The lingering aftermath of the Great Depression, a rise in
organized crime, and especially, the country’s entry into World War II ensured
that the early 1940s was a tumultuous time for the U.S. With such grim business
rushing around them, many Americans found solace in escapist entertainment, and
few entertainment mediums exploded as comics did between 1940 and 1944.
A timeline of this period is like a checklist of the most
important developments in comics. These brief five years saw the debuts of
Wonder Woman, The Flash, Green Arrow, Archie and his gang, Captain America,
Sheena Queen of the Jungle, Hawkman and Hawkwoman, Sub-Mariner, Aquaman,
Plastic Man, The Green Lantern, Captain Marvel, Dick Briefer’s Frankenstein, Pogo
(before moving to newspapers), and many more of comics’ most celebrated
characters. While we’d have to extend the timeline back just a year or two to
include the medium’s two-most famous heroes, we would not have to in order to account
for such foes and friends as Robin, The Joker, Catwoman, The Penguin, Alfred
the Butler, Lex Luthor, Perry White, Clay Face, Hugo Strange, Scarecrow, and
Two Face. This period also saw the first significant rumblings of a major
backlash against funny books with Wonder Woman as the most frequent
whipping-girl. Was there ever a more crucial half-decade for comics?
Interestingly, TwoMorrows Publishings’ American Comic Book Chronicles series has been issuing volumes for
six years but is only now getting around to this key period of 1940-1944.
Because so much happened during these years, the storytelling seems to rush
through the material faster than a speeding bullet, but Kurt F. Mitchell and
Roy Thomas actually make the tale reasonably thorough, reasonably critical, and
politically sharp. Along with the cavalcade of legendary characters, the
writers make room to name-check such forgotten oddballs as Supermouse, Kangaroo
Man, super-witch Spider Widow, and Snowbird, the Strangler’s coke-addicted
lackey. Mitchell and Thomas refuse to succumb to the thoughtless jingoism that
defined so many of the comics of the era they cover. Like all volumes in this
series, American Comic Book Chronicles:
1940-1944 is also a gorgeous, hardcover package, swelling with tons of
full-color art beautifully and authentically reproduced.
