Sunday, July 15, 2007

The world's most prophetic comic book


An actual page from T-Man comics #3, published in 1952. If the dialog balloons are too small to read, either click on the image or go here. Many thanks to Jay Kinney for digging up this eerie prediction of neocon foreign policy.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

It is surely bogus. I won't believe it until I see convincing evidence of that cartoon in print in 1952.

Anonymous said...

More likely a prediction of the 1953 coup in which the CIA, working with the British, overthrew Iran's democratically elected Mohammed Mossadegh, who wanted to nationalize the oil supply.

Joseph Cannon said...

I'm familiar with Jay Kinney's work via Gnosis and some of the underground comics he published. I just don't hink he'd pull a stunt like this, although I could be wrong.

At any rate, there was such a comic, the third issue was published in 1952, and the lead character looks the same in the panel reproduced by Don Markstein's Toonpedia:

http://www.toonopedia.com/tman.htm

By the way, if you have any affection for the pop culture of yore, don't start reading Markstein's site. Not if you want to get anything accomplished during the rest of the day. That stuff is like heroin.

Joseph Cannon said...

One other thing. A subtle point, but it speaks to authenticity. The Mir Reza character refers to himself as a "Moslem." That's the spelling which virtually all American writers in 1952 would have used. Nowadays, all writers (except for the most barbaric) have switched to "Muslim."

ViViDVeW said...

This same comic showed up on the front page of readit.com a few days ago. As no story about it being fake has showed up on readit.com since, I’m inclined to think it’s real. readit.com readers are pretty good about checking their stuff and bumping stories that refute earlier stories that may have been misleading or false.

The vid that showed an Iraq vet claming to have see a 15yr old girl raped in Abu Ghraib was on readit’s front page, and about 24hrs latter so was a story that said it was most likely a fake.