Manchester University Press
11 ‘Who is this upstart Hitler?’
Abstract
In the period 1939–1945 several American comic magazines published graphic stories featuring pagan Nordic gods, including Odin and Thor. These range from Jack Kirby and Joe Simon's ‘The Villain from Valhalla’, appearing in Adventure Comics in 1942, to ‘The Shadow of Valhalla’, published in the magazine Boy Commandos in 1944. The most interesting of these publications, however, was the series ‘Thor, God of Thunder’, published in Weird Comics as early as 1940. The five stories in question were attributed to one Wright Lincoln (a pen name used by several writers and artists). The article traces how all of these American comic stories were inspired by the medieval Icelandic Eddas and how they contributed, with their anti-German propaganda, to the so-called ‘comic book war’.
Abstract
In the period 1939–1945 several American comic magazines published graphic stories featuring pagan Nordic gods, including Odin and Thor. These range from Jack Kirby and Joe Simon's ‘The Villain from Valhalla’, appearing in Adventure Comics in 1942, to ‘The Shadow of Valhalla’, published in the magazine Boy Commandos in 1944. The most interesting of these publications, however, was the series ‘Thor, God of Thunder’, published in Weird Comics as early as 1940. The five stories in question were attributed to one Wright Lincoln (a pen name used by several writers and artists). The article traces how all of these American comic stories were inspired by the medieval Icelandic Eddas and how they contributed, with their anti-German propaganda, to the so-called ‘comic book war’.
Chapters in this book
- Front matter i
- Contents v
- List of figures and tables vii
- Notes on contributors viii
- Preface and acknowledgements xii
-
Introduction
- 1 Vinland on the brain 3
-
Part I: Imagination and ideology
- 2 Journeys to the centre of the mind 27
- 3 The ‘Viking tower’ in Newport, Rhode Island 45
- 4 Critiquing Columbus with the Vinland sagas 61
- 5 Vinland and white nationalism 77
-
Part II: Landscapes and cultural memory
- 6 Migration of a North Atlantic seascape 101
- 7 Norwegian-American ‘missions of education’ and Old Norse literature 122
- 8 Americans in Sagaland 137
- 9 The good sense to lose America 160
-
Part III: Recasting the past
- 10 Spectral Vikings in nineteenth-century American poetry 181
- 11 ‘Who is this upstart Hitler?’ 198
- 12 ‘There’s no going back’ 215
- 13 Old Norse in the New World 236
- Bibliography 252
- Index 282
Chapters in this book
- Front matter i
- Contents v
- List of figures and tables vii
- Notes on contributors viii
- Preface and acknowledgements xii
-
Introduction
- 1 Vinland on the brain 3
-
Part I: Imagination and ideology
- 2 Journeys to the centre of the mind 27
- 3 The ‘Viking tower’ in Newport, Rhode Island 45
- 4 Critiquing Columbus with the Vinland sagas 61
- 5 Vinland and white nationalism 77
-
Part II: Landscapes and cultural memory
- 6 Migration of a North Atlantic seascape 101
- 7 Norwegian-American ‘missions of education’ and Old Norse literature 122
- 8 Americans in Sagaland 137
- 9 The good sense to lose America 160
-
Part III: Recasting the past
- 10 Spectral Vikings in nineteenth-century American poetry 181
- 11 ‘Who is this upstart Hitler?’ 198
- 12 ‘There’s no going back’ 215
- 13 Old Norse in the New World 236
- Bibliography 252
- Index 282
