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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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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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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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