Featuring: Young Allies
Release: July 23, 1941
Cover: Summer 1941
10 cents
57 pages
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|---|---|---|
| Captain America Comics #3 | Prelude | Captain America Comics #7 |
| Sgt. Fury #16 | Reading order | Tales of Suspense #65 |
The table of contents lists Joe Simon as “Art editor” and Jack Kirby as “Art director”, while recognizing Carl Burgos as the creator of Toro. No hints as to who actually wrote or drew the comic are given. The GCD credits Otto Binder, Charles Nicholas, and Syd Shores, noting Jack Kirby supplied art for some of the chapter-opening splash pages. The cover is by Jack Kirby and Syd Shores.
We also take the on-sale date from the GCD, which disagrees with the July 10 date given in Mike’s Amazing World, but also offers an explanation for the discrepancy.
An ad shows an earlier version of the cover (and gives the July 10 release date). Notice in the original cover, Stalin is one of the villains (along with Hitler, Tōjō, and Mussolini). This comic was released in July 1941. Between its original advertisement and publication, Germany invaded the Soviet Union, so Stalin was now a good guy, and couldn’t be depicted as evil in the comic. The USSR was now part of the Allied forces.
America remained neutral in the war, but you couldn’t tell by the comic books.
We read the introduction of the Young Allies, a painfully long 57-page adventure. Our motivation is that this is the third appearance of the Red Skull, who was presumed dead in an explosion in Captain America Comics #3.
This comic is pretty rough reading. The most infamous part of it is the character of Whitewash Jones, a painful stereotype of an African American child, whose portrayal somehow keeps getting worse as the issue progresses. Even leaving aside that racial sentiment has evolved in 80 years, the other kids are also pretty awful characters. Tubby, the obese child, is portrayed no better. Nor is Knuckles, the street-tough kid. Jefferson, the nerd, probably comes off the best.
The history of cartooning is built on caricature and exaggeration, but these four kids just push it into the absurd and unreadable.
Even if we accept the characters, the story is then 57 pages. A rough contrast to the 10-20 page stories we usually read. Yet somehow this story is more slight than many 5 page stories we’ve read.
The plot is that Agent Zero has an important code that the Red Skull wants. The kids stumble across the plan and try to help Agent Zero. We never learn what the code is or why it’s important. It’s a pure MacGuffin.
What this does allow for that somewhat redeems the story and gets it to a full star below is a bit of a tour of the world in 1941, admittedly filtered through a very particular viewpoint. The kids find themselves in Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and China.
The Chinese and the British are portrayed heroically.
The French are portrayed as just too hard to understand. Germany and Russia are basically the bad guys.
As discussed above, the attitude toward Russia flipped suddenly in the middle of the production of this comic. It was likely the scene where the kids got shipped to Siberia for playing foreign broadcasts in Russia was written before Germany invaded Russia, though the comic was released afterwards.
Bucky and friends are part of the Sentinels of Liberty, a real club introduced in Captain America Comics #1. Readers were encouraged to send in a dime to get a badge and membership card. Every issue reminded readers to do so, and reminded its members to be upright citizens.
They refer to their chapter as the Young Allies. They stumble across Nazi soldiers interrogating the British Agent Zero. The idea of Nazi soldiers in uniform operating in America in 1941 is pretty absurd, but we’ll go with it.
They get into trouble, when they are saved by Toro.
We’ve still never properly met Toro. He’s the sidekick of the Human Torch, a young flaming boy. We saw him in Human Torch #5, the big Torch/Namor battle. And we’ll see him now battling Red Skull alongside the Young Allies. But we haven’t really had an excuse yet to go read his first appearance. We eventually will, but for now, I’m just going to let him show up here and there when we look back to 1940s and 50s comics.
Bucky and Toro have some brief conflict, but soon set aside differences to battle common foes.
The comic has a couple highlights. In Germany, the Allies find a skeleton, likely a victim of Red Skull’s torture chamber. They color the skull red, then stand on each other’s shoulders to disguise themselves as the Red Skull.
Hitler shows up, but Red Skull mistakes the real Hitler for the kids in disguise, and attacks him.
Knuckles knocks Goering unconscious.
Then Bucky and Tubby dress up as Hitler and Goering to escape Germany.
The best scene in the comic is probably when Red Skull calls Stalin a dumb-head.
Red Skull supposedly died when we last saw him, but nobody seems surprised to see him alive and well. I certainly wasn’t.
He does take off his skull mask a couple times. His name is never mentioned, but presumably he is still the American George Maxon, who has now defected to Germany and learned a bit of German slang. It’s also of course possible he is not George Maxon at all, rather a German wearing a similar mask. Captain America and Bucky both seem to believe he’s the same Skull they’ve met before.
And he certainly looks like Maxon.
There is an Agent X in this story. We met an Agent X in the pages of Sgt. Fury. I suspect it’s just a coincidence, a common name for spies in the era. These seem to be definitely two different people.
This comic is notable for being the first meeting of Captain America and Human Torch, as they team up to save the Young Allies from the Red Skull.
It’s most infamous for the comedic portrayal of the cowardly and dull-whitted Whitewash Jones.
And just when you think it can’t get any worse, the kids put on a fake carnival show. Toro actually has flame powers, so a legit act. But Whitewash wows the audience as an ape man.
Oh, 1940s America.
For better or worse, Whitewash Jones is the first significant black hero in Marvel’s history.
Red Skull will battle the Young Allies again in issue 4, but I don’t know if I’ll have the patience to get through it.
Rating: ★☆☆☆☆, 12/100
This story can be found on Kindle.
Characters:
- Agent Zero
- Bucky
- Knuckles/Percival Aloysius O’Toole
- Tubby/Henry Tinkle
- Whitewash Jones/Growlo the Ape-Man
- Jefferson Worthington Sandervilt
- Toro/Flamo the Fire Boy
- Agent X
- Red Skull
- Adolf Hitler
- Fritz Flootzendootzen
- Goering
- Mister Walsh
- Captain America/Steve Rogers
- Human Torch
Story notes:
- Nazis purse British Agent Zero.
- Agent Zero swallows code.
- Kids fool Nazis with wooden guns.
- Bucky leads Sentinels of Liberty club.
- The Allies know Toro from comics about him.
- Knuckles formerly a “dead-end kid”.
- Jefferson a boy inventor with parents in Who’s Who.
- Whitewash Jones good with harmonica and watermelon.
- Tubby, fugitive from a circus.
- Young Allies a Chapter of Sentinels of Liberty, real club introduced in Captain America Comics #1.
- Agent Zero meeting Agent X at the Lone Pine; Tubby overheard.
- Agent X shot and killed.
- Bucky unsurprised Red Skull is alive.
- Red Skull takes Agent Zero to Berlin; Young Allies follow.
- Allies stowaway on British ship; caught and forced to work for passage.
- Allies stop Nazi saboteur and are offered first class passage.
- Nazi sub attacks British ship.
- Bombing raid in Britain.
- Raft across Channel taken out by Stuka; Toro takes out plane.
- Skull agent tries to poison Allies in France.
- Germany referred to as “Nazi-Land”.
- Allies meet Hitler.
- Skull tortures Agent Zero.
- Allies in concentration camp.
- Whitewash performs as ape-man.
- Allies arrested in Russia for listening to foreign broadcasts; sent to Siberia.
- Allies caught in battle between Russians and Japanese.
- Allies welcomed to Free China by Chiang-Kai-Sheks soldiers; take Burma Road to Hong Kong; caught in Tong war.
- Agent Zero a woman.
- Steve Rogers receives call for help at Camp Lehigh.
- First meeting of Captain America and Human Torch.
| Previous | Next | |
|---|---|---|
| Captain America Comics #3 | Prelude | Captain America Comics #7 |
| Sgt. Fury #16 | Reading order | Tales of Suspense #65 |
Ow! Ow! Though I abhor censorship, I can understand why bullies want to censor Whitwash and Tubby and their ilk. Unlike Allan, Bill, and “Stymie,” these caricatures weren’t even funny – much less the comedy genius that Stymie was.