"Official War Achives," Or, How Not To Give Up Good Villains!

So, what do you do for villains once World War II is over?

This proved a vexing problem for much of comics industry.

Fawcett had their own cute way: they kept WWII going for a whole extra year!

Note that little seal on the lower left side: "OFFICIAL WAR ARCHIVES."

What the hell was that supposed to mean?

This:

Now, Wow Comics #41 was cover dated February 1946; it streeted in late January. Which was, of course, 9 months after V-E day, and and almost 5 months after V-J day.

Which means that the stories were almost certainly crafted after the end of the war. Or perhaps Fawcett just had a huge backlog of war stories they had already paid for?

But man oh man, the Nazis and the Japanese made such great villains!! And except for Patton, no one was ready to commit to commies as the villains yet. So, with heroes like Phantom Eagle and Commando Yank so closely tied to WWII, what to do?

Well, I give Fawcett points for the "now it can be told" approach. "Public exposure of hitherto confidential stories" is a pretty good rationalization for "we want to keep telling Hitler and Tojo stories."

Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course. Hell, DC was publishing Sgt. Rock war comics until the late 1980s. And Hollywood still churns out a WWII flick or two every year. Those guys never felt they had to explain why they well telling tales of a war that was over.

But Fawcett clearly felt the need to justify the back-of-the-book heroes continuing to fight in a war that was over. "Highly secret war record," indeed.

By the June 1946 issue the charade ended (or they just used up the backlog of war stories they had sitting around?!?), and Phantom Eagle & Commando Yank began to run non war-time stories, going up against smugglers and post-war profiteers and enemy agents from unspecified countries, without the need to dress it up as "secret stories that we're now allowed to tell."

And soon enough the Red Menace would be a major concern for heroes to face, and Korea would provide ample opportunity for contemporary war tales.