PROBLEMATIC ROUND-UP 007

Damn their problematic hides!

Rango: 

A former Vaudeville magician who employs a magical gem and some rubberoid mask blackface to establish himself as medicine man/bandit chief in Africa, Rango aka Harrigan is ultimately unmasked by Yarko the Great. (Wonderworld Comics 015, 1940) 

Unnamed Witch Doctor: 

This unnamed Haitian witch doctor has a very unusual scheme: blind entire American cities with a floating vision of some of his men and then loot those same cities of all of their diamonds. Why diamonds specifically? No clue. He is also notable for giving Zambini the Miracle Man a harder time than Satan himself, before eventually being killed, just like Satan himself. (Zip Comics 005, 1940)

War Hatchet: 

Fascist spies striking at the US by inciting Native American tribes to violence is unfortunately going to crop up more than a couple of times as we make our way through the comics of the Forties (and I reckon that the same plot will be recycled with Commie spies in the Fifties and Sixties, alas). This time, the plot is spearheaded by a fellow who calls himself War Hatchet, a European ex-pat turned bandit chief who has returned to the fold to do some espionage work for the dear old unnamed fatherland. 

As is often the case, War Hatchet makes an okay argument for the colonized to rise up against their oppressors, only with a bunch of murder appended and the unspoken coda that there will be new oppressors later on. Spy Smasher not only stabs him to death but chucks him into a fire afterward. (Spy Smasher 001, 1941)

the Yellow Horde: 

The Yellow Horde is a gang of guys in cool looking yellow suits who break into defense plants and shoot poison gas balls everywhere. They turn out to be Chinese, and while the name is arguably in reference to the cool suits I just can't bring myself to trust 1940s America not to get a little bit of racism in for fun.

The Yellow Horde's boss turns out to be an unnamed costumed Nazi who is pretending to be Chinese but also forcing the Horde into doing his bidding. why both? Who knows. Ultimately he gets beaten up by the Hood. (Cat-Man Comics 005, 1941)

PROBLEMATIC ROUND-UP 001

The kinds of character that are a part of comics history so it would be wrong to ignore them but are also pretty racist (usually - I'm sure that eventually I'll find something else distasteful enough to put here) and unpleasant to dedicate a whole lot of time to. We're going with a round-up!

Our first culprit is George Harvard AKA Big Sun, a guy with a way too complicated plan to sell oil to the Axis out of the Florida Everglades under the cover of being a geological surveyor or prospector or something. He comes to the attention of adventurer Clip Carson due to not accounting for his partner maybe poking around looking for samples like their job is supposed to be? It's a bad plan.

I'm mad at myself for finding Big Sun's mask so cool looking, but it's mitigated by how dumb his gimmick is: he has a shiny breastplate on under his robe and he reveals it flasher-style to blind his foes. Hence the name, I guess. (More Fun Comics 069, 1941) 

I didn't even know that Zingaro was an Italian slur for people of Romani descent until I looked up this guy - just why it was used as the name of a fellow trying to take over Mexico I will never know. On the one hand he is stopped by weirdo character the Voice so that's good. On the other, he gets away so there's a chance he could appear again, which is bad. It's okay though: the Voice only ever had two adventures and this is the second one.

Thankfully there aren't too many characters whose names are racial slurs. (Amazing-Man Comics 022, 1941)

I don't know if you could call it lucky, per se, but it is kind of fortunate for the purposes of this round-up that I'm hitting a lot of the major categories of racist super-villains all in one go. We'll see if this questionable luck holds for the fourth entry.

So: Banga the Elephant God is predicated on the old trope that indigenous peoples are so credulous and superstitious that they will believe that anything (eg, a big mean elephant with a guy in a skull mask on it) is a god or other supernatural occurrence - in this case the people of the hidden jungle civilization of Yenya are helped along by the fact that the human part of the Banga gestalt is actually their witch doctor (called a "wizard doctor" in this case, which is kind of a neat linguistic variation if nothing else). Banga is eventually unmasked by jungle hero Morak the Mighty and meets his dual ends.

As with so many racist characters it is very unfortunate that Banga the Elephant God looks sick as hell. (Super-Magic Comics 001, 1941)

The very next issue we have more of the same: a bunch of white guys dress up like the very cool looking Lizard-Lion Men of local legend and fleece ivory out of villagers in... Malaysia? If Rex King aka Black Fury stayed put between issues then it's Malaysia.

There's not too much to these guys: one of them hides inside the statue of the Lizard-Lion in the local temple and says for the locals to bring all of their ivory hence and then costumed goons go beat up anyone who refuses. And then Black Fury beats them up. (Super-Magician v1 002, 1941)

We didn't hit all the greats in one go - there's a lot of untapped racism coming up once we hit the comics of 1942 after all - but it's a good - bad? - sample.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 217: THE STONE IDOL

(Detective Comics v1 056, 1941)

The Stone Idol is a bit of a weird one: a miner living in the ghost town of Ghost Gulch City discovers silver on town land and recruits an unscrupulous group of circus performers to aid him in driving out the town's remaining inhabitants so as to have all the silver for themselves. The actual Stone Idol is the circus strongman disguised as a local Native American statue in order to play on the local superstitions but really it's a group effort.

Sadly for Mad Mack the prospector and his circus of crime, the Stone Idol's push to take over the town coincides with Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson's stay in a local hotel and the entire group of them die in a mine collapse while fighting Batman and Robin. Perils of living in a comic book world, I guess.