The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 2169: Eternal Thirst #4, 1990

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 Nazis and Vampires and Spies, oh my!

In an effort to return to semi-daily writing, I decided to return to alphabetically reading my collection, albeit alphabetical by publisher name, as that's how the collection is organized at the moment. Making my way through the A miscellaneous section has been interesting - some good stuff, some truly not good stuff. But that's how comics go, and I'd never want them to change.

Honestly, the thing that struck me most about this comic, one that tells the origin of the vampire spy on the cover at the hands of a Nazi scientist during the Second World War, is that swastika up on the cover. While I was working at the Glenbow Museum, I'd often take students on tours through our "Warriors" gallery. Amongst the swords and armour where definitely a few bits of Nazi memorabilia, and it fascinated the kids for some reason. I always tried to contextualize it for them, but sometimes kids just like things because they're not supposed to. I get it though. When I was growing up, the Nazis were a really great bad guy to have, because you could get away with doing anything to them and no one was going to complain. To a certain extent it's still the same, but now we have actual neo-Nazis on the world stage, much more in view than they used to be, and it's harder to use them as entertainment. For the kids at the museum, they haven't really connected the evil villains they might have some notion of with the violent lunatics who hijacked the American government for the last few years. Though, perhaps, that's a good thing. Leave them unburdened while we can, as the burden never leaves once you take it on.

Another interesting thing about today's comic is it features early work by Paul Pelletier, whose work on Mark Waid's Flash is amongst my favourite stories. It's cool to see where some artists and writers get their beginnings, and to see where they eventually end up.

More to follow.