Isolationism, Internationalism and the “Other:” the Yellow Peril, Mad Brute and Red Menace in Early to Mid Twentieth Century Pulp Magazines and Comic Books

Virginia Commonwealth University VCU Scholars Compass Theses and Dissertations Graduate School 2010 Isolationism, Internationalism and the “Other:” The Yellow Peril, Mad Brute and Red Menace in Early to Mid Twentieth Century Pulp Magazines and Comic Books Nathan Vernon Madison Virginia Commonwealth University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/etd Part of the History Commons © The Author Downloaded from https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/etd/2330 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at VCU Scholars Compass. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of VCU Scholars Compass. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Isolationism, Internationalism and the “Other:” The Yellow Peril, German Brute and Red Menace in Early to Mid Twentieth Century Pulp Magazines and Comic Books Nathan Vernon Madison Copyright © 2010 Nathan Vernon Madison Isolationism, Internationalism and the “Other:” The Yellow Peril, German Brute and Red Menace in Early to Mid Twentieth Century Pulp Magazines and Comic Books A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Master of History at Virginia Commonwealth University by Nathan Vernon Madison Master of History – Virginia Commonwealth University – 2010 Bachelor of History and American Studies – University of Mary Washington – 2008 Thesis Committee Director: Dr. Emilie E. Raymond – Department of History Second Reader: Dr. John T. Kneebone – Department of History Third Reader: Ms. Cindy Jackson – Special Collections and Archives – James Branch Cabell Library Virginia Commonwealth University Richmond, Virginia December, 2010 i Acknowledgments There are a good number of people I owe thanks to following the completion of this project. My deepest appreciation goes to my thesis director, Dr. Emilie Raymond, who agreed to oversee this project, even after knowing the limited timeframe it would encompass. She was always available for consultation, and provided valuable stylistic suggestions when they were desperately needed. I would also like to thank Dr. John Kneebone and Ms. Cindy Jackson, my second and third readers, respectively. Dr. Kneebone’s door was always open whenever I required aid, and he offered much-needed encouragement throughout the entire process. Ms. Jackson’s knowledge of the James Cabell Branch’s Library comic collection, as well as numerous other resources, expanded the width of my research greatly. All three members of my thesis committee made themselves available for consultation whenever I asked, and I am indebted to all three for their willingness to take on such a project. Dr. Timothy Thurber, Director of Graduate Studies, I would like to thank for his patience and understanding as well; guidance through the various procedures of working on, and finally completing and submitting, the thesis was something I was in dire need of throughout the semester. I would also like to thank Ms. Patricia Higley, head of the comic book collection at the Library of Congress, in Washington D.C. Her willingness to help me with any and all materials I requested made the research process a great deal more enjoyable than it otherwise would have been. I would also like to thank my family: my parents, James and Sylvia, my sisters Stacey and Natalie, and my brother-in-law Kevin. They have all been nothing but supportive in all of my academic endeavors, and the research required for my thesis was no exception. From my parents’ encouragement of my thesis topic, to my siblings’ reminding me to eat on a regular basis, this work would not have been possible without their help, and I sincerely thank them for that. Lastly, I would like to thank Ms. Sherry Corbin, who always insisted, against my doubts, throughout my time at Mary Washington, that I should do a Senior, or even a Master’s, thesis on comic books. ii Contents Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….iv Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..….…….v Appendix I……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….……..xxii Chapter I The Yellow Peril: The American Pulps Between the World Wars 1919-1935…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….……1 Appendix II…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….………..47 Chapter II The Hun and the Nipponese Hordes: The American Pulps and Comic Books of World War II 1935-1945……………………………………………………………………………………………………….……………………...56 Appendix III……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………111 Chapter III Russian Communists, Red Chinese and Nuclear Annihilation The American Pulps and Comic Books of the Early Cold War 1945-1956……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..130 Appendix IV…………………………….………………………………………………………………………………………….....171 Conclusion…..…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………185 Bibliography………………………………………………………………………………………………………..……..………….192 Vita…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….…………….……………205 The illustrations in this work, if not otherwise designated, come primarily from one of five sources; The Library of Congress, Phil Stephensen-Payne’s Galactic Central pulp magazine bibliography and cover index webpage (http://www.philsp.com/index.html), www.coverbrowser.com, The Library of Virginia, and the author’s personal collection. The source of each image is designated following its description, by LOC, PSP-GC, CB, LVA and NVM, respectively. All images and characters are property of their respective copyright holders, and their presence here is strictly for scholarly inquiry. iii Abstract This thesis’ purpose is to demonstrate, via the examination of popular youth literature (primarily pulp magazines and comic books) from the 1920s through to the 1950s, that the stories found therein drew their definitions of heroism and villainy from an overarching, nativist fear of outsiders that had existed before the Great War, but intensified afterwards. These depictions were transferred to America’s “new” enemies following both the United States’ entry into the Second World War, as well as the early stages of the Cold War. This transference of nativist imagery left behind the ethnically-based origins of such depictions, showing that racism was not the sole and simple reason for such exaggerated visages. A process of change, in regards to America’s nativist sentiment, so virulent after the First World War, will be explained by way of the popular, inexpensive escapism of the time, the pulp magazines and comic books of the early to mid-twentieth century. iv Introduction Europe is entering an era of twilight. It is heading for a period of social and civil warfare which is likely to last fifty years and may last longer. It will emerge from this warfare a Socialist state. But the new Socialist Europe may be faced by a war greater and more crucial than any the world has yet seen – a war for the white man’s right to leadership in civilization, a war with the yellow races of the world. - Georg Brandes, 1919 The preceding statement by Scandinavian philosopher Georg Brandes, published on the front page of the July 13, 1919 edition of the New York Tribune, mirrored the thoughts of many Americans following the devastation of the First World War. While America was fortunate enough to avoid the destruction that had ravaged Europe, the reverberations of the conflict impacted America as violently as any military bombardment ever could. The Victorian age of sensibility and reason was violently shattered, and in its place appeared an America very different from the one that had preceded it; Bolshevism was triumphant in Russia, which precipitated Red Scares at home combined with a seemingly never-ending cascade of immigrants. The rise in youthful sexual frivolity and sexual freedom among women convinced one poet of the time that the youth of the 1920s were “a separate race, speaking an alien tongue.”1 The consumer culture that would come to define America was beginning to emerge in earnest. America was changing, and as within any other transformations, fear accompanied the change; the fear of the immigrant, the outsider, the “other,” that had destroyed Europe and 1 Geoffrey Perret, America in the 1920s: A History (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982), 150-152. v was planning on doing the same in America. Immigrants that did not fit the traditional, Anglo- American ideal had always been under scrutiny, such as the “uncivilized” and “atheistic” hordes of Eastern Europe and the enigmatic yellow races of Asia. Discriminatory imagery of foreigners, especially the Chinese, appeared in an excess of American publications in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (see Figures I – III). After the end of World War I, however, attacks upon these groups took on new importance – an importance that, in many minds, signified a life or death struggle for the survival of America. The predominant form of popular youth literature at this time, owing in large part to its low costs, both in production as well as in consumption, were the fantastic pulps of the early 1920s and 1930s and later, particularly with the advent of the Second World War, comic books. Both mediums offered the youth of America many things: fast-paced action, travels to unbelievable and far-off worlds, miracles of modern science, and a reality in which good, almost always, triumphed over evil. What these also offered were definitions as to what that “good” and “evil” were; in most cases, the good was personified by a heroic, strapping Anglo-Saxon male and the evil

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