Answers to Comics' Persistent Questions

A dark knight in a city that knows how to keep its secrets, but one man is still trying to find answers to life's persistent questions... ||Taylor | university student | 19 | she/her||

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A true woman’s 1942?

By the time Sensation Comics #8 was published in August 1942, the United States had already been officially fighting in WWII for over half a year. The working landscape for men and women alike on the home front changed almost immediately with the U.S. entry into the war, and likely the situation that Wonder Woman and the Bullfinch girls were fighting against in Sensation #8 would have looked quite different.

Even before the war, 1938 saw the passage of the Fair Labor and Standards Act, which— at least by law if not entirely in practice— established a maximum 40-hour workweek, minimum wage, and guaranteed overtime pay. While the Act of course didn’t require business owners to pay their employees a hearty ton or make their workdays cushily comfortable, it should have at least required what was considered a living wage for the time. With such an act in place, the Bullfinch girls would have had legal recourse for their poor conditions and pay, which most certainly would have been Mr. Googins’ business.

The U.S.’s entry into the war toward the end of 1941 created massive shifts in the labor force which had consequences across all industries, department stores included. As men left their positions at work to enlist in the military, women stepped forward to fill what had traditionally been male-occupied positions in manufacturing and industry. Women also found work in military service, occupying positions as secretaries, in newly created women’s corps, and in other unique positions.

This newly found demand for women in war industries and both men and women in armed services left tremendous gaps in non-war employment. A personnel director in a Dallas, Texas department store remarked in October 1942 that “women under thirty who’ve been with us [at the department store] less than five years are going into war work. We’re losing men’s department heads to the army.”

The supply/demand dynamics between job seekers and employers shifted entirely, and whereas department stores once had ten times the numbers of applicants as they had positions, in 1942 they found themselves desperate to fill openings. Women taking retail merchants’ courses found themselves able to land jobs immediately and with no previous experience.

At W.A. Green Co. in Dallas, TX in 1942. Left to right: “Betty Farrell, housewife who had no previous experience; Ruby Tomlinson, who said she wanted to prepare for the time her husband went to war; Mrs. W.E. Whittington, a voice teacher, and Mary Ryburn, also a voice teacher.”

Department stores took another hit when employment conditions combined with shifts in consumer culture and product availabilities. Store owners and their hired buyers found themselves increasingly unable to meet product demands as materials were used in war efforts. Stores faced shortages in such goods as silk, nylon, and cotton, and the shutting down of several supplying firms forced the closing of sometimes-decades-old business partnerships and left stores needing to look for new suppliers.

Shoppers frenzy to buy silk stockings before inventories are depleted. July 1941.

With such a dramatic change in atmosphere, why does Sensation Comics #8 in 1942 depict an episode that would have been much more likely at a time a year before?

Of course, without being able to know for sure, I’d say that the cause would likely not have been simply the comic medium’s delayed response to changing forces of society. The entry into the war and the societal changes it brought would have been too sudden and drastic to go unnoticed by Wonder Woman creator William Moulton Marston, and the public would have been very much conscious of the differing circumstances found pre- and post- entry into the war.

Perhaps Marston used the department store episode because, while it may have not been the most immediately relevant issue, it would have been recent enough to still present a clear and understandable point to the reading public.

Wonder Woman presented a feminist case against inequality shown to women that didn’t go away with wartime. While women found themselves occupying new roles in the opportunities the war afforded them, prevailing ideas about the “proper” places of women remained. Peacetime following the war’s end in 1945 saw a reversion to old ideas, as women were expected back into the domestic realm to make way for the returning men.

The ideas that Wonder Woman would have fought for under Marston’s direction would have been the same during and after the war as they are in the pre-WWII-like society in which she fights for the Bullfinch girls in Sensation Comics #8: ideas born from Marston’s unique brand of 20th-century feminism arguing for women’s distinct capabilities separate from men’s corrupting control.

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Why would anyone want such a job?

Considering their poor working conditions and below-subsistence pay, what made sales jobs inside early 20th century department stores so desirable?

What kept women working at these stores when they could very well have found themselves in as dire of straits as the Bullfinch workers find themselves in Sensation Comics #8? Why didn’t they just leave, or demand better conditions?

While the turn of the century certainly began to see more women engaging in paid, market work outside of their homes, women faced unfavorable conditions and low pay in almost any field. More than half of all market-employed women in the 1930s worked over 50 hours a week (not including their unpaid work keeping their homes and supporting their families), and often could be paid as little as half of what their male counterparts made. Even as more women entered the workforce, the largely male-dominated labor unions often did not represent women’s concerns well, and women were often left without much of a voice against labor concerns.

In the 1930s, the greatest number of employed women were found working in domestic or personal service. Most professionals at the time were working either as schoolteachers or nurses. The 1940s saw a shift within clerical and sales work toward “feminization”, where women began to increasingly fill what were previously seen as men’s jobs. This shift took place alongside the greater implementation of technology and the decreased chance of promotion within the fields, and the roles women found themselves newly filling no longer came with their previously held promise of advancement within an enterprise.

And even as women began to take over the clerical and sales fields, the plurality of women were still found working in the unskilled professions. In 1940, half of the women working on the market were employed in domestic/personal service, in factories, or as service workers. Three out of ten women worked in clerical positions or in sales, and but one in ten women in 1940 worked in the professional field— which was still largely made up entirely of either teachers or nurses.

Amidst largely unfavorable conditions pretty much across the board, department store jobs offered to women the societal respectability of white-color, non-labor work in what was still mostly an unskilled position. The pay most saleswomen earned, while still sub-adequate, was comparable to that found in clerical work, and the job offered a certain degree of autonomy that was rare outside of the professional nursing and teaching realms. With these considerations, department store sales jobs were largely seen as quite favorable positions for women at the time, which explains their flocking to the jobs in the pre-WW2 20th century.

The saleswomen played a central and vital role to the department stores’ operations, and were critical to the enterprises’ successes. As such, the role of saleswoman rose to the status of a legitimate profession within the industry, even while the women within the role still worked overlong hours for too little pay.

The plight of the department store saleswomen then provided an ideal illustration of the oppression and inequality for women that Wonder Woman dedicated herself to fighting against. Even those respected positions that could be considered within the upper echelons of women’s work offered poor conditions and left the women within them without a considerable amount of voice. Wonder Woman represented the feminist battle against that exact sort of institutional sexism, and the familiarity of the situation that Sensation Comics #8′s Bullfinch girls found themselves in would have presented a clear message to the readers of the comic.

[batmannoir-blog]

Starving saleswomen?

Acknowledging the grandeur and massive scale of early 20th century department stores (from my previous post), I’m left wondering:

In the ranks of the armies of employees required to keep these behemoths running, what were the realities of life for the workers? Was the exploitation in Sensation Comics #8 reflective of real-life situations at the time of its publication in August 1942?

At the turn of the century through to the U.S.’s entry into WWII, jobs in department stores— for both men and women— were in high demand and it was often very difficult to get hired. A new store opening in New York in 1904 reported that “more than ten times as many applicants appeared as were wanted,” demanding that police reserves be called in to keep the more than 30,000 applicants in line. Even long-established stores continued to receive large volumes of applicants daily. Application forms were often extensive for the time, the sometimes 30+ questions asking such things as the applicants’ race, color, “previous condition of servitude,” marital status, “habits bad or good,” and “general inclinations in the pursuit of health and happiness.”

The nature of the work itself demanded a lot of those who found themselves employed by the retail giants. Sales jobs were usually held by women, with men occupying the more prestigious “floor walker” and department manager positions that oversaw the sales. Saleswomen were expected to command a great deal of knowledge about the wares they were hired to sell, and were required to express a certain level of enthusiasm for the products in order to interest their prospective customers.

Saleswomen were also expected to navigate the complicated psychology of sales while maintaining maximum levels of customer satisfaction. When dealing with customers, they were required to be “attentive without being insistent,” being taught “the value of silence, as well as the value of a well-placed word” and being expected to understand the minds of their customers without asking too many questions. Department stores relied heavily on their customers’ satisfaction and willingness to return, so the impression of trustworthy salespeople was essential to their businesses. So, while saleswomen were held to expectations of making certain numbers of sales, they were also expected to not coerce customers in buying for the sake of “making a sale.”

These early 20th century department store employees have often been described as working in “sweatshop-like conditions”. Their hours were long, many often working from open to close, 6am to 9pm (15 hours) daily. Saleswomen were required to stand for the entirety of their shifts, and were often responsible for keeping their shelves stocked and sweeping the sales areas in addition to their responsibilities to the customers. They were reportedly required to take their lunches in overly cramped rooms.

In addition to all these stresses and demands of the job, employees were also required to be pleasant and obliging at all times. They were encouraged to identify themselves as part of a larger “we” of the department store as a whole so as to better deal with rude and uncompliant customers.

The eleven dollars a week that Sensation Comics #8‘s Bullfinch girls made was probably about standard for most saleswomen leading up to the years before WWII. It seems that most made a weekly wage of something along the range of nine to twelve dollars, with the possibility of added commission on a percentage of the sales made after meeting a certain defined quota.

A simple purchasing power comparison estimates that $11 in 1942 would have been roughly equal to $160 in 2015. How does this stack up against the living expenses the Bullfinch girls would have been facing?

Most of the early Sensation and Wonder Woman comics, unless otherwise stated, take place around Wonder Woman/Diana Prince’s workplace in Washington D.C.. While recognizing that the dynamics of the city and the related living expenses have certainly changed, the expected typical living expenses for a single adult in D.C. today are about $30,867 annually before taxes, or $594 per week— and that’s the bare, “living wage” estimate.

If the Bullfinch girls were making the equivalent of $160 in 2015-dollars, they would be living well below subsistence levels. While they might be able to afford food (about $58 a week, according to the living wage calculator), their housing expenses alone would leave them in staggering debt (today’s prices at about $269 a week in D.C.). Never mind even considering that $57.90 (in 2015-dollars) bottle of vitamins.

While I recognize that it’s not a perfect comparison, apparently below-subsistence wages were the reality for many saleswomen working for department stores in the early 20th century. Many of the women reportedly turned to prostitution in order to get by.

A lot of these issues were addressed with the Fair Labor and Standards Act of 1938, which established a 40-hour workweek, minimum wage, and guaranteed overtime pay. The U.S.’s entrance into WWII at the end of 1941 also saw further changes to the dynamics of the department stores’ functioning and employment. At the time of Sensation Comics #8′s publication in 1942, the situation for department store workers might have been quite different, but the Bullfinch girls’ struggles certainly reflected the realities of an earlier set of working department store women.

[batmannoir-blog]

Department stores?

August 1942, Sensation Comics #8: The issue’s action revolves around the Bullfinch Department Store after Wonder Woman— disguised as Diana Prince— discovers the woes of one of the store’s salesgirls. Her further investigation uncovers mistreatment and corruption within the store, and (together with her trusty band of Holliday College girls) she manages to beat down the oppressive and corrupt men in charge and restore order for the store’s women.

But what were department stores actually like at the time? Why did they seem to demand enough attention to occupy the setting of an entire arc of Wonder Woman’s early exploits?

By the time of Wonder Woman’s first appearance in December 1941, department stores were certainly nothing new. While there is plenty of dissension on the concrete historical beginnings of the department store, all accounts can at least agree that by Sensation Comics #8′s publication in 1942, they had been in the United States for well over eighty years.

Expanding from perhaps humble origins, these stores were massive enterprises by the beginning of the 20th century. Perhaps one of the most enduring of these retail giants was R. H. Macy & Co. (now known familiarly as Macy’s), which while prominent was still but one name among many in the world of department stores. In 1933, the Macy’s location on the west side of Broadway boasted over two million square feet of floor space and employed over 10,000 people during the regular working season (and more during the holidays). Included in this particular location was a library, reading room, recreation room, and hospital all for the employees’ use alone, amenities which were not at all unusual in the department stores of the day.

It was estimated that shoppers only actually interacted with about one quarter of the army of employees that kept the stores running. Behind the scenes of display cases and showroom floors were massive operations dedicated to the testing and handling of merchandise, cashier work, delivery of goods, management of employees, purchasing, and the many various other tasks that were required to keep the entire organism of the store alive.

In these early 20th century stores, cashiers were not housed among the separate departments or even at a central location to which customers brought their purchases. Instead, tens of miles of pneumatic brass tubing (similar to what we see at bank drive-thrus today) connected each of the many departments to a centralized “tube room”, where clerks kept detailed records of the transactions made and sent back change to the customer.

After their transactions were settled, customers often did not actually walk out of the store with their purchases. Instead, records of their orders were sent to the stock rooms, where the goods were wrapped and packaged before being sent through the store’s intricate network of chutes and conveyor belts and eventually delivered via a fleet of carriages/trucks (depending on the year) to the customers’ homes.

Many department stores also offered mail-order services for customers outside of the cities, which added a separate concern for the package handlers and also demanded the employment of hoards of clerks dedicated specifically to the processing of these orders.

Department stores developed alongside a consumer culture that emerged with the rise of the middle class throughout and after the Industrial Revolution. Rising prosperity and social mobility, coupled with an ever-increasing fascination with changing fashion, transformed shopping into a leisure activity. The fascinating, opulent, and expansive brick-and-mortar retail locations created new opportunities for women by offering public spaces for them to stroll unaccompanied without damaging their reputations.

Department stores and window shopping were largely seen as the realms and past-times of women, and as such it makes sense that their concerns and appeals would be attributed to the only woman superhero of the time. By characterizing Wonder Woman by her window shopping in Sensation Comics #1, I’d argue that creator William Moulton Marston was not attempting to demean her with stereotypical vices of women. Rather, Marston was attempting to establish that Wonder Woman could be powerful, influential, and independent while still being entirely a woman and maintaining her femininity.

For all their wonder and appeal, department stores did in reality have their fair share of issues. Employees worked long, hard hours, often for little pay— much like what the women face in Sensation Comics #8. What’s interesting, though, is that circumstances across the board changed with the United States’ entry in WWII. By 1942, the department stores’ situations would likely have looked much different, the scenario in Sensation #8 representing more the concerns of the years prior.

[batmannoir-blog]

An electric touch?

May 1941, Captain America Comics #3: The Red Skull is wreaking his usual havoc, rustling up a gang of thugs and their Captain America and Bucky imposters. One of the good-for-nothing scammers has the misfortune of discovering the awesome power of the Skull’s “touch of death”, and a single touch to the Skull has his body dropping to the floor.

The Skull flaunts his “touch of death”, the horrific idea of a death-bringing touch adding to the fear and mystique around himself from which he draws his power. Bucky, however— the real Bucky— being the smart kid that he is, has the Skull all figured out. He knows that behind the mask, the Skull is just a man and that he has no terrible, death-bringing powers, but just a trick of innovative science.

So where did writer Jack Kirby cook up such an (admittedly still quite terrifying) idea? Was the Skull’s electricity-laden outfit just a figure of imaginative fantasy invented to add to Red Skull’s unique brand of horror, or was there some precedent in 1941 for the concept?

Perhaps one of the earliest uses of an electrical current in some form of electroshock weapon was with the invention of an “electric whaling apparatus”, a type of electric harpoon patented by Dr. Albert Sonnenburg and Philip Reohton for “catching and securing sperm and right whales” in 1852. Similar technology was seen later with the invention of the cattle prod which, though it was patented in 1890 by John M. Burton, only started to become popularly used in the 1930s and 40s.

Though cattle prods in their original or in any modified forms can now be associated with police and particularly aggressive riot control methods, they weren’t really put to such uses until even later— in the 1960s with the Civil Rights movement and its many associated protests.

At least one particularly inventive individual saw such a possibility with the technology in the years immediately preceding Captain America’s birth, though. In 1935, a Cuban inventor named Cirilo Hernandez Diaz utilized Model T vibrator coils (which were used in the ignition of early cars) to design an electric glove to be worn by policemen for the purpose of subduing rioters.

The glove was designed to be discreet, the being comprised of a battery “not larger than a revolver holster” meant to be carried on the hip, a wire to be drawn through the wearer’s sleeve, and a single insulated glove. The original design, giving a 1,500-volt shock, was meant to hurt but not permanently damage or burn its recipient. Diaz posited, though, that the voltage of the current could be stepped up to any figure— a fact that leaves open the possibility of a hidden electroshock death weapon very much in vein with the Red Skull’s electric wiring “touch of death”.

[batmannoir-blog]

Women in the FBI?

March 1941, Captain America Comics #1: Before we even meet Private Steve Rogers or see his transformed alter-ego of Captain America, we are introduced to one of the agents behind the super soldier experiment:

Agent X-13, later revealed to be a young Miss Betty Ross working in the service of the FBI.

Betty’s capability as an agent is never really questioned, and she’s often depicted operating independently on investigations and handling herself in difficult situations. Despite her apparent penchant for rescue by Captain America, Betty occupies what could be considered a uniquely empowering role for a woman at the time.

Perhaps her position should be considered even more unique, considering the fact that— at least officially— there were no female agents in the FBI in 1941.

When J. Edgar Hoover assumed control of the Bureau of Investigation (which became the FBI in 1935) in 1924, there were two female agents in the employment of the agency: Jessie B. Duckstein and Alaska P. Davidson. However, as a part of the Bureau’s “reduction of force”, they both resigned within a few months after Hoover’s assuming office. One other woman, Lenore Houston, was made a “special agent” by Hoover for the Bureau’s New York office in November 1924, but she too resigned by the end of 1928.

The next female agents weren’t hired by the FBI until 1972, when Hoover’s death left open opportunities for long-brewing changes within the FBI to finally be implemented.

Despite the FBI’s closed doors and the unlikelihood of Betty’s employment as a special agent with them, there were service opportunities opened to women during the war effort. Women were employed on secret war projects, working as secretaries with code breakers and science departments, and were also enlisted officially in women’s branches of military service.

The United States established the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) in 1942, which was later converted to full army status as the Women’s Army Corps (WAC) in July 1943. The women in it served voluntarily and were trained to meet the needs of the Army as it found itself increasingly short on manpower. The women in the WAAC/WAC were trained in circumstances parallel to their male counterparts, and—excluding weapons and tactical training— they were taught the same courses as the Army men.

The women in the WAAC/WAC were trained to be switchboard operators, mechanics, bakers, postal clerks, drivers, stenographers, typists, and seamstresses. While they largely occupied positions on the home front within the United States, many were also deployed overseas. Despite public criticism of the idea of women in uniform, many generals praised the women in the WAAC/WAC. General Douglas MacArthur, Chief of Staff of the US Army and Supreme Allied Commander, has been credited with calling the WACs "my best soldiers", adding that they worked harder, complained less, and were better disciplined than men.

Around Captain America Comics #32 in 1943, Betty Ross had apparently left her post with the FBI to serve in the WAAC.

This was likely an attempt to place her in a more probable role, and one that readers could relate to as a position that real women in their lives filled. And, considering Captain America’s propagandist role during the war, it likely was an effort to build support for the WAC amidst the criticism and slander it faced.

For the real women of the WAC to whom the Captain America creators likely looked when shaping the character of Betty Ross, their service in the Army gave them the opportunity to assert an independence they didn’t have previously. The WAC remained an active branch of the Army until 1978, when it was disbanded and its units were integrated with male units of the US Army.

Betty later went on to fill a variety of roles, seeming to have resumed her position with the FBI by 1945. After the war and in later years, she occupied multiple roles both within the government and alongside superheroes.

[batmannoir-blog]

Captain America: predicting the future?

June 1941: Captain America Comics #4 opens with several of the United States’ “most prominent national figures” being knocked off one-by-one by Nazi agents disguised as beggars and bums. One of those unfortunate victims is a certain “John L. Green, nationally known labor leader”:

Something about the specificity of his name in particular— middle initial included and all— and the insistence of the “nationally known” descriptor stuck out to me, as if we as readers are supposed to recognize this guy somehow other than just as someone that the comic’s writers cooked up for a neat plot element.

It turns out that there wasn’t anyone named John L. Green in 1941— well, at least nobody with that name occupying any position of leadership in either the American Federation of Labor (AFL) or the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), which were the U.S.’s two major federations of labor at the time. There were, however, two rather prominent men who sat in leading roles of each of the separate organizations with the names of John L. Lewis and William Green.

The resemblance of the names is too close, too exact, to just be considered an uncanny coincidence. Both of the names would have been easily recognizable to contemporary readers, each man heading one of the two largest labor union groupings in the United States. Perhaps the character John L. Green represented an amalgam of real-life labor leaders of the time, used by the comic’s writers to create a recognizable character whose significance in the world of the comic would be understood by readers— while still not actually using a real person.

What’s interesting about the amalgamation of these two particular men, though, is that their relationship in real life was not at all one of cooperation or amiability. The two organizations that the men each headed were actually locked in a fairly prolonged public dispute, a contention that held significant implications on the eve of the United States’ entry into WWII.

Without delving too much into the complicated specifics of union politics, it can be simply said that the CIO and AFL represented different realms of the unionized workforce and often stood at odds to each other in a sometimes-violent rivalry for dominance.

The CIO was actually formed by John L. Lewis as a committee within the AFL in 1935, but was expelled from the federation to form its own organization in 1938. The two groups did attempt to reconcile, but the peace talks that they held were adjourned in April 1939 and largely abandoned thereafter.

Public opinion was overwhelmingly in favor of the reunification of the two labor organizations, with something along the lines of 87% of the leaders and 71% of the members of the groups’ constituent unions in favor of the AFL and CIO joining into one organization. President Roosevelt also repeatedly appealed to the two groups to make peace, as a unified labor force was advantageous to the nation’s defense production.

While opposing certain aspects of the AFL’s labor-related policies, Lewis also was particularly outspoken against U.S. involvement in the war. He opposed Roosevelt and the U.S.’s defense production quite vehemently, often calling for coal miners’ strikes that hindered production. It wasn’t until Germany invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941 that Lewis and nearly all labor unions finally turned to supporting the U.S.’s war efforts.

In response to such overwhelming public demand for peace between the two organizations and recognizing the significance of their cooperation to the war effort, Lewis sent a letter on January 17, 1942 (though he wasn’t president at the time, he remained a member of the CIO’s peace committee) to Green requesting a resumption of their organizations’ peace talks. In this letter, Lewis recognized the increased strength of a unified labor effort, as well as saying:

“America needs unity in every phase of its national economy. Labor imperatively requires coherency, in order to give maximum assistance to the nation in its war effort to defend American liberties and American institutions.”

Green responded by referencing a statement in the AFL’s war policy declaration made the prior December:

“We... renew our offer for unity in the labor movement and for the common defense of our nation against mortal danger.”

These statements are resembled almost exactly in John L. Green’s proclamation in the comics:

“And I say again, that labor must unite to advance our defense program.”

The mystery, though, is that at the time of Captain America Comics #4′s publication in June 1941, none of these developments had happened yet. As the comic’s writers and artists were putting together the story of “Captain America and the Unholy Legion” that features John L. Green, the AFL and the CIO were still locked in their contentions and peace-talk-hiatus. Lewis still vehemently opposed the U.S.’s defense program entirely, the Germans’ invasion of the Soviet Union that turned him to supporting it not occurring until late that June and well after the issue’s creation. The two statements by Green and Lewis, though saying almost exactly the same thing, weren’t made until well after the statement made by their fictitious, amalgamous counterpart.

So did the Captain America creators somehow manage to predict the future in imagining a united labor effort in support of U.S. defense efforts?

Perhaps. It’s more likely, though, that the creators were just further utilizing the comic’s purpose as a tool of propaganda in support of the U.S.’s war efforts. Even John L. Green’s extremely simple and brief appearance could be powerful, as it supported the appeal of a reality where labor was united in support of defense production. By doing such, it fed into and fueled existing public demands, those demands likely being what led to the labor leaders repeating their comic-self’s almost exact words.

[batmannoir-blog]

World’s earliest cell phone?

July 1940: Robin goes undercover at a “fashionable private school for boys” in Detective Comics #41 to get to the bottom of a case involving a murdered grounds attendant, an escaped asylum inmate, and a missing school boy.

Due to the school being overrun by police, Batman decides he will be unable to stick around and work, leaving Robin with instructions to “send details on whatever develops.”

When it comes time for Robin to report in, we see him fiddle with his belt before establishing a connection with Batman on his “tiny capable wireless” and then proceeding to take part in a two-way conversation.

But if portable, handheld cell phones weren’t invented until 1973, where did the dynamic duo get this kind of tech?

The idea, at least, for wireless communication was certainly not new in 1940. English caricaturist Lewis Baumer published a cartoon in 1907 entitled “Forecasts for 1907″ that illustrated the “development of wireless telegraphy”. It depicted two individuals— antennae seemingly protruding from their respective head coverings— each separately engaged in their own matters over wireless “telegraphic” devices. (Baumer seemed to have a century-early prescience on this one, seeming to illustrate the very same paradoxical disconnect brought by our connective devices that we’re dealing with in our 21st century... I guess we can’t say we didn’t see it coming, then.)

Later, artist Karl Arnold published a cartoon entitled “Wireless Telephony” in a German satirical magazine in 1926 which envisioned a crowded street of people going about their day with wireless telephone devices attached to their chests. Looking closer at Batman’s “portable phone” in the comic, one might dare to say that it could be drawn with inspiration taken from those in Arnold’s cartoon:

As far as existing technology of the time goes, though, two-way communication radios had been invented for quite a while, but they were large and mostly used in transportation and military settings. “Portable” devices were even still large and required automobiles or trucks to carry them.

The first truly portable two-way communication radio, the SCR-300, was invented by the Galvin Manufacturing Company (later Motorola) for military purposes in 1940. Nicknamed the “walkie-talkie” (a name which stuck with all subsequent two-way radios), it weighed almost 40 pounds and was designed to be carried like a backpack.

Also developed by the Galvin Manufacturing Company in 1940 was the SCR-536, or “handie-talkie”. While it had a considerably shorter range than the backpack-mounted SCR-300, it was also considerably smaller.

With Batman standing by just outside the school’s walls, it’s likely that the SCR-536′s short range would have been plenty sufficient for his and Robin’s conversation. But weighing in at five pounds and being roughly the size of a breadbox, it’s hard to imagine either of the caped crusaders maneuvering well with that thing built into their utility belts.

Batman and Robin’s “portable phones” must have been another one of those fantastical feats of science cooked up by the Detective Comics writers. Playing off the readers’ imaginations and the fantasies of the time, the comic went (and still goes) beyond the capabilities of existing technology to give the idea of technological possibilities only open to the super-smart, super-rich Batman and his trusted companion. In 1940, such small, convenient, and capable communication devices must have seemed in themselves a kind of superpower.

[batmannoir-blog]

Why the purple gloves?

May 1939: Detective Comics #27 is published starring a new “mysterious and adventurous figure” engaged in a “lone battle against the evil forces of society”... the “Bat-man”!

Bat-man as he appears in this first issue is very much the same as the Batman we know today. The batsuit hasn’t actually seen many major changes in the 77 years of its history, always keeping the same basic elements from his first design. That is, except for one very noticeable detail...

What’s up with the bright purple gloves, Batman? Those seem like an odd fashion choice, and they certainly don’t stick around. In the very next issue of Detective Comics, Batman appears without any gloves at all. Later, he’s shown wearing blue or black gloves.

Were the purple gloves an intentional design choice that happened to get discarded as the creators were developing the character? And if they were, what was the rationale behind purple?

It seems that once, likely in the late 19th century, purple (or, well, lavender) colored kid gloves were quite fashionable among the aristocratic elite in Great Britain. King Edward VII briefly revived this trend by donning the lavender gloves at the Royal Ascot horse racetrack in the summer of 1909.

That brief surge in lavender-colored men’s fashion was likely long forgotten by the time of Batman’s creation 30 years later, though, and it’s unlikely that creator Bob Kane had it anywhere near in mind in designing the character. Closer to Batman’s first appearance, however, gloves of various shades were beginning to be seen as fashionable accents to otherwise severe suits. Gloves were produced initially in mostly subdued tones of black, brown, navy, and mauve through the mid-to-late 1930s. The experimentation with varieties of color hit a high point around 1942 when advancements in technologies allowed the abundance of various brightly colored gloves of nearly every shade of the rainbow.

Batman’s designs would have been conceived right in the middle of this fashion development, and the experimentation with colored accessories might have at least somewhat influenced his creators. However, the fascination with gloves and their rainbowed possibilities was mostly a phenomenon within the realm of women’s fashion and while men did seem to have their fair share of options, they wore their gloves more often for practical purposes rather than fashion.

It’s hard, then to present a compelling argument that Batman’s purple gloves were simply a product of fashion at the time.

Today’s readers might just assume that the gloves are supposed to be those blue or purple gloves worn by medical professionals or the detectives we see on TV, to add to Batman’s characterization as the “World’s Greatest Detective”.

This would be the simplest explanation because not only do they look so much the same, but it would only make sense that a detective in Detective Comics would be wearing “detective” gloves.

The problem, though, is that this particular type of glove wasn’t even invented until 1990. Reusable latex gloves were first invented for medical purposes in 1889, but they were mostly white or off-white. Disposable latex gloves weren’t seen until 1965, and they still maintained the limited color options. The demand for latex-free options later prompted the development of these nitrile gloves, which come in multiple colors to indicate that they are latex-free. They were released on the market in the mid-1990s.

So Batman in his first appearance in 1939 can’t be wearing these medical nitrile gloves.

There doesn’t seem to be any clear answer for why Batman’s gloves are purple in his first appearance. It’s interesting to note, though, that later reprints of Detective Comics #27 have been recolored to show him donning what appear to be blue gloves that more closely match the accents on his cape and boots.

ORIGINAL:

REPRINT:

That, combined with the fact that on the original cover of Detective Comics #27, Batman is drawn wearing blue gloves, could indicate that it was never really intended for him to be wearing purple gloves at all. The purple could have been a coloration error in the original printing, later changed to more accurately represent the artist’s intent.

Without having any recorded evidence from his creators explaining the reasons behind Batman’s purple gloves, they can only remain a mystery. However, they show that comics were (and still are) imprecise and in a period of development. You can very literally see the decisions being made and changed about characters with each new issue, as design elements are subtly changed and as characters’ personal qualities are developed.

[batmannoir-blog]

WTF, Batman?

Spring 1940, one year after Batman’s first appearance in Detective Comics #27, Batman appears in his own title in Batman #1.

The issue contained five stand-alone stories, one of which (retroactively titled “The Cat”) sees Batman and his boy wonder going about what can be seen as typical crime-fighting business by intercepting a jewelry heist at a rich socialite’s yacht party.

That is until, upon the duo’s capturing of the thief (who turns out to be “The Cat”, later known as Catwoman), the readers find themselves at a particularly puzzling panel:

Out of context, the panel has been rediscovered to a unanimous “WTF??” the Internet round. Even read within context, to today’s readers it seems oddly placed and jarringly out of character for the “eerie figure of the night” that is the Batman.

But what about in the context of the time? Was “Papa spank” just one of those synchronic phrases everyone was throwing around in 1940?

To the extent of my research... No.

Recognizing— and disregarding— the potential perilousness of such an Internet venture, I’ve only been able to find the words “Papa spank” used in that order in three other historical instances: once in 1929 as the title of a comedy short directed by Neal Burns (whose filmography is a flood of titles of what surely must be blatant double entendres), once as the title and possibly joking closing remark of a letter written from a father to his daughter in a Dec 5, 1947 edition of the Schenectady Gazette, and once more as a descriptive term in a 1949 report on the “Relation of the Court to Probationers During the Period of Probation.”

Lacking any historical justification for Batman’s particular phraseology, however, the threat itself might not actually have been all that uncommon. While the 1940s is typically recognized as a perhaps uniquely empowering decade for women, the United States didn’t actually enter WWII and thus see the societal changes with women occupying traditionally men-occupied work roles until December 1941. When Batman #1 was published in 1940, ideas from previous decades about strictly separated gender roles were still very much the norm.

Spanking was seen as an acceptable means of disciplining unruly children and women. Domestic abuse in other forms was also not particularly uncommon, popular views often holding that women were subordinate to men and wives under the domain of their husbands.

Blatant sexism was neither uncommon nor particularly frowned upon at the time, and the Batman comics were certainly no exceptions. Catwoman herself was modeled after the popular “vamp” or “femme fatale” trope of literature, movies, and television, which was a woman who used her seductive, womanly appeals to charm a male protagonist to his doom.

“I felt that women were feline creatures and men were more like dogs. While dogs are faithful and friendly, cats are cool, detached, and unreliable... You always need to keep women at arm's length. We don't want anyone taking over our souls, and women have a habit of doing that.” --Bob Kane, creator of Batman

[batmannoir-blog]

Who is Stanislaw Kober?

Action Comics #3, August 1938:

Unsafe conditions in a mine owned by a corrupt and greedy businessman lead to a cave-in, trapping the lone miner Stanislaw Kober and the draegermen who attempt to rescue him. Of course, Superman rushes to the rescue and saves both Kober and the rescue workers who were knocked unconscious by leaking toxic gas.

But who is this mine worker, and why did Siegel and Shuster decide to give him such a distinctive name and broken English?

Stanisław is the Polish version of the common Slavic name Stanislav, and Kober is a predominately Jewish surname of German origin. It’s easy to assume, then, that Stanislaw Kober here would be a Polish man of Jewish descent who immigrated to the U.S. at some point within his lifetime.

Polish immigration to the U.S. saw several waves throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. The first of these waves occurred within the 19th century as Poland was conquered and partitioned among the three imperial powers of Russia, Prussia, and Austria-Hungary. Poles found difficulty in maintaining their independence, their freedom to worship as Roman Catholics, and what they felt was their distinct identity as a people amid persecution under these hostile regimes, which led many to seek their freedom overseas.

Polish immigration saw another surge at the turn of the 20th century as continued imperial repression, land shortages, and chronic unemployment within Poland led many Poles to seek decent livelihoods elsewhere, being especially drawn to the heavy industry of America’s northeast. The migration slowed significantly as Poland gained its independence after WWI and as the U.S. severely tightened restrictions on European immigration through the 1920s and early 30s.

Early Polish immigrants within the U.S. sought to maintain their distinct identity as a people, and often came together in communities to preserve aspects of the Polish way of life. These communities that formed were known collectively as “Polonia”, and within them were networks of Polish-language newspapers and radio and television stations as well as schools, music, dance, literature, and more than 900 Polish Catholic churches.

Heavy industry played a major role in recruitment throughout Europe, and new Polish immigrants and their Polish-American descendants most often occupied unskilled work roles within industry and agriculture. Poles were employed in factories, steel mills, slaughterhouses, farms, and mines, and Polish was often spoken inside the Appalachian mines.

So Superman’s rescuee represents an individual of a common demographic within the mines (and workforce) of the early 1900s. In a time period between turmoil and conflicts through Eastern Europe, it would have been a common sight to see immigrants from economically- or conflict-stricken countries occupying such roles. Siegel and Shuster here are providing for us a representation of life within the time.

[batmannoir-blog]

What even is justice anyway?

The question is not a new one, and neither is the practice of using paragons in heroic positions to explore the concepts and implications surrounding it. Myths and works of literature throughout time have been used to exemplify their society’s contemporary ideas of justice, and they often have come to very different conclusions.

The Homeric epics The Iliad and The Odyssey each follow the feats of superior men: Achilles in The Iliad possessing unmatched strength, invulnerability, and godly parentage and Odysseus in The Odyssey showing unparalleled wit, cunning, and resourcefulness. Through Achilles and Odysseus (as well as a whole other cast of great men and godly beings), Homeric ideas of justice are characterized as existing in vengeance. Wrongdoing or slights to a man’s honor are shown to need to rectification through reciprocal action. Achilles finds glory by enacting justice through avenging the death of his dear friend Patroklos, and Odysseus seeks justice by relentlessly slaughtering his wife’s suitors upon his return home after 20 years away.

Odysseus killing his wife’s suitors

Plato, however, in his Republic defines justice in an entirely different vein by implying that true justice is found in a state of efficiency. He removes justice from a sense of morality or honor and describes it as existing when every man occupies the place for which he is best suited. People should do only that at which they are best and no more in order for a stable, just society.

The U.S. Constitution asserts that justice is established with the construction of law and order, and it exists only alongside the “perfect union”, “domestic tranquility”, “common defense”, “general welfare”, and “blessings of liberty” (freedom) outlined within the Preamble. America was founded on a justice associated with freedom and social order.

“We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

America was founded on a justice associated with freedom and social order.

So what does Superman say about this?

Like the great heroes of mythology, Superman is elevated above the men around him (quite often literally) and—while possessing flaws—embodies traits of what is to be considered the ideal person. However, not yet the boy scout we assume him to be today, Superman in the first issues of Action Comics and then his own Superman issues acted well outside established laws or institutions in his “one-man battle against evil and injustice!” Rather than fighting for “truth, justice, and the American way,” Superman in his early comics appearances was introduced as a “Champion of the oppressed, the physical marvel who had sworn to devote his existence to helping those in need!”

In a tumultuous time coming out of the Great Depression and before entering WWII, the traditional American mainstays of justice within a system of law and order were being questioned. Rather, there was a push against the system as it was seen to become a source of injustice in its ability to be manipulated for the advantage of the morally corrupt and used as a tool to oppress the morally upright. As such, it would make sense for people’s paragon of the time to be a figure that acted outside and against that system in the name of those oppressed by it.

Superman in his comics does just that, and in his fight against injustice he commits several of what could be considered overtly illegal acts. However, both real-life readers and those depicted as upstanding citizens within the comics seem able and eager to forgive Superman for his “criminal” acts in favor of the results they bring. Perhaps the blatant destruction Superman wrought could be seen as hopeful steps toward breaking down old delusions of justice before building a new, just system and set of social ideals.

[batmannoir-blog]

Truth, justice, and the American way?

Superman. He’s simple, right? The good guy. The one that fights the persistent and noble battle for “truth, justice, and the American way!”

Except in his original renditions, Superman was not at all the patriotic crusader fighting for the immaculate and distinctly American values that earn him the “big, blue boy scout” moniker persistent in the public mind today. The phrase “Truth, justice, and the American way” wasn’t even introduced until the autumn of 1942 during a low point for America in WWII—4 years after Superman’s first appearance in Action Comics #1. The phrase was used in the “Adventures of Superman” radio show until after war efforts turned in American favor in 1944 and the preamble was dropped.

In his first appearances in the earliest issues of Action Comics, Superman was known as the “champion of the oppressed”, using his might to stand up for the little guy in the face of seemingly indomitable institutions like corrupt capitalism, entrenched bureaucrats, and an oppressive criminal justice system. While he still claimed to be fighting for justice, he fought outside and sometimes in direct opposition to the American law. He wasn’t opposed to say, roughing up a fellow...

...or throwing one off into oblivion...

...or obstructing the criminal justice system...

...or a little collateral damage...

...or fully intentionally wreaking massive destruction on an entire city sector... 

...Which calls into question… what exactly is justice?

[batmannoir-blog]

Close reading comics?

“Good Boy” by Kelly Angel:

These are only the first three panels of a much longer (physically, not a long amount of time) comic, so read the entire thing here.

(source: http://www.anythingcomic.com/)

In the major portion of the comic, the text and words work together in a manner that Scott McCloud in Understanding Comics describes as word-specific, “Where pictures illustrate, but don’t significantly add to a largely complete text.”

In fact, for much of “Good Boy”, the pictures could be removed entirely and the the text would be left with essentially the same effect, but as a poem or literary vignette:

You came to live with us about 12 years ago. You were small and fluffy and you’d cry as you ate your food. I remember the time your belly swelled up when you ate an entire tub of cream. And when your eyes swelled shut and we couldn’t figure out what had happened until we found the chewed up orange you were too afraid to get close to...

The pictures themselves don’t depict any new information, but rather serve as illustrations to the narration that the text provides. The combination of the two, however, allow the reader to slow down and absorb the emotions of life with this goofy-eyed dog. As they read, the audience develops their own empathetic relationship with the dog Jay.

Once the text reaches its end, though, the comic continues. After the words “You were a good boy,” the narration stops and a shift is seen with the remaining image-only panels. The previously plain-white background fades to all black. The previous panels consisted entirely of scene-to-scene transitions depicting disconnected, snapshot images of life with Jay, but the post-narration panels consist entirely of moment-to-moment transitions with very little time elapsing between panels.

This drastic shift in composition represents the shift between what is known by the comic’s writer/artist and what is not. The fade to black can be seen as symbolically representing Jay’s sleeplike fade into death and the unknown realm that exists there after. Both the “audible” silence from the lack of text and the visual silence from the solid black background give these final panels a sense of solemnity as Jay’s death is accepted. This black also presents a stark contrast against the bright, faintly glowing white of Jay’s ghost, giving the sense that even after death, Jay is still his bright, happy, doglike self.

The comic’s overall panel layout is ideal for online reading. The entire comic cannot be viewed on a screen all at once, and as the reader scrolls down to read on their computer or mobile device, the comic’s narrative slowly unfurls. This effect is especially well utilized in the final panels as the moment-to-moment transitions are able to be experienced in an almost cinematic manner.

[batmannoir-blog]

Who am I?

Hello all, I’m Taylor.

I’m a double major in Environmental & Sustainability Studies and International Studies here at the U. I grew up in a small town in the upperstate of South Carolina before moving to Provo, Utah my freshman year of high school and then again to Riverton my sophomore year. As a sort of gap year experience between graduating high school and moving on to university, I spent a year from March 2014 to February 2015 studying at a high school and living with a family in Obihiro, Hokkaido, Japan.

My first encounters with comics was through Japanese manga as I was studying the Japanese language and culture in early preparation for my planned year abroad. I never saw myself getting into any American comics, though; something about the image of absurdly muscled bodies in impractical costumes running around haphazardly constructed worlds and storylines kinda turned me off.

“Beware my awesome muscles... They’re so big and bulging I can barely move!”

What actually led to the cracking open of my first American superhero comic was my interest in the animation medium. Revisiting some of the cartoons from my child- and young teen-hood a few years back, I found myself marathoning Cartoon Network’s 2003 Teen Titans series. As a kid, I remember being taken up with the powers and adventure and fun of the show without thinking too much about where the material came from. It wasn’t until this later rewatching that I connected it with the superhero genre and the fact that some sort of source material that continued and expanded the stories and characters existed. In a search for more story, I found myself led to Wikipedia articles with extensive biographies for characters that appear only briefly in the show, and entire histories for the show’s leading figures (involving complex and more adult themes, at that)! A serious case of FOMO gripped me, and I soon found myself at the local library checking out my first Teen Titans trade paperback.

It’s been a couple years since then, and after the initial cluelessness and intimidation at entering the expansive multiverse that is comics, I’ve found myself enjoying the complex and interconnected canon that they present. I’ve been forced to let go of my typical FOMO by the sheer volume of material, but I’ve found that while I’ll almost never know the entire story, what I am able to read is enhanced by the knowledge that there is always more to it.

My comics knowledge thus far is limited almost exclusively to the main DC titles, and even within that mostly to Batman and the bat-family. I’m excited for the opportunity to explore more the origins of the character and of those others that pioneered the American superhero comic and to see the larger implications of society within them and them within society.