Hiển thị các bài đăng có nhãn Sunday Funnies. Hiển thị tất cả bài đăng
Hiển thị các bài đăng có nhãn Sunday Funnies. Hiển thị tất cả bài đăng

Sunday Funnies #31: Batman with Robin in Swastika Over the White House

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Have a Happy Batman Day!



I know it's Saturday, but I thought I'd do a Sunday Funnies post anyway since today is Batman Day, celebrating 80 years of the Caped Crusader and my Kiddo's favorite Superhero. This Batman story is called "Swastika Over the White House." It's from Batman Vol. 1, No. 14 and was published in January 1943. It's one of the few stories that actually relate to the war, although Batman and Robin lots of other things to help the war effort.


























Fred Hopper a/k/a Fritz Hoffner may have fooled the other cameramen, but now he has orders to get rid of Batman. As luck would have it, Batman and Robin were coming by the Gotham City Newsreel offices that very day to help with the nation's war effort. Suddenly, a car appears and shots are fired at the dynamic duo.

















The young Nazi spy may not have gotten rid of Carson, but he does manage to swap out their camera footage of the shipyard to give to his superiors, along with footage of bomber plants, including gasoline storage tanks. Meanwhile, Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson, in reality Batman and Robin, have suspicions about the cameramen, so that night, out comes pair in the Batmobile, to check on the industrial suburbs of Gotham City.






















Sunday Funnies goes on a Blog Tour: Dear Justice League by Michael Northrop, illustrated by Gustavo Duarte

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So, you all know how so many favorite Superheroes were a mainstay for American youth during WWII, right? Back then, the Justice League was formed and called the Justice Society of America (JSA), but eventually, morphed into the Justice League of America (JLA). In 2011, the JLA was reintroduced as the Justice League (JL), and that's pretty much where it stands today.*  The name may have been changed over time, but the members not so much - there's Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Hawkgirl, Aquaman, the Flash, Green Lantern, Cyborg.



All of this brings us to Dear Justice League. Here are America's great superheroes, seemingly perfect in every way, but haven't you ever wondered if their lives are really as perfect as they seem. Don't they have any faults, or screw up once in a while, maybe make a wrong decision, or perhaps even have some good advice for the rest of us?



Yes, they do and you can find it all between the covers of this delightfully silly, sometimes serious look at some of the Justice League's not so spectacular adventures as they answer emails from some of their fans.



One boy wants to know if Superman is super all the time, so Superman recounts a time he flew into a building because he was texting while flying (twf). This set off a series of hilarious events that he tries to handle all over Metropolis, ending in Superman getting a ticket for, what else, twf.







Does Wonder Woman have any advice for an 10-almost-11-year old? You bet she does, and it involves her 11th birthday and some cake.





Or how about Batman, always so brave, so fearless, has he ever been scared? asks a boy about to go to a new school and afraid he's going to be picked on the way he was at his old school.





Dear Justice League is divided into nine chapters, one for each Superheroes' story and a final chapter that ties it all together. There is a storyline running through each chapter that connects each story to the others involving a insectoid that escaped Hawkgirl's mighty mace. Insectoids are giant mantis-like alien bugs from the planet Molt-On and can replicate very quickly and easily so it's important for the Justice League to deal with them. But as insectoid's keep replicating exponentially, can they be stopped, even by Superheroes?





This is such a fun book to read, and I know young fans of the Justice League will love it. It has a very energetic, tongue-in-cheek text, but nothing really over the heads of young readers. And Duarte's colorful cartoon-like illustrations will no doubt appeal to kids. I liked that the Superheroes take the time to answer kid's email questions, and the way some of the stories circled back to the email writer to show how the advice they got helped them.



It seems that most kids go through a phase of being totally into Superheroes and this is geared perfectly for the age when that usually happens, a time when kids are out in the world because of school and activities and life is beginning to get more complicated and a little Superhero fantasy helps. I know my Kiddo went through a Superhero phase (and probably hasn't outgrown it yet, if truth be told).



Dear Justice League is a fun definite-must-read book for fans, and ideal for introducing kids to the Superhero realm, and might even hold appeal for reluctant readers.



This book is recommended for readers age 8+

This book was an EARC received from the publisher



Be sure to visit the other stops on the Dear Justice League Blog Tour:








*If you really want to read the complicated history of the Justice League, you can find it HERE

Sunday Funnies #30: Women's History Month

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I thought I would end Women's History Month 2019 with some Peanuts comic strips of Lucy paying homage to her grandmother and the work she did in WWII. As always, Charles Schultz was ahead of his time with his Peanuts comic strips.






November 8, 1976




November 9, 1976




November 11, 1976




November 12, 1976


Sunday Funnies #29: Carrier Pigeons

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A pigeon played a much larger roll in I Survived the Battle of D-Day 1944 than I indicated in my review. In fact, carrier pigeons played an important roll in both World War I and World War II. I thought the cartoon below was a nice homage to carrier pigeons. It is a George Wolfe cartoon, but I have unfortunately the actual citation, though I believe it is also from the Saturday Evening Post, just like the one I posted for Women's History Month.  







Sunday Funnies #27: Batman and Robin - A Christmas Peril

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This Batman comic book is dated February/March 1945, but it appeared on newsstands and candy stores on December 11, 1944. World War II hadn't ended yet, but by then it was clear that the war was going in favor of the Allied Forces and would soon be over. Note the request to back the 6th War Loan on the cover of the comic. The public had a chance to purchase war bonds for this loan beginning on Monday, November 20, 1944 until Saturday, December 16, 1944. This loan has an interesting history which you can read about HERE. 





The comic had several stories in it, but one that follows was the only Christmas story and it's in interesting parody of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol which it completely owns on page 1 of the comic. The story has nothing to do with the war, but it's an interesting one, nevertheless.






































































Sunday Funnies #26: Archie Comics

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I decided not to go to Comic Con this year, after standing on line to get in for almost 4 hours last year. But I’ve been thinking about comics this weekend anyway. I loved comics growing up and I like to feature some of the comics that were popular during the WWII. Comic are often such a measure of what is happening in the world.






And, sometimes, while reading a book for this blog, I come across things about WWII that I didn’t know and that take me by surprise. That’s exactly what happened while I was reading a mystery called The Girl is Murder by Kathryn Miller Haines. On page 36, the protagonist, Iris Anderson, 15, is reading an Archie comic book. Archie in 1942? The same Archie Andrews I read all those years later?






Archie was indeed a war-time creation, and Iris Anderson was probably reading Archie Comics #1, dated Winter 1942, on sale November 15, 1942, cost 10¢. But teenaged Archie’s first appearance, along with Jughead Jones and Betty Cooper, was actually a year earlier, in Pep Comics #22, dated Dec. 1941. It was a six page spread and introduced Archie as “America’s newest boyfriend.” 









Archie lived in Riverdale, along with his parents Mary and Fred Andrews, and attended Riverdale High School. Archie’s infamous jalopy was introduced in Pep Comics #25, dated March 1942 and the very rich Veronica Lodge, middle-class Betty Cooper’s rival for Archie’s affections, was introduced in Pep Comics #26, dated April 1942. More characters were added over the first year, including Mr. Weatherbee, the school principal. Mr. Lodge, who raison d’être was to keep Archie and Veronica apart, and Archie’s other friend, Reggie Mantle. It is interesting that there is no mention of the Archie story in either of these Pep Comics.






In 1942, with most of the characters in place, Archie got his own comic book, in which he was now billed as “The Mirth of a Nation.” The overall humor in Archie’s adventures is pretty much the same in these early comics and in the ones I read. And although he looked like a total doofus in the early Pep Comics and the first Archie Comics, his popularity continued to grow and his looks mellowed out somewhat. 




Oddly, even though the Pep Comics of the early 1940s had superheroes fighting Nazis, Archie stories were apolitical. It wasn’t until he had his own comic that the war began to figure into some, though not many, of the stories. The first one I found is called “Pancakes in a Blackout.” When his parents go out for the evening, Archie decides to make himself a nice stack of pancakes, but then the air raid siren sounds and he has every light in the house on. Well, see for yourself:







Archie has changed and evolved over time, but it's been fun revisiting those early days of Archie and the gang, and if you are like me, right about now you have "Sugar, Sugar" by The Archies running through your head.