Featuring: Sgt. Fury and the Howling Commandoes
Release: May 2, 1963
Cover: July 1963
12 cents
Script: Stan Lee
Art: Jack Kirby
Inking: Dick Ayers
23 pages
I read this story in Sgt. Fury Epic Collection vol. 1: The Howling Commandoes. Scans are taken from a reprint in Sgt. Fury #95 from 1972.
The story opens at a Nazi u-boat port in occupied France.
The plan is to create a diversion so that Nazis don’t notice a destroyer coming in to destroy the port. I have one concern with the plan. Sgt. Fury notes the destroyer is coming at 1300. The narration tells us it’s currently dark out. The implication is that it’s nighttime, presumably no later than 0400 or so. Are they supposed to create a 9-hour long diversion? Even if it’s just a dark morning, we’re still looking at 0800 at latest, well before it seems an appropriate time to start the diversion.
That mission ends, and the Commandoes are looking to rest back in Dover, but are instead sent immediately on a new mission, a seeming suicide mission into Germany to stop German atomic bomb testing.
The Nazi regime really did have an atomic bomb program, but they did not get very far. Many of their best scientists had long since defected. This comic has them close to completion, with the Commandoes ordered to destroy the heavy water at all costs.
Despite some pretty serious subject matter, this is the still the most humor Kirby injects into any of the comics we’ve been reading. See as an example Happy Sam Sawyer’s directions regarding the heavy water.
Or the depiction of the Commandoes “goose-stepping” to try to blend in with the Nazi soldiers.
The testing facility was located at Heinemund, which also housed a concentration camp. As far as I can tell, Heinemund was not a real place. Unless it’s so top secret that the only evidence of its existence is this comic.
The concentration camp near Heinemund is depicted only briefly, with subtle hints that it is a place of horror. It goes into no detail and doesn’t quite do justice to the horrors of concentration camps, but that’s probably a wise choice for the venue. This is mostly meant as a light read. Watch a film like Shoah to get a better sense of what was going on. On a personal note, I visited Dachau a few months back, and it was a truly humbling experience.
In the end, they destroy the lab and this sets off a small atomic explosion. That’s the second atomic explosion we’ve seen in recent months, the first being when Radioactive Man exploded in China.
I’d like to take the opportunity to focus on the character of Gabe Jones. Gabe Jones is a Black man, an African American. I had wanted to discuss him more last issue, but a printing error caused him to be rendered with white skin. So this is the first comic where you can tell he’s meant to be a Black man.
I’ll put images both from the original along with my own scans from the reprint in #95. You can see how the coloring of black skin (along with coloring, generally) changed from 1963 (left) to 1972 (right).
If you look hard at every story we’ve covered in this blog and the characters who appear, you’ll notice a pattern. All the main characters are white, and most of the side characters are as well. The only exceptions have been Asian people, who have been consistently depicted as absurd caricatures of Asian people.
We just encountered the one possible exception to this with Dr. Strange, which features Asian people in ways that are somewhat stereotypical, but not absurdly so. The Master is a reasonable comic character by the standards of the time, in contrast to, say, General Fang.
Prior to 1963, Marvel had almost no recurring Black characters in their titles.
The most notable exception is Whitewash Jones of the Young Allies, a character of very unfortunate name and visage. The Young Allies starred Captain America’s teen sidekick Bucky and a group of kids who helped him out. One of whom was Black… but his depiction was beyond cringeworthy.
Whitewash’s drawing style is consistent with many other Black comic characters of the 1940s, most notably Spirit’s partner Ebony White from the otherwise masterful Will Eisner. Also an unfortunate name and visage.
In the 1950s, the only recurring Black Marvel character I’m aware of is Waku, Prince of the Bantu, who had a recurring feature in Jungle Tales. Less cringeworthy than Whitewash, but still burdened with African stereotypes.
And now it’s 1963. Gabe Jones is just one of the soldiers in the company. He plays Jazz. He’s not well developed in this issue, but none of the characters really are. They’ve all got their superficial personality traits and a job to do. He’s probably Marvel’s first Black star to be portrayed more as a character than a stereotype.
DC was slightly ahead of Marvel in this regard. DC’s Our Army at War introduced Jackie Johnson of Easy Company in 1961. In fact, this comic probably owes more than a beat or two to Our Army at War, and Sgt. Fury himself borrows some from Sgt. Rock.
Since we’ve complained at length about Marvel’s Asian caricatures, and we’re now discussing Marvel’s history of Black caricatures, it seems appropriate to discuss the German caricatures on display.
The dialogue from the Germans is strange to the point of silly. What would make sense is if they were speaking German; it would also make sense if that German were translated into English for our benefit. Instead, they speak in an absurd mix of mostly English with some German words sprinkled in, and some English words pronounced with a bad German accent. The “goose-stepping” is also a poke at the Nazis. As is just how often they self-describe as the “master race”.
Is this offensive? I don’t know. If there’s one group of people in modern history who probably earned a bit of caricaturing, it’s the Nazis.
The comic includes a couple informational extras. One page about a Nazi infantryman.
And one about guns, similar to last issue.
Rating: ★★★½, 60/100
Characters:
- Sgt. Nick Fury
- Robert “Rebel” Ralston
- Corporal “Dum-Dum” Dugan
- Jonathan “Junior” Juniper
- Gabriel “Gabe” Jones
- Izzy Cohen
- Dino Manelli
- “Happy Sam” Sawyer
Story notes:
- Story begins in Nazi-occupied French coastal town.
- Allied Destroyer to blow up port at 1300; unmanned destroyer filled with TNT blows up u-boat pens.
- Nazis replicating Manhattan Project at Heinemund; Captain Sawyer got word they are shipping heavy water.
- Dum-Dum has wife.
- Commandoes approach Heinemund disguised as German fishermen.
- Commandoes end up briefly as prisoners in concentration camp.
- Izzy Cohen is from Brooklyn.
- Atomic base destroyed.
- 1 page on German infantryman.
- 1 page about guns.
#80 story in reading order
Next: Strange Tales #111
Previous: Journey Into Mystery #94
