but The Spirit had a kid, toxic racist stereotype Ebony White.

In a 2003 interview with Will Eisner (ironically titled “Never Too Late”) in Time magazine about his then new book Fagin the Jew, the subject of his stereotypical depiction of Ebony came up. As far as I know it contained the closest the author ever came to actually apologizing for Ebony; “The only excuse I have for (that portrayal) is that at the time humor consisted in our society of bad English and physical difference in identity.” No question Ebony was more of an actual person than such offenses as Steamboat and Whitewash Jones, and Eisner was unquestionably a genius. But he was also a man of his time and I suppose the closest we’ll ever come to understanding why men of that era could tolerate something which seems to us to be so obviously wrong is by accepting the bromide “that’s just the way things were.” That can never be used as a free pass, but I believe we’ve reached a point in our history where it’s just as important to understand our past as it is to judge it.

And those Spirit Sections were also home to lesser known features, like Lady Luck who was secretly socialite Brenda Banks who fought crime not so much in a costume, but a fetching sea green ensemble with the figleaf of a veil working as a mask. This outing was drawn by the artist most associated with the character, Klaus Nordling,

And Mr. Mystic. He was a fairly conventional if all powerful comic book magician who got his powers through a tattoo on his forehead he picked up in Tibet, who had fairly conventional adventures, though this one by Fred Guardineer is more outre than usual and is barely even a story as I understand the concept.

Hooray for acronyms!

Here we are a few weeks into Marvel’s new TV series and I have to say I’m enjoying it. I’ve always liked S.H.I.E.L.D. and its various agents, and it’s fun to see them in action on screen – although perhaps not as fun as reading the comics. There’s still something about holding a comic book in your hands, reading the captions and the word balloons, looking at the pictures, and turning the pages, that a television show can’t do. On the other hand, a TV show has music. Since every Tuesday here on the I.T.C.H. blog is Comics Tunes Tuesday, and this is the nexus of comics and records, putting music together with comic art is what we do.

Today’s treat for the ears is the theme music to the ABC-TV series Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (no surprise there). To go with this stirring music are some classic images of Strange Tales covers featuring Nick Fury Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.

P.S. Today is also Election Day here in these United States. I encourage you to Vote for the L.O.T.E. (the Lesser Of Two Evils). I’m hoping that this slogan makes it onto bumper stickers and soon becomes a rallying cry like “Don’t Yield, Back S.H.I.E.L.D.”

Click the link below and listen!

Theme from Agents of Shield - L’Orchestra Numerique