We give you, The Whip and an allegedly Italian guy…

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Site Admin Matt has returned to bring you more of the best from Typo’s nearly five year blog history! I jumped up to April 2008 for this one. It made me LOL, and I don’t usually LOL.

I just love how that Indian/Aztec guy (Is that what he’s supposed to be?) is looking right at the audience, as if to say, “I know, I know. Look, it’s a paycheck. Humor them.”

If you do not know of the joy that is “Roy Raymond, TV Detective”, then you have my pity. Roy was a supposed genius who ran a “Believe it or Not!” type TV show called “Impossible… But True!”. The basic gist is that someone would always try some sort of obviously faked scam and Roy, because he was the Smartest Man Ever, would then debunk it. Occasionally even his own cast and crew would try to pull a fast one on him.

I chose to see Roy not as a brilliant man, but a man of average intelligence stuck in a world of highly credulous idiots, particularly his girl-friday/love interest Karen.

By way of example…

“Yes Karen, that’s the amazing part. Not that a parrot can form full sentences at all, or that it can complete math equations, or even that it can somehow hold a stick of chalk in its wings despite a complete and utter lack of any kind of prehensile grip. That’s nothing. The amazing think is that it ‘speaks so well’. Why do I even keep your bigoted ass around?”

Hey everybody, Site Admin Matt here with more of Typo’s Best, plucked from the last 4½ years of posts.

Yesterday was all about misogyny in the 1970s. Today I decided to dig right in with some 1940s racism. Really, really blatant, mind-bogglingly offensive racism. This post from July 2006 is probably the first one of Typo’s that made me audibly gasp.

Billy Batson was an everyman. After all, what orphan doesn’t have a job in radio that lets him travel the country without adult supervision?

And of course, there’s his valet.

Yes, that’s right, Billy had a slave. Sure, they call him a valet, but he’s a slave.

There’s a great story with his grandmother, Steamboat Mammy. She does voodoo.

Steamboat is eventually replaced by someone else.

Named Whitey.

I so could not make that up if I tried.

Typo had this to say in a comment on the original post:

Here’s some reminiscing by C.C. Beck, one of the early Captain Marvel artists, on Steamboat:

Steamboat was created to capture the affection of negro (sic) readers. Unfortunately he offended them instead and was unceremoniously killed off after a delegation of blacks visited the editor’s office protesting because he was a servant, because he had huge lips and kinky hair and because he spoke in a dialect. He was always a cartoon character, not intended to be realistic at all, but he was taken seriously by some, sadly enough.

On the one hand, I’m glad the *intention* was to be inclusive of black readers as well as white. On the other, WTF? How could such a horrible caricature not be taken as a serious offense?

Anyway, the original interview is here.

DC published “Popsicle Pete” stories for a bit. He was tagged “The All-American Boy”, and the strips ran in All-American Comics in a bit of branding synergy. These weren’t ads, but multi-page stories in which Pete and his pals did such “All-American things as stop kidnappers, backpack, and go to fairs. In an adventure at an aforementioned fair, we have the following background scene.

I titled this “holy hell!?” because that’s honestly what I thought when I read it. I know it was a different time and panels like that make me glad!

A complete page of the awesomeness that is Gary Concord:
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I mentioned yesterday that Gargantua, the “yes suh” style “comic” sidekick of Tex Thomson (because he was so manly he needed two), left the strip.
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In case you thought Golden Age comics were only offensive to Japanese and African-American peoples…
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Zatara is searching for an explorer. He was exploring a jungle (where, mysteriously, there are both “savage” type natives and “arabs”) to find the Missing Link. He finds both, but there’s something curious going on:
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Blackface humor. Blegh.
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Tex Thomson was a pre-”superhero” character of National’s, who would go on to become a superhero, the patriotic Mr. America (also known as the Americommando). Before (and after) donning a domino mask, Tex would travel the world, looking for adventure with his best buddy, Bob “Fatman” Daley. I’ve mentioned them before, due to their penchant for sharing a bed. However, it seems Bob’s balding, fat, and subtextual nature was not enough for the writers, so they added a second comic relief sidekick. One I did not know of until recently. (more…)