Madison - Anti-Foreign Imagery in American Pulps and Comic Books, 1920 to 1960

NATHAN VERNON MADISON

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Jefferson, North Carolina, and London

Permission granted by Argosy Communications, Inc., for use of the following magazine cover images in this volume, which are protected by their respective copyrights and trademarks owned by Argosy Communications, Inc.: Adventure, Argosy, Detective Fiction Weekly, Detective Tales, Famous Fantastic Mysteries, The Mysterious Wu Fang, and The Spider. Copyright 2012 Argosy Communications, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGUING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

ISBN 978-0-7864-7095-2

BRITISH LIBRARY CATALOGUING DATA ARE AVAILABLE

2013 Nathan Vernon Madison. All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

On the cover: Cover art from Headline Comics, No. 11, Winter 1944 (Prize Publications)

Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640www.mcfarlandpub.com

There are a good number of people I owe thanks to following the completion of this project. My appreciation goes to my masters thesis committee members, who read the original version of what would eventually become this book: Dr. Emilie Raymond, Dr. John Kneebone, and Cindy Jackson.

I would also like to thank my family: my parents, James and Sylvia, and my sisters Natalie and Stacey, and my brother-in-law Kevin. Much appreciation also goes to the staffs of the Newspaper and Periodical Reading Room; the Rare Book Room; and the Microlm Reading Room at the Library of Congress, as well as the Pulp Magazine Project, the Digital Comic Book Museum, and Phil Stephenson-Paynes Galactic Central archive of pulp magazine covers, all of which aided greatly in tracking down many primary sources.

Lastly, I would like to thank Sherry Corbin, who always insisted, against my doubts, throughout my time as an undergraduate student at the University of Mary Washington that I should do a senior, or even a masters, thesis concerning comic books.

Europe is entering an era of twilight.... It is heading for a period of social and civil warfare which is likely to last fty years and may last longer. It will emerge from this warfare a Socialist state. But the new Socialist Europe may be faced by a war greater and more crucial than any the world has yet seena war for the white mans right to leadership in civilization, a war with the yellow races of the world.Georg Brandes, 1919

The preceding prediction by Scandinavian literary theorist Georg Brandes, published on the front page of the July 13, 1919, edition of the New York Tribune, spoke volumes to many Americans still reeling from the devastation of the First World War and on the verge of a Red Scare. While America was fortunate enough to avoid the destruction that had ravaged Europe, the reverberations of the conict impacted America as violently as any military bombardment ever could. The Victorian ideal of sensibility and reason was brutally shattered, and in its place appeared an America very different from the one that had preceded it. Brandes elucidates perfectly the two central terrors that plagued America in the early years of the century and particularly following the Great War. Bolshevism was triumphant in Russia, which precipitated Red Scares at home, combined with a seemingly never-ending cascade of immigrants from Eastern Europe and Asia.

America was changing in many ways following the war, in every arenafrom womens roles in society to Prohibition to literary experimentalism; not surprisingly, fear accompanied such change. Among the strongest fears of the time were those regarding the immigrant, the outsider, the other, that had destroyed Europe or were slumbering in Asia waiting for their chance to awaken. Immigrants that did not t the traditional Anglo-American ideal had always been under scrutiny, such as the uncivilized, radical, and atheistic hordes of Eastern Europe, and the enigmatic yellow races of Asia. Such sentiments were not new and intermittently gained widespread support throughout American history, such as during wartime or severe economic downturns. Discriminatory imagery of foreigners, especially the Chinese and Eastern Europeans, appeared in excess throughout American publications in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, due in part to economic uncertainties, as well as to concerns regarding cheap labor, steep climbs in immigration, and the expansion of America into a colonial and international power. After the end of World War I, however, assaults upon these groups soared to new heightssignifying, in many minds, a life or death struggle for the survival of what was considered American. Several factors contributed to the rise in anti-foreign sentiment following the First World War. A boom in nationalism that naturally follows the end of any war was certainly one reason, especially in a period of history during which American and Anglo-Saxon were understood to be one and the same. Anxiety over the possibilities of new conicts arising out of strained international, and racial, relations also stoked anti-foreign feelings. A report on population and immigration control published in 1922 explains the connection between racial tension and the trepidation vis--vis renewed world conicts:

Around the Pacic is a new stirring of racial movements and aspirations. Russians, Chinese, Japanese, Malays, Dutch, British, Anzacs, Canadians and Americans are touching each other on the vast brim of the Pacic and are looking with

Actors of foreign birth who had been beloved silent lm stars before the war were forced to ee their adopted homes amidst nativist outcry. Anti-foreign rhetoric in politics and popular culture throughout the country rose, concurrent with an increase in isolationist policies that would last until Americas entry into the Second World War.

The predominant forms of popular literature at this time, owing in large part to low costs both in production as well as in consumption, were rst the dime novels of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, followed by the fantastic pulps of the early 1920s and 1930s, and later, particularly with the advent of World War II, comic books. These mediums offered readers of varying ages many things: fast-paced action, travels to unbelievable and far-off worlds, miracles of modern science, and a reality in which good almost always triumphed over evil. What they also offered were denitions as to what that good and evil were; in many cases, the good was personied by a heroic, strapping Anglo-Saxon male and the evil by a villain of obviously foreign origin, either a sly and crafty Oriental or a brutish Slavic criminalboth of whom invariably held an alien-like disdain for wholesome American values. If, in the event that good was not triumphant, it was usually due to the heros inability to cope with the foreign and alien nature of his opponent. The denitions of heroism and villainy reected in what are now considered undoubtedly racist imagery were inuenced and intensied by the horrors of the First World War. It was a time when America was undergoing fundamental changes in many aspects of its culture and identity after what was, until then, the most costly conict in Western history. The intensity of isolationism and fear of the other from abroad on the part of politicians and the public alike were primarily responsible for the intensication of such imagery within the pages of popular literature.