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THE COMPLETE
VO L U M E T E N :
THEJUNIORCOMMANDOS
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
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T H E C O M P L E T E L I T T L E O R P H A N AN N I EVO L U M E T E N :
T H E J U N I O R C O M M A N D O SDAILY AND SUNDAY COMICS 19411943
STORIES ANDART BYHarold Gray
THE LIBRARY OFAMERICAN COMICSEDITED AND DESIGNED BYDean Mullaney
ASSOCIATE EDITOR Bruce CanwellART DIRECTOR Lorraine Turner
BIOGRAPHICAL TEXT BYJeet Heer, CONTRIBUTING EDITORRESTORATIONASSISTANTJoseph Ketels MARKETING DIRECTORBeau Smith
PRODUCTIONASSISTANCEJackson Glassey, Valarie Jones
LibraryofAmericanComics.com
Special thanks to the Harold Gray Archives at the Howard Gotlieb ArchivalResearch 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.
ISBN: 978-1-61377-951-4First Printing, April 2014
Distributed by Diamond Book Distributors1-410-560-7100
IDW Publishinga Division of Idea and Design Works, LLC
5080 Santa Fe Street San Diego, CA 92109
idwpublishing.com
Ted Adams, Chief Executive Officer/PublisherGreg Goldstein, Chief Operating Officer/President
Robbie Robbins, EVP/Sr. Graphic ArtistChris Ryall, Chief Creative Officer/Editor-in-Chief
Matthew Ruzicka, CPA/Chief Financial OfficerAlan Payne/VP of Sales
Dirk Wood/VP of MarketingLorelei Bunjes/VP of Digital Services
Little Orphan Annie and 2014 TMS News and Features, LLC.All rights reserved. The Library of American Comics is a trademarkof Library of American Comics LLC. All rights reserved.Introduction 2014 Jeet Heer. With the exception of artwork usedfor review purposes, none of the contents of this publication may bereprinted without the permission of TMS News and Features, LLC.No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form,
electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or byany information and retrieval system, without permission in writingfrom TMS News and Features, LLC. Printed in Korea.
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5
he Second World War was the single most traumatic and transformative
event the United States experienced in the 20th Century. The anger unleashed
by the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor galvanized a hitherto isolated and divided
nation, turning it into a global superpower. For cartoonist Harold Gray, the war
years provided an unparalleled opportunity to turn his contentious and divisive
strip, Little Orphan Annie, into a nearly universally celebrated emblem of a
shared patriotism, with the beloved waif organizing her own Junior Commandos
to help speed victory. War brought not just national unity, but also fear, suffering,
and death, ordeals that Gray tried to confront and allay in his storylines. The war
years were also personally tragic for Gray when he lost a close family member in
a tragic accident, an event that cast a shadow on his work.
Gray had been preparing for armed hostility long before Pearl Harbor. In the
run-up to the American entry into the war, Orphan Annie repeatedly confronted
enemy agents trying to undermine the American way of life. She also heard from
Daddy Warbucks and others stories about concentration camps and mass
killings that gave the strip an ambience of unsettling menace. Due to Grays
forthright handling of war issues in the late 1930s and early 1940s, he had an
easier time transitioning to war than many other cartoonists.
How to handle the war was a major issue faced by all newspaper cartoonists
after Pearl Harbor. The problem was made acute by the clashing demands of
readers. Some applauded wartime patriotism in comics but there was a sizeable
body of opinion that wanted the funny pages to remain a source of amusement
an anachronistic demand given the fact that blood-soaked storylines had been
common in strips for more than a decade. Thrills and chills that echoed the
newspaper headlines had long been the norm not just in Grays Orphan Annie
but in Milton Caniffs Terry and the Pirates, Roy Cranes Wash Tubbs and
Captain Easy, and Chester Goulds Dick Tracy. Still there were readers like Mrs.
F.O. of Evanston, Illinois who wrote to the Chicago Tribune in March of 1942
complaining that in these days of war which bring so much sorrow and worry
over loved ones who have gone and are going into the service of our beloved
country, why not do everything to cheer and uplift them? Why not let our
funnies be funny? Let Daddy Warbucks come back to Orphan Annie.
Despite readers like Mrs. F.O. the fact that Orphan Anniehad never been a
humor strip or one with a focus on domestic life made it simpler for Gray to shift
to wartime storytelling than cartoonists whose strips were decidedly more gentle
and genteel, such as Frank Kings Gasoline Alley. King agonized over whether his
main character Skeezix, who was of military age, should be drafted. Even when
Skeezix did join the army, King kept the star of his strip away from combat.
While Gray did not share Kings compunctions about doing wartime stories,
the creator of Orphan Annie was careful to avoid creating a fully military strip in
the manner of Terry, Wash Tubbs and Captain Easyor Ham FishersJoe Paloo ka
(where the boxer hero joined the army a year before Pearl Harbor). Grays heroine
WE'RE ALL LOYAL AMERICANS:
ANNIE GOES TO WAR
BY Jeet Heer
T
[Editors Note: Important story elements are revealed in this introduction. Readers may wish to read the strips before this essay.]
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was a young girl, so she couldnt join the Army Air Corps in the manner of a
Caniff hero or the Navy in the pattern of a Crane character. As Annie reflects,
she could only join the military if she was oldermaybean a boy.
Aside from Annie, Gray did have adult male characters who could have
joined the American military: Daddy Warbucks and his hardy band of
experienced warriors headed by Punjab and the Asp. Warbucks and his posse
show up in uniformnot the vestments of the United States military but
the raiment of an unnamed allied power. I got in a little ahead of schedule,
he tells his ward.
Why would Gray, who was never shy about celebrating patriotism, make
Warbucks and company soldiers of a foreign power? In part, Gray wanted to
avoid the problems of too close an alignment with the actual military. Before Pearl
Harbor, Caniff and Crane drew stories about adventurers and soldiers-of-fortune,
but after the Japanese attack their main characters were firmly and officially part
of the American war machine. This meant that Caniff and Crane had to work inclose conjunction with the Army Air Corps and the Navy, who suggested story-
lines and topics to the cartoonists, advice that was often accepted by artists eager
to help the war effort. Increasingly, during World War II and especially in the
Cold War Caniff and Crane became unofficial propagandists for the military, an
intimate relationship that bore tremendous advantages in terms of providing them
with a ready-made audience but also limited their artistic freedom. Good soldiers,
Caniff and Crane had no problem working with the Pentagon bureaucracy, but a
freewheeling cartoonist like Gray would have felt more fettered.
Harold Gray supported the war effort and in fact wanted the United States
to be much more aggressive than it actually was, especially during the Cold War.
For that very reason he preferred to keep Warbucks and his men as free agents,able to launch commando raids whether there was an official declaration of war or
not. Both during World War II and in later conflicts, Gray upheld the commando
as the ideal type of soldier: quick and stealthy, commandos appealed to Grays
imagination more than conventional rule-bound warriors did. Warbucks had
always been a bit of an outlaw, a pirate of international capital, so making him
a commando of an unnamed army preserved both the freedom of the billionaire
warlord and Grays artistic liberty.
Grays predilection for doing grisly and gothic stories also made it wise for
him to keep some distance from the official military. When Punjab gets his
hands on some German prisoners of war, he uses magic to dispatch the hapless
POWs to the land of the genii, a flagrant violation of the Geneva Conventions.
If Punjab had been in the regular army he couldnt use so entertaining, but also
illegal, a method to deal with captured enemy soldiers.
The physical and psychological damage caused by war makes healing
urgent, so it is not surprising that throughout 1941 Little Orphan Annie
becomes a medical melodrama with a proliferating cast of doctors who have
to mend not just the body but also the mind. Even the villain of the storyline
is a medical manDr. Eldeen, a needle-wielding quack who is the prototype
of a figure that Gray will return to in later stories, the sham-healer whose
sanatorium was actually a prison.
Annie herself becomes both a patient (briefly traumatized by news of
Daddy Warbuckss death) and also a lay psychologist. In helping soothetroubled minds and bringing warmth into the lives of icy people, Annie
returned to the role she fulfilled in the early days of the strip in 1924 when
she most resembled Pollyanna, the cheer-bringing waif created by childrens
author Eleanor H. Porter. In 1942 Annie is at her most Pollyanna-ish in her
relationship with Dr. Zee (the brilliant but cold surgeon hardened after
witnessing the horrors of the Spanish Civil War) and Auntie Priss (the chilly
aristocratic widow who lost both husband and son in earlier wars). Through
her vitality and buoyant spirits Annie brings both these characters out of their
shells, performing a sort of mental healing.
National unity was as important a wartime necessity as healing. The
emergence of President Franklin Roosevelt as war leader presented Gray with adelicate problem. From 1932 onwards, Gray had used Little Orphan Annieas a
vehicle for attacking FDR and his signature New Deal policies, which the
cartoonist thought verged on socialism, if not communism. Now Roosevelt was
the Commander-in-Chief in a global war. How would Gray handle the change?
For the first twenty months after Pearl Harbor, Gray put aside his partisan
objections to the Democratic president and pointedly made overtures to the left.
In the past, Gray might have used Annie as a mouthpiece for bemoaning high
taxes and government regulations but in the early years of the war, Annie
acknowledges that both rationing and taxes are necessary. In the December 27,
1942 strip Annie reflects that there is no reason to bemoan rationing and taxes
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takin most all we have since if we losewe lose
everything! (There is some unintentional comedy in
Annie, supposedly a poor waif, pondering the high tax
rate paid only by millionaires like her creator).
Grays attempt to make common cause with thepolitical left is most evident in the startling character of
Dr. Zee, the only time the cartoonist created a character
with a progressive political orientation. Dr. Zee was a
volunteer during the Spanish Civil War. Gray doesnt spell
out which side he helped, but there are grounds for thinking
that Dr. Zee was on the side of the democratic government,
like Rick Blaine in Casablancaor the real-life members of the
Abraham Lincoln Brigade, the radicals (often socialists and
communists) who went to fight against fascism in the 1930s
when the official policy of the United States was neutrality.Dr. Zee opens a clinic offering affordable health
care for all, charging one dollar for all visits, much to
the chagrin of the local medical establishment. A neighbor
says Zee must be a socialist or a durn commy! In
running his household with Annie, he insists that all
resources be pooled, saying well sort of go socialist or
communist, in a capitalist sort of way.
Even more startling than Annies admitting that taxes
are sometimes necessary or Dr. Zees pinkish political
profile is the praise Gray gives to FDRs strength of will.
In late 1942, Dr. Zee loses his arm. To cheer him up,the refugee child Driftwood cites examples of great leaders
who have overcome affliction, noting we all know one of
the greatest victories over handicap, right in this wonderful
country. This is a clear allusion to FDRs triumph over
polio. This praise of FDR, completely out of keeping with
Grays anti-New Deal polemics of the 1930s, is striking
proof of Grays commitment to wartime unity.
This spirit of wartime unity was not permanent. By
late 1943, Gray would return to his critique of New Deal
bureaucracy, focusing his ire on rationing and once again
question FDRs leadership. But for at least the first
twenty months after America entered the war, the
cartoonist made a strong effort to be a team player.
Grays investment in the idea of national unity can
be seen in his most famous wartime innovation, the
Junior Commandos, an ad-hoc military group Annie
created. The Junior Commandos fulfilled several useful
functions: they allowed Gray to make a frontal challenge
to the idea that children should be shielded from wartime
news (a notion that was propounded by those who
wanted comic strips not to have war-related stories).
The Junior Commandos also allowed Gray to circumventthe fact that Annie, as a young girl, couldnt join the army:
like Daddy Warbucks, she could be an officer in her own
fictional army. Finally, the Junior Commandos allowed
Gray to keep the strip based in the United States but
still have a wartime feel. Indeed, the richness of the Junior
Commando storylines comes from the fact that they allow
Gray to vividly portray everyday life on the homefront,
ranging from the collecting of scrap metal to the daycare
needs of war workers to the need for quiet in neighborhoods
where night shift workers lived. From the vantage point of
the 21st Century, the Junior Commando stories are mostvaluable for the unique window they provide into the daily
life of ordinary Americans during World War II. No other
strip quite captured the feeling of how the everyday
arrangements of life were disrupted by war as the entire
nation mobilized.
The Junior Commandos were a nifty idea within the
comic strip and they turned out to be an even better one
in real life. Neither Gray nor his syndicate expected Annies
make-believe military group to attract flesh-and-blood
imitators but within weeks of the first JC storyline, parents
ABOVE: Harold and Winifred GraysChristmas card for December 1942.
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New York News Syndicate to indicate that readers were upset about this cartoon.
Oakland has a large Negro section and we have considerable circulation there,
Scratch noted. So you can see that a comic feature dealing with chicken stealing
by Negroes will hurt us. We hope your artist will be able to avoid gags about
Negroes in the future.
Grays next major foray into race relations was much bolder and thoughtful.
In the August 2, 1942 Sunday page, Gray showed a little black boy named
George ask if he can join the Commandos. Who says you cant be a
commando? Annie asks. Youve got as much right in this outfit as I have.
Youre an American! Were all loyal Americans. This defense of Georges right
to be an American is framed within the context of the Junior Commandos
being an explicitly multi-ethnic group, with members such as Angelo, Fritz,
Marie, and Chu. (Gray repeatedly emphasized that German-Americans could
be good citizens and shouldnt be confused with the Nazis. Unfortunately,
displaying a racial blindspot common to the era, he didnt make the same
distinction with Japanese-Americans.)
George immediately proved his worth as a Junior Commando by leading
the troops to an abandoned locomotive, a rich source of scrap metal. Annie
rewarded Georges ingenuity on the spot by making him a sergeant in the
Junior Commandos.
Given the fact that many comic strips in 1942 still depicted African-
Americans using minstrel show stereotypes, George was a revolutionary
character. To be sure, hes depicted as being politely deferential and speaks
with a slight rustic accent, but he is also drawn in the same style as the white
children and displays great savvy and dignity. In terms of being a respectful
portrayal of African Americans, George compares favorably to characters such
as Ebony White in The Spirit, who were the norm in comics. At a time when
the military was still segregated, having George as a sergeant commanding
white soldiers (albeit fellow children) was a radical statement and an implicit
critique of the racism in the actual military. As an anti-racist statement, the
strip featuring George was at least twenty years ahead of anything else in
comics or popular culture at large.
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10
Although he only appeared in one Sunday strip, George provoked
a strong reaction from both black and white readers. Many, but not all,
African-American readers were overjoyed. Benzell Graham, an 18-year-old
black sophomore studying at the University of Southern California, sent
Gray a note of appreciation for the fine spirit expressed in the George
strip. She added that my family and many friends who saw the strip join
me in thanking you. She echoed the idea of national unity that Gray had
expressed in the strip, noting that, We negroes, as all other faithful
Americans, are doing our best to help win this war. It encourages us to
know that our effort is appreciated. (Graham would go on to become
a school teacher and write the 1959 childrens book That Big Broozer.)
Grahams sentiments were echoed by Private Robert B. Mitchell, then
serving at Fort Francis E. Warren in Wyoming. I must say I am an Americannegro, born in the deep south and such comics are not prevalent there and
hardly nowhere else save here in the west, Mitchell wrote, adding that the
ideas expressed in the strip shall become a highlight in my life and for many
other negroes... Here is hoping that repetition of such thoughts and actions
will be characteristic of the new era in which the world is entering. Then
there will be no more wars, and what will be more heaven like?
Helen Selgrainer of Hinsdale, Illinois was another reader who was grateful
for George as a symbol of national unity, saying that Annie welcomed him in
the way many of us wish to be [welcomed]. She made the lad appreciated
being an American....we do want to help win the war.
Not all African-American readers celebrated George. Elsie Winslowof New York engaged in a passionate correspondence with Gray. She
acknowledged that Grays intentions were good but complained that
George was too servile. The Old Uncle Tom is dead and in his place is
the youth who is willing to shed his blood for America, but not in your
kitchen or Pullmans as George or Liza, Winslow wrote. There are so
many who even deny us the will to die for America. Winslow protested
the fact that George spoke in a mild dialect, saying that a modern black
youth should be shown talking like Annie.
Gray wrote back to Winslow but unfortunately his letter hasnt
survived. Based on a subsequent letter from Winslow, we can infer thatABOVE: Character studies on vellum forstories reprinted in this volume.
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11
he wrote to defend the use of dialect as realistic, saying that we must win
our point by indirection and noted that many Southern white readers
were upset by George.
Thank you sincerely for your nice letter, Winslow responded. Your
letter was also startling and depressing, for I had never before realized that such
hatred existed. It is pretty deep, isnt it? It is easy to understand now, how you
must have felt when you received my letter. Under existing circumstances, you
have done a very splendid thing; your comic did create a furor. It hasnt died
down....You deserve encouragement for the wedge youve made....Being a simple
idealistic fool, I like people to like me, to live in harmony with a neighbor, black
or white. This I shall try to continue, no matter what. And its very consoling
to know that there are thousands more like me. Perhaps you know this and
know[ing] it, will continue to drive wedges. Thanks.Wilamelia Wilson of New York City also objected to Grays use of dialect,
arguing that in the deep South Negro children do not speak as you portrayed
the little Negro boy in your script. For Wilson, George was portrayed as
ignorant.
Some black readers were upset that George only appeared once, which
to their minds meant that he was used only as a token and not an integral part
of the strip. Henry Crawford of Cleveland wrote a note to complain that both
George and the Chinese-American boy called Chu had only cameo appearances
in the strip. Writing in late October of 1942, Crawford stated that I have
watched your comic strip each and every day since [George was introduced]
but have failed to see the Negro or the Chinese youths appear with the JuniorCommandos since. Therefore I have come to the conclusion that your
introduction of them was typically American; that is to make a lot of fanfare
about equal rights, democracy, etc., with no intention of ever practicing it.
Three Civil Rights organizationsthe Southern Education Foundation
of Washington, D.C., Youthbuilders in New York, and the Chicago Urban
Leaguetook an interest in George and encouraged Gray to continue doing
strips of this sort. Sabra Holbrook of Youthbuilder praised Gray for using his
strip as propaganda for inter-racial unity and understanding and hoped that
Gray would continue to use the strip to promote all the ideals incorporated
in the American Bill of Rights.
In October of 1942, A.L. Foster of the Chicago Urban League expressed
pleasure that Gray created a black character who was not a servant or a clown.
But Foster wanted to know why George only appeared once. Foster, a 49-year-
old social worker and activist, was a pillar of the Chicago African-American
community. An entrepreneur as well as an activist, Foster had started a savings
and loan company, a music shop, and an insurance company. He had a weekly
column in the Chicago Defenderand ran the Chicago Negro Chamber of
Commerce.
Once again, it is regrettable that Grays side of the correspondence hasnt
survived. He seems to have written to Foster noting that opinion on George was
divided fifty/fifty, pro and con. Gray also seems to have indicated that some black
readers objected to his use of dialect. In response, Foster wrote that he himself
hadnt even noticed the use of dialect and urged Gray to ignore the critics, sincecomplainers were always more vocal, and try to bring back George.
As against the complex response of black readers and civil rights
organizations, the reaction of white racists was more clearcut. R.B. Chandler,
the publisher of the Mobile Press Registerof Mobile, Alabama, gave voice to
the objections of the Jim Crow South. Your Orphan AnnieSunday page of
August 2 brought in a Negro boy character, George, Chandler noted. While
I have heard only two or three subscribers who stated that they had read
Orphan Anniefor the last time because of mixing a negro character in with
the white children, I want to submit my suggestion that you give careful
thought and due consideration to the problem of the South on this issue.
Chandler went on to offer a defense of Jim Crow as a policy practiced formany generations in the South. Chandler also defended the idea of military
segregation that Gray had implicitly criticized in the strip.
Surprisingly, within the context of the Jim Crow South, Chandler was
a moderate representative of white opinion, however extreme he may sound
today. He supported the economic policies of the New Deal even if he opposed
the efforts Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt were making on behalf of racial
equality. In 1943, when there was a race riot in Mobile, Chandler rebuked
whites who had attacked black defense workers. But this stance, like his letter
to Gray, came in the context of a larger commitment to racial segregation and
the status quo that kept African-Americans as second-class citizens.
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November 24-26, 1941ON NEEDLES AND PINS
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November 27-29, 1941ON NEEDLES AND PINS
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November 30, 1941ON NEEDLES AND PINS
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December 1-3, 1941ON NEEDLES AND PINS
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