That said, it looks like the soon to be released Cap. America film is going to do the same thing as the current Avengers ‘toon (i.e.- Hydra in place of Nazis); a move I find baffling. It seems a touch insulting to those who died in the war, and I fear might be a deciding factor in the success or failure of the movie (read- contributing to people hating it; I hear people bash X-Men 3 for much less). What REALLY honks me off though is the modern condemnation of “propaganda” comics and cartoons from the WWII era (Superman advertizing war bonds, Daffy Duck fighting straight up Nazis, Cap. punching Hitler in the face, etc.) For one thing, its another example of the absurdity of imposing contemporary morals on historical subjects, and at worst its indirectly condoning the actions of the Axis powers- you know, the aggressors in the war who preached ethnic superiority as an excuse for genocide.

Oh, and the Surfer/Elf Quest connection is awesome. The trippy Marvel Sci-Fi of the 70s reminds me a lot of Elf Quest. Also, I agree with the other comments about the Silver Surfer ‘toon- it was brilliantly done and cut down much too early.

And EC’s totally still in business. MAD is one of the most successful magazines of all time, and still going strong. EC’s now under the DC banner, like Wildstorm etc.

I actually enjoyed the Elfquest books I was able to get a hold of, although mainly in tradepaperback form. I never got to the end of their story though.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navajo_rug#Folklore

“Weaving plays a role in the creation myth of Navajo cosmology, which articulates social relationships and continues to play a role in Navajo culture. According to one aspect of this tradition, a spiritual being called Spider Man instructed the women of the Navajo how to build the first loom from exotic materials including sky, earth, sunrays, rock crystal, and sheet lightning. Then another spiritual being known as Spider Woman taught the Navajo how to weave on it.”

Just saw this in PBS:

http://www.pbs.org/opb/historydetectives/investigations/704_navajorug.html

So yeah, that episode of Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends was really on to something.

http://www.collectorsguide.com/fa/fa086.shtml

See…Hiawatha Smith taught me something. I feel more smarter already now.

I do not disagree with the sentiment, but do hate some of the numbers 90% of the worlds toy buying kids? You think so? I mean before any cartoon series outside of the established characters, how many of the toy buying kids had an emotional attachment to the product? How much of He-Man toy sales were outside the U.S. and how many kids had an emotional attachment to the product before the show?

Sure Cap as a franchise is probably never going to be a big seller overseas, but there is enough kids in the U.S. to matter to the point that overseas sells are usually thought of as an afterthought anyway. (until recently that is, nowadays they do think more about overseas product sales, but even in the recent past it wasn’t a big business factor—in the opposite way, try and buy a Dr Who toy in the U.S.)

Probably though the other factor that’s not been mentioned though is that even without problems to do with the villains, Captain America just doesn’t travel all that well. Even before the current problems, 90% of the world’s toy buying kids don’t have the emotional attachment to the character that you might. Just doesn’t make sense to develop the show

The “banning” of nazi symbolism was actually imposed on the Germans by the Allies in what they called the “denazification” of the country. It was part of the agreement by which the Germans were allowed to form a new government and rule themselves after WW2. It wasn’t so much an effort to “forget history” and “promote political correctness” as it was to prevent propagandists from fanning the still-glowing embers of the recently defeated Nazi party.

Marvel’s avoidance of such symbolism, was probably an effort to avoid the time and hassle of being reviewed by a German censorship board, rather than trying to adhere to a hard and fast set of rules. Although the rules, in their strictest context, are supposed to deal with “propaganda”, it’s probably a little scary to sink time and money into something that someone could subjectively reject because of a questionable translation or maybe they were having a bad day.

(( Interesting note: there was also an allied campaign to instill a “collective guilt” among the German people after the war, with propaganda featuring concentration camp victims with slogans such as “YOU ARE GUILTY OF THIS”. The objective was to make the Germans to feel implicitly involved in Hitler’s madness, with the hopes they would not let it happen again. You learn something new, every day. ))

If you want to read more, wikipedia has some great info.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denazification

Knowing is half the battle.

Please, people, let´s be serious. Are we really complaining about the lack of historical accuracy in kid´s tv shows?

Maybe we should start forbidding The Flintstones, then. Not to mention Peabody and Sherman. That time-meddling dog deserves a stern talk-to.

They also popped up in an Iron Fist storyline as well, since they were friends with one of the Sons of The Tiger characters, Bob something or other.

Anyway, I happen to also be currently reading”The Chrysalids”, by John Wyndham, right now. It was published in 1955, and is about a small segment of a post-apocalyptic world (Newfoundland and Labrador, actually) in which mutation is rampant and highly feared by the people there. I suppose it’s possibly just a coincidence that “An Eye For An Eye” came out around the same time and featured many of the same scenes (including the one with mutated babies being taken away from their anguished mothers, and destroyed). Or it’s possible that Torres had just read the Wyndham novel and decided to do his own take on those same themes. (Or maybe everyone was obsessed with mutation at that time, what with Hiroshima and Nagasaki being only a decade earlier and the Cold War being in full bloom by then.)

Oddly enough he is a tribute to Indiana Jones. The character studies ancient histories, is also a professor, and look at the bit where Firestar has to simulate the sun shining behind the swastika cast its shadow and tell them where the secret chamber is. There is a snake crawling around the swastika. The whole episode is an homage to Raiders of the Lost Ark which is why the Nazi references were there to begin with. I’m willing to bet that they had to soften it up quite a bit to even get what that had aired.