1941 Notes--Timely's Different Drummer

July, 1941.

In hindsight, it's easy to say we were on the cusp of war. But to the contemporaneous observer, not so obvious.

There was still a large isolationist movement that favored keeping us unentangled in "Europe's war." Not to mention those who believed that fascism was a superior alternative to communism or the colonialism that the older European regimes seemed to represent.

Opinion polls consistently showed great resistance to America becoming involved. One year previously, polls showed a 2-1 majority favored not getting involved, even if England were to fall. Even as the war grew worse for England, by the summer of 1941 38% of Americans favored a negotiated peace with Germany.

So, how to market comic books in that environment? Clearly, the sentiment towards war was growing, but a huge swath of potential readers very well might resent any blatant pro-war comics. And we all know how small-c conservative publishers can be when it comes to jeopardizing sales.

So as you look at the covers of comic books with a cover date of July 1941, despite the growing international tensions for the US, there's hardly a trace of any such notion. (Comic cover dates were much more inconsistent then--these books actually hit newstands anywhere from April to July).

Obviously, you can't judge a comic by its cover, particularly in an era when comics were 64 page anthologies with multiple stories. But even on the inside, there's almost no mention of Nazis. There are a growing number of stories involving "spies," "saboteurs," "fifth columnists," mostly of European origin, and most of the bad guys certainly had German sounding names and spoke with German accents.

But obvious "sly" references to Germany aside, even these stories generally were uninterested in foreign affairs. They revolved not around America going abroad to war, but keeping that war from infecting America. One story went so far as to have its hero's declared mission be "to protect America's neutrality."

Yes, a few isolated stories went further. But in summer 1941, comic books in general were taking it pretty carefully, only obliquely referring to the war and Naziism, and certainly not agitating for the US to go to war.

Except for Timely/Marvel.

Timely had 5 comics with a July 1941 cover date. Here are four of them:




(The fifth cover was All-Winners #1, which just showed all the heroes standing around in a "hey, look, we've got a team book, too" pose)

At a time when other companies were ignoring the war, or satisfied to gently tiptoe around it with the barest of hints, Timely had us already at war with the Nazis, in living color.

And it wasn't just July. For almost a year Timely had been devoting its covers to smashing Nazis.

Most famously of course, in December 1940--nearly a full year before Pearl Harbor--Captain America debuted by punching Hitler in the face.

(Hey, I'll use any excuse to run that cover).

But even that wasn't the beginning of Timely's crusade. As early as June 1940, they began having their heroes fight "Nazi hordes":

After that, it seemed that every month brought more and more Nazi covers, until Timely might as well have called itself the Let's Go Fight The Nazis comic company.

When you go back and look at the covers of the era, it really is striking--the other companies focused on early superheroes fighting crime and rescuing damsels, whereas the Timely books seeming became all war, all the time.

Oh, in a few months, the others would catch up, and you'd see Blackhawk, and Captain Marvel and Bulletman fighting Captain Nazi, and Doctor Fate fighting Nazis atop a U-Boat. But Timely was there first, much earlier and much more enthusiastic.

Did Timely find that anti-Nazi covers sold better? Or were they true believers who decided to use their books to push a position they sincerely agreed with? (Or, most likely, a combination of both) My inner nerd would like to think that FDR secretly (yet with complete deniability) ordered them to ramp up the anti-Nazi propaganda, because he thought comic books were the best way to surreptitiously influence public opinion.

There's a doctoral thesis for someone here...