This is a feature called "A Political World," where we spotlight 20th Century comic book stories that came out back when comic books were not political at all, unlike comic books nowadays.
Today, based on a suggestion from reader Rob H., we take a look at Nick Fury's displeasure at having a bigoted member of the Howling Commandos! The story took place in Sgt. Fury #6 (by Jack Kirby, Stan Lee and George Roussos).
The adventure takes place as the Howling Commandos are sent on a mission to take down the infamous German general, Rommel. However, before they can go on this mission, their previous deployment saw one of their members, Dino Manelli, injured in a parachute mishap. So the team had to add an emergency fill-in commando. His name was George Stonewell and when he is introduced to Maneilli, he snubs him. Fury thinks that perhaps he is just a little too intense, but over the next couple of pages, it becomes evident that Stonewell is, well, just a flat out bigot...
Fury has seen enough of this, so he calls out Stonewell, with Stan Lee using the much more subtle political language that writers of the era would do, unlike modern comic books where the are right in your face about their political views. Here, Stan is very subtl...oh, right, he just has Nick Fury give a long speech about how bad bigots are.
On the actual mission, Stonewell consistently screws up due to his racism. Like when he can't work well with Gabe Jones and almost gets them both killed...
The team captures a Nazi and there is a fascinating moment where even the bigoted Stonewell is, like, "Dude, I'm a bigoted jerk and even I know that being a Nazi is bad"...
After Stonewell screws up and loses the prisoner (which he, of course, blames on others and Fury totally has his number as someone who will always find someone else to blame for his failings as a person) he once again can't help but break free when he is paired with Izzy Cohen and Stonewall tries to kill Rommel by himself. There's a great moment when Stonewell realizes his only chance of surviving is if he and Cohen go back to back and try to cover themselves with their machine guns. Cohen notes that he stopped joking about his religion now.
Anyhow, Stonewell is then injured badly and the only way to save him is through a blood transfusion and wouldn't you know that Gabe Jones is the one to do it...
At the end of the story, it seems like Stonewell is back to being a jerk, but then he leaves his information behind for Izzy and Gabe, essentially asking them to write to him...
That's really kind of an odd way to ask people to write to you, right? Who's to say they would even find the piece of paper?
Anyhow, this was a nice example of what Stan Lee thought about bigotry.
Thanks for the suggestion, Rob!
Okay, folks, I'm sure you have suggestions for good political storylines from the "good old days when comic books weren't political," so drop me suggestions at brianc@cbr.com!