By 1942, Hitler’s days were filled with worry. While Germany had no trouble picking off smaller nations such as Poland, Holland and Belgium, the Third Reich now confronted an alliance of three major powers: Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union. Already at Stalingrad the once invincible Wehrmacht had met its first serious defeat and the painful and bloody retreat from the east had started. Another major headache for Hitler, at least according to one Toronto-based publication, was the superhero Johnny Canuck—“Canada’s answer to Nazi oppression”—who was “devoting his time to the destruction of Hitler’s war material factories in the Berlin area.”
Dressed in an austere military uniform with a sash cutting across his square torso, Hitler castigated his staff. “Ach! Fools,” the Fuhrer complained, “you promise...
Jeet Heer, a Regina-based cultural journalist is co-editor, with Kent Worcester, of Arguing Comics: Literary Masters on a Popular Medium (University of Mississippi Press, 2004) and A Comics Studies Reader (University Press of Mississippi, 2008). With Chris Ware and Chris Oliveros, he is editing a series of volumes reprinting Frank King’s Gasoline Alley, three volumes of which have been published by Drawn and Quarterly under the umbrella title Walt and Skeezix.
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