The Junior Commandos
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$49.99 “One of the most impressive comic-strip collections ever produced.” — The Washington Times Harold Gray’s (Different in Canada) LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE DEBUTED on August 5, 1924, and Harold Gray continued FROM THE INTRODUCTION BY JEET HEER to write and draw the comic strip for forty-four “ years, until his death, after which it was For the first twenty months after Pearl Harbor, Harold Gray put aside EISNER AWARD NOMINEE continued, on and off, by other hands for more his partisan objections to the Democratic president. In the past, Gray than two additional decades. Little Orphan Annie “A MUST-READ” has become a cultural icon—in both her red- might have used Annie as a mouthpiece for bemoaning high taxes and headed, blank-eyed appearance, and as the government regulations but in the early years of the war, Annie —New York Times Week in Review embodiment of American individuality, spunk, acknowledges that both rationing and taxes are necessary. There’s no and self-reliance. Even those who’ve never read the comic strip are keenly aware of the plucky reason to bemoan rationing and ‘taxes takin’ most all we have,’ she says, ® orphan, her loveable mutt Sandy, and her adoptive since ‘if we lose—we lose everything!’ This spirit of wartime unity, benefactor, Oliver “Daddy” Warbucks, through however, was not permanent. By late 1943, Gray would return to his the Broadway play, the hit movie, and the song “Tomorrow,” made famous by both. critique of New Deal bureaucracy, focusing his ire on rationing, and once again question FDR's leadership…” The THE JUNIOR Complete COMMANDOS e HAROLD GRAY IN THIS VOLUME: The EcCentric America's spunkiest kid is hospitalized after a car 1941 (ZANEY) crash, has to fight off a dope pushing doctor, meets TO "Crazy Kate" (who's not all that crazy!), and when America enters the Second World War, Annie protects 1943 the home front by forming the Junior Commandos, DAILIES and a group that inspired tens of thousands of real life COLOR SUNDAYS children to collect newspapers, scrap metal, and other items needed for the war effort. The fictional Harold Gray was born in 1894 in Kankakee, "Colonel Annie," meanwhile, finds herself face to face Illinois, and began his cartooning career as an 1941-1943 with fifth columnists and a Nazi submarine! Daddy assistant to Sidney Smith, creator of the famously MORE THAN 600 Warbucks, true to his name, is back making munitions successful strip The Gumps. Gray wrote and and leads a mysterious army overseas. And that's just illustrated Little Orphan Annie for more than SEQUENTIAL COMIC STRIPS for starters. Including dailies and Sundays from four decades, from 1924 until 1968. FROM 1941–1943 November 24, 1941 through August 7, 1943. LibraryofAmericanComics.com • idwpublishing.com America’s Spunkiest Kid Protects the Home Front! THE COMPLETE V OLUME T EN : THE JUNIOR COMMANDOS DAILY AND SUNDAY COMICS 1941-1943 FEATURING THE INCREDIBLE TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS OF THE KID WITH A HEART OF GOLD AND A QUICK LEFT HOOK VOLUME TEN IN THE COMPLETE LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE THE JUNIOR COMMANDOS DAILY AND SUNDAY COMICS 1941 –1943 by HAROLD GRAY IDW PUBLISHING SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA T HE C OMPLETE L ITTLE O RPHAN A NNIE ISBN: 978-1-61377-951-4 V OLUME T EN : First Printing, April 2014 T HE J UNIOR C OMMANDOS Distributed by Diamond Book Distributors 1-410-560-7100 DAILY AND SUNDAY COMICS 1941–1943 IDW Publishing a Division of Idea and Design Works, LLC 5080 Santa Fe Street • San Diego, CA 92109 STORIES AND rART BY Harold Gray idwpublishing.com Ted Adams, Chief Executive Officer/Publisher Greg Goldstein, Chief Operating Officer/President HE IBRARYr OF MERICAN OMICS Robbie Robbins, EVP/Sr. Graphic Artist T L A C Chris Ryall, Chief Creative Officer/Editor-in-Chief Matthew Ruzicka, CPA/Chief Financial Officer EDITED AND DESIGNED BY Dean Mullaney Alan Payne/VP of Sales Dirk Wood/VP of Marketing ASSOCIATE EDITOR Bruce Canwell Lorelei Bunjes/VP of Digital Services ART DIRECTOR Lorraine Turner Little Orphan Annie ® and © 2014 TMS News and Features, LLC. All rights reserved. The Library of American Comics is a trademark IOGRAPHICAL EXT BY ONTRIBUTING DITOR of Library of American Comics LLC. All rights reserved. B T Jeet Heer, C E Introduction © 2014 Jeet Heer. With the exception of artwork used for review purposes, none of the contents of this publication may be RESTORATION ASSISTANT Joseph Ketels MARKETING DIRECTOR Beau Smith reprinted without the permission of TMS News and Features, LLC. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, PRODUCTION ASSISTANCE Jackson Glassey, Valarie Jones electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information and retrieval system, without permission in writing LibraryofAmericanComics.com from TMS News and Features, LLC. Printed in Korea. Special thanks to the Harold Gray Archives at the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center, Mugar Library, Boston University. Additional thanks to Jay Maeder, Richard Olson, Stephen Tippie, Julie Josephitis, Heritage Auctions, Justin Eisinger, Alonzo Simon, Larry Lowery/biglittlebooks.com, John Province, and the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum at the Ohio State University. WE RE ALL LOYAL AMERICANS: ' ANNIE GOES TO WAR BY Jeet Heer [Editor’s Note: Important story elements are revealed in this introduction. Readers may wish to read the strips before this essay.] The Second World War was the single most traumatic and transformative body of opinion that wanted the “funny pages” to remain a source of amusement event the United States experienced in the 20th Century. The anger unleashed —an anachronistic demand given the fact that blood-soaked storylines had been by the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor galvanized a hitherto isolated and divided common in strips for more than a decade. Thrills and chills that echoed the nation, turning it into a global superpower. For cartoonist Harold Gray, the war newspaper headlines had long been the norm not just in Gray’s Orphan Annie years provided an unparalleled opportunity to turn his contentious and divisive but in Milton Caniff’s Terry and the Pirates, Roy Crane’s Wash Tubbs and strip, Little Orphan Annie, into a nearly universally celebrated emblem of a Captain Easy, and Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy. Still there were readers like “Mrs. shared patriotism, with the beloved waif organizing her own Junior Commandos F.O.” of Evanston, Illinois who wrote to the Chicago Tribune in March of 1942 to help speed victory. War brought not just national unity, but also fear, suffering, complaining that “in these days of war which bring so much sorrow and worry and death, ordeals that Gray tried to confront and allay in his storylines. The war over loved ones who have gone and are going into the service of our beloved years were also personally tragic for Gray when he lost a close family member in country, why not do everything to cheer and uplift them? Why not let our a tragic accident, an event that cast a shadow on his work. funnies be funny? Let Daddy Warbucks come back to Orphan Annie….” Gray had been preparing for armed hostility long before Pearl Harbor. In the Despite readers like “Mrs. F.O.” the fact that Orphan Annie had never been a run-up to the American entry into the war, Orphan Annie repeatedly confronted humor strip or one with a focus on domestic life made it simpler for Gray to shift enemy agents trying to undermine the American way of life. She also heard from to wartime storytelling than cartoonists whose strips were decidedly more gentle “Daddy” Warbucks and others stories about “concentration camps” and mass and genteel, such as Frank King’s Gasoline Alley. King agonized over whether his killings that gave the strip an ambience of unsettling menace. Due to Gray’s main character Skeezix, who was of military age, should be drafted. Even when forthright handling of war issues in the late 1930s and early 1940s, he had an Skeezix did join the army, King kept the star of his strip away from combat. easier time transitioning to war than many other cartoonists. While Gray did not share King’s compunctions about doing wartime stories, How to handle the war was a major issue faced by all newspaper cartoonists the creator of Orphan Annie was careful to avoid creating a fully military strip in after Pearl Harbor. The problem was made acute by the clashing demands of the manner of Terry, Wash Tubbs and Captain Easy or Ham Fisher’s Joe Palooka readers. Some applauded wartime patriotism in comics but there was a sizeable (where the boxer hero joined the army a year before Pearl Harbor). Gray’s heroine 5 was a young girl, so she couldn’t join the Army Air Corps in the manner of a POWs to the land of the genii, a flagrant violation of the Geneva Conventions. Caniff hero or the Navy in the pattern of a Crane character. As Annie reflects, If Punjab had been in the regular army he couldn’t use so entertaining, but also she could only join the military if she “was older—maybe—an’ a boy.” illegal, a method to deal with captured enemy soldiers. Aside from Annie, Gray did have adult male characters who could have joined the American military: “Daddy” Warbucks and his hardy band of bbb experienced warriors headed by Punjab and the Asp. Warbucks and his posse show up in uniform—not the vestments of the United States military but The physical and psychological damage caused by war makes healing the raiment of an unnamed allied power. “I got in a little ahead of schedule,” urgent, so it is not surprising that throughout 1941 Little Orphan Annie he tells his ward.