Here's a fun little quickie illustrated by the ever unmistakable master of watery weirdness, Bill Everett, and from the December 1956 issue of Marvel Tales #153. I guess it's been awhile since we had ourselves a creep from the deep post, -- it's a typical post code type tale, but highly enjoyable none the less thanks to Big Bad Bill's sweet sense of visual humor...
5 comments:
It's of a time, but the racist Asian characters are not a good thing. Moving on!
I'd bet this is a Stan script -- his entire early Marvel run put any communist (usually just autocratic) governments and people as enemies, and sometimes pretty starkly. This sounds a bit like him in the opening!
The art is great. That splash is museum worthy, it's incredible. The fake sea monster is cute as all get out, only to be out-cute-d by the real sea monster at the end. I want that fellow as a pet!
This is a really fun 3 pager. It's fast, funny, and full of beautiful artwork.
The real monster at the end looks like it was based, at least in part, on a seahorse. I mean it's got that upright thing going on.
Man, Everett sure knew his way around boats. That Junk on page one is superb.
OK. Two thing's first. The first first being I hope I'll not sound insulting. The second first being I am not asian and my name is Eric Barnes, which is what the katakana says.
Here goes. I don't get how the asians here are racist depictions. I live in Japan and have lived in S. Korea and the thing is some asians look... well... asian. Are these particularly heroic portrayals? Well... no... but there are plenty of white people in these kinds of stories that play exactly these roles in other stories.
Is it their stilted English? I assumed they weren't really supposed be speaking English. I don't think this is as over-the-top as some versions of German speakers and French speakers could be.
Going back to the visuals I think Bill Everett did an especially nice job of making the fishermen look asian and yet not look demeaning.
Now, I will admit this seems a bit of a hodgepodge of various asian nationalities, but I don't think that makes it racist. Just not well thought-out or well informed.
I don't think the fishermen are presented as overly superstitious, either. There are plenty of whites in stories like this presented as much more superstitious.
I don't know. I know I'm going on at length about this, but I'm trying to get at where this racist idea comes from 'cause I thought Bill Everett did a good job on this otherwise trivial story.
No offense intended, though. I just don't really see it.
Painful depictions of Chinese people aside, the whole thing was kind of worth it for the facial expression on the monster in the final panel: it looks like somebody trying to figure out how to open a difficult can, which of course is pretty much what's happening there.
Along with a seahorse, that picture at the end resembles a lot of early sea serpent drawings, like the Scandinavian ones.
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