How Tor Won The War, Chapter 3--The Racist Turtle Of Panama!

One of the difficulties in writing about comics created during WWII is what the hell do you do about the racism?

When the creators of the day did cartoony caricatures of Germans or Italians with stereotypical accents, we still view that as patriotic fun. Unfortunately, when you do that with Japanese characters, well, you suddenly feel pretty damn squeamish about the racism. 

So I tend to avoid stories where our hero fights the Japanese. Whether it's cowardly or over-sensitive of me, I just find it easier to skip those stories altogether. (Ditto, by the way, for the many, many MANY jungle characters of the Golden Age, 85% of whose stories are at least tainted by the racism of the day.)

But, I've been covering how Tor The Magic Master was single-handedly winning WWII, first by beating the Luftwaffe, and then by beating the crap out of the German navy. So I kind of have to talk about how he defeated the Japanese.

Plus, really, how could I have skipped this:

So, I'm just going to skip around the racist bits as best I can, especially what that damned turtle says. Still, you've been trigger-warned.

Photojournalist Jim Slade has been sent to the jungles of Panama, supposedly to cover the "San Blas Indians"...

Sigh...yeah, there's racism against the natives, too. Bad show, Fred Guardineer!

But in reality, Jim's editor sent him there to keep an eye out for a Japanese attempt to seize the Panama Canal. And I'll be damned, it happens!

Well, even though, as Tor, he has seemingly unlimited control over space and time, Jim manipulates the natives into fighting the Japanese for him:

Then, and only then, does Tor show up:

What, you couldn't have done that before some of the natives were killed?!?

Tor doesn't forget his day job:

Well, Tor's not going to allow for an easy escape:

Sorry, I just had to white out what the turtle says there. Because if there's one thing that can spoil a backwards-talking-magician-created giant talking turtle gobbling up Axis forces, it's the turtle making racist jokes.

If you insist on knowing what the turtle said, you can find it here. Please don't do it, though. Really, you'll be sorry.

And that's how Tor routed the Japanese!

Too bad the turtle was a racist bastard. And too bad about the racism against the natives. And sending them to die in your place. And...

From Crack Comics #24 (1942)