“They Called Us Enemy”: George Takei’s Memoir of the Japanese Internment Camps

Tags

book review, chris hopkins, george takei, history, indie box, Indie Comics, japanese internment, racism, sulu, they called us enemy, world war ii

Racism and oppression based on race are nothing new to the United States. It was written into our original Constitution, and we had a full-blown war over it not too many generations ago. Judging from current events, that war left wounds that are far from healed even more than a century later. But one of the most overlooked parts of American history is how this nation treated its citizens of Japanese descent during World War II.

It happened at the same time we still pat ourselves on the back for because we opposed the Nazis. The Third Reich was herding Jews into ghettoes and eventually death camps, and the USA was the hero with the ethical high ground for opposing such inhumanity. That might be the morally satisfying story your grandparents remember about WWII—unless they were of Japanese descent. Here in the States, we were herding American citizens into camps of our own.

In 2019, former Star Trek star George Takei published a graphic novel about his experiences as a child in those camps. The narrative is interesting for the way it shows his multiple perspectives on the events at different times in his life. As a child on a train to the camps for the first time, protected by his parents from the true horror, he initially sees the detainment with a child’s sense of wonder at being on some new adventure.

As a teenager developing a broader historical perspective, he rages at his father for not violently resisting the incarceration.

As an older man, George comes to understand that his father and mother did everything in their power to do what was best for their children in a horrific situation no one should ever experience. Only later in life did he realize how much it meant for his mother to smuggle a sewing machine.

They Called Us Enemy includes a few framing sequences. One portrays George giving a TED Talk, which seems to be his presentation from 2014 in Kyoto, Japan.

I don’t know about you, but I think if I lived through what George did as a child, I would be bitter for a damn long time. Maybe forever. But George’s memoir continues through rebuilding his life after the war, getting involved in theater, landing his role as Sulu, and making peace with his past through political advocacy, non-profit work, and speaking to new audiences.

One would hope that George’s efforts to educate about that period of American history will prevent us from repeating horrors of the past. But it is difficult to maintain such hope in a time when thousands of people are held in similar camps for attempting to cross our border, where hundreds of thousands of people work as slave labor in prisons in a country with the highest incarceration rate on the planet, and where millions of people of color are being systematically disenfranchised though racist voting laws, gerrymandering, and the dismantling of election oversight committees.

But that’s what I love about Takei’s graphic novel. It doesn’t present an easy solution. It gets you thinking. It reminds you that if you don’t want the USA to be a nation governed by racist policy, then you need to get involved. You can’t just sit by and do nothing. They Called Us Enemy is both a cautionary and inspiring tale for those of us who envision a country where, in the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., “children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

On a related note, I recently discovered a Chris Hopkins series of paintings and drawings about the people who lived through the internment camps, and they range from powerful to heartbreaking.

Uncaged Songbird by Chris Hopkins. “In 1942, June Kikoshima and her family were forced to leave their Seattle home to be interned at Camp Harmony at the Puyallup Fairgrounds. They were allowed to bring only two suitcases, and June chose to bring her violin instead of a second suitcase.”

Chris painted the cover of one of my favorite editions of old pirate biographies, and he also brought the Tuskegee Airmen to life with his brushes. You might have seen Chris’ paintings for 1980s movie posters such as Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Labyrinth, and Return of the Jedi. He currently has a gallery of dozens of paintings and drawings about the Japanese internment camps at http://www.chrishopkinsart.com/

The All-American Boy by Chris Hopkins

One thing the Hopkins paintings cover that the Takei story does not is the rule that people sent to those camps could not bring their pets. As sad as it is to leave behind possessions and people, there’s something especially sad about leaving behind a best friend and companion who lacks the words and pictures to even comprehend what is happening.

Girl Kitty by Chris Hopkins

Fortunately, George Takei and his artistic collaborators created words and pictures we can understand, relate to, and learn from. They Called Us Enemy is an educational yet personal account from a man who lived through the worst of times, and it deserves a place alongside Maus and March in your collection.

Shout out to my fellow blogger and comic-book enthusiast Ben Herman for introducing me to this book with his post about meeting George at a 2021 Comic Con.

Collector’s Guide: Available on Amazon in Kindle/Comixology format and paperback. Currently available in hardback on MyComicShop. George’s 1994 Pocket Books autobiography is also available at MyComicShop in paperback.

No Application for Justice: Marcus Rediker’s “The Slave Ship”

Tags

atlantic slave trade, book review, books, marcus rediker, racism, slave ship, slavery

The ship sailed beyond the sight of land, to a place where “there is no moral possibility of desertion, or application for justice.”

—James Stanfield, as qtd. by Rediker.

To board the slave ship was to abandon hope—unless one hoped for torture, degradation, and the destruction of human life in the name of commerce. Driven by profit motives, the wealthy of Europe engaged some of the most depraved men of their times to lead cruel voyages across the Atlantic Ocean. The center stage for this drama of human injustice was the slave ship, or slaver. Historian Marcus Rediker takes the reader on several hideous voyages across the Atlantic on these ships, telling the stories of the human lives that participated in the trade of captive Africans for money.

The Human Stories

Rediker primarily focuses on putting a human face on dehumanization. The Slave Ship covers 1700 to 1808, the period of the highest volume of slave trade by the British. Their sailors gave the journey from Africa to the Americas the name “the Middle Passage”. Subtitled “A Human History”, The Slave Ship examines the lives of key figures involved in the slave trade and the effects this unholy commerce wrought upon their lives. To call the trade horrifying hardly scratches the surface.

Rediker spares no gory detail in his recounting, save where the writers of the day could not even bring themselves to elaborate the torture and suffering that took place. Such was the case with James Field Stanfield, who witnessed what was “practised by the captain on an unfortunate female slave, of the age of eight or nine.” Field said of this event, “I cannot express it in words”, although it was “too atrocious and bloody to be passed over in silence” (Rediker, 152).

Rediker’s focus on human stories rather than facts and figures reminds us that the men perpetrating these crimes were not fantastic monsters but human beings. Men in Britain and the American colonies grew rich from the trade, men such as Humphry Morice and Henry Laurens. They were, after all, simply men, respected in their communities and occupying social positions of prestige and leadership.

The Slave Ship also recounts the lives of slaves such as Olaudah Equiano, who penned a tale of his experience aboard the slavers that contributed to the abolitionist movement with its tragic narrative, and men such as Job Ben Solomon. Solomon, a leader of his people, endured enslavement but was eventually recognized as a tribal leader by the British.

He returned to Africa not to liberate his people but to serve the interest of the Royal African Company, assisting the Europeans in putting even more Africans into slavery. Stories like this reveal the myth that the Atlantic slave trade simply consisted of European enslavement of Africans. Rediker tells of many African leaders and tribes who participated willingly, capturing peaceful people on their own continent to sell into slavery.

Rediker details the lives of John Newton and James Field Stanfield to paint portraits of the sailors on these terrible ships. Newton’s experience as a common sailor with a bad attitude eventually transformed him into an ardent abolitionist. Stanfield originally joined the slave trade to see the world and have adventures. He found despair, torture, and atrocity. He would write vivid narrative poetry that bolstered the abolitionist movement.

These were the fortunate ones, for Rediker tells many more tales of lives destroyed by the trade: free men reduced to slaves, families torn apart, tribes destroyed, healthy men crushed by disease and torture, and sailors reduced to empty shells after their voyages. By focusing on the human side of history, Rediker makes it come alive.

The Rise of Racism and Capitalism

The Slave Ship touches many times upon the relation of the Atlantic slave trade to the rise of racism. Before the Atlantic slave trade, it was uncommon for people to see other people divided only by the color of their skin. Anyone—black, white, or brown—could become a slave in those days.

The Atlantic slave trade, however, grouped all Africans of many cultures into one single group: black. Rediker explores how far the division of black and white could be taken, where light-skinned people could be “black” based on their social status, and “white” became synonymous with “free” even for dark-skinned people. It often depended on which side of the barricade one ended up when revolt broke out on the ship.

Rediker also relates the Atlantic slave trade to the rise of capitalism. Slave ships brought manufactured goods from the Americas back to Europe on the return leg of their journeys, stimulating manufacturing in the colonies. Also tabulated for the reader are the facts and figures of production: millions of pounds per year of rum, tobacco, and cotton produced with slave labor and exported to Europe.

Rediker could have spent more time on the rise of the corporation. While he mentions companies such as the Royal African Company formed solely for the purpose of enslaving human beings, he does not explore the lingering social impact of forming companies to profit from human misery. To see the lasting effects of this form of commerce, observe companies like Raytheon who profit by creating bombs with no other purpose than the mutilation and destruction of human beings. The Atlantic slave trade and other European ventures into the Americas founded this policy of corporate cruelty.

Rediker often returns to his theme of the slave trade’s destruction of lives—not just the lives of slaves, but of all those involved. When Rediker describes the incredible atrocities committed by sailors against their captives, the reader might form an idea of privileged white people abusing blacks. Even more shocking, perhaps, is the examination of the lives of the sailors. In most cases, captains victimized sailors to nearly the same degree they abused the slaves.

In Rediker’s portrait of the slave trade, the lines between the victimizer and the victimized disappear. What emerges is a web of cruelty that enveloped everyone it touched. Rediker tells of many sailors who were swindled into the voyages by unscrupulous means: through falsified debts in bars, threats of imprisonment, and false promises from recruiters.

In some sense, the sailors were captives just as much as the slaves, and their lives were wrecked just as thoroughly. Rediker tells of sailors cheated out of wages, abandoned in ports, riddled with disease and injury, and left to scrape a mean existence on the docks as homeless, penniless human wreckage. While the mortality rate of slaves on the ships was high, about one in four sailors died on the voyages, too.

It appears the only people to benefit from the Atlantic slave trade were the richest, most powerful men living far removed from the ships, reaping most of the profits and enduring none of the hardships.

Two Criticisms

Rediker’s approach to telling stories results in a narrative that jumps around chronologically. His approach shows how individuals changed over time, but makes it difficult to envision the flow of historical change. From an educational perspective, a single timeline would make the big picture clear. The Slave Ship seems to be several books combined into one, making an overview almost necessary for a complete understanding.

Because each chapter stands on its own, the reader runs into much unnecessary duplication. By the halfway point, the reader has already encountered the same or similar descriptions several times: slaves jumping overboard, manacles “excoriating” flesh, dysentery smearing the hold with excrement, sailors being swindled into signing on to the ships, and the speculum oris.

Each time these horrors appear in The Slave Ship, they receive a treatment as if they appear for the first time. This causes the book to lose momentum as it progresses. While it starts with a bang, the last third of the book includes many redundant descriptions.

While manacles get many paragraphs, world events sometimes receive much less. In a study of the development of capitalism, one might expect a bit more time studying various wars, inventions, and other world-shaking events. The development of ship-building from a hand-me-down trade to a full-blown global science merits a page or two. The relation between science and the slave trade bears more exploration.

Abolition movements receive a similar treatment. While Rediker speaks of the contributions of Equiano and Stanfield to the abolition movement, he does not spend much time discussing the movement itself. This might be an important part of the puzzle he leaves out. How the abolitionists contributed to the British and American bans on the Atlantic slave trade would form the proper end to this book.

Conclusion

What can we learn from The Slave Ship? Nothing good, it seems—only that humans require no fantastic gods or monsters to inflict cruelty upon them. They will take care of that themselves.

History bears out this lesson. From instruments of medieval torture to the Spanish invasion of the Americas, from the Nazi concentration camps to Ku Klux Klan lynchings, the greatest danger to man continues to be man himself. When his greed for money and power drives man’s capacity for cruelty, we find no limits to the savagery he will inflict upon others.

The Europeans un-ironically viewed themselves as civilized and the Africans they tortured as barbarians. Despite the years that have passed since the Atlantic slave trade, that attitude remains prevalent in many countries and cultures around the world. One group dehumanizes another group, and the cycle continues.

Is the entire planet a slave ship driven by greed, fear, and hate? Is there no application for justice? Are we doomed to destroy other people in the pursuit of profit forever? The Slave Ship raises these questions and leaves them unanswered, while brutality in the name of commerce continues to destroy lives around the world in the twenty-first century.

Collector’s Guide: The Slave Ship: A Human History is available on Amazon in ebook or paperback or hardback. Marcus Rediker also wrote one my favorite books about Atlantic pirates and Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea about general conditions of life at sea in that era.

indie box: March

Tags

andrew aydin, barack obama, black and white, black lives matter, civil rights, indie box, john lewis, john robert lewis, march, martin luther king jr, nate powell, racism, slavery, top shelf productions

March is a three-issue graphic novel from 2013 that autobiographically tells the story of 1960s-era civil-rights activist John Lewis, who later served as a representative for Georgia. He led one of the groups that helped organize the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom where Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech.

Through a series of framing sequences and flashbacks, March takes the reader on a journey from an impoverished rural childhood, through times of heartbreaking violence and protest, to the presidential inauguration of Barack Obama. That moment was a cultural victory for millions of Americans, and reading about it this month puts recent events into perspective.

In January 2021, we saw a different kind of march on Washington. A violent mob of white supremacists and incredibly misguided people who swear allegiance to a reality-TV demagogue and known liar stormed the capitol, claiming their racist hate was patriotism, claiming their attempt to overthrow a fair and democratic election was a defense of democracy, and leaving in their wake a trail of death and destruction in the name of so-called freedom.

March also reminds us that this despicable aspect of America is nothing new. Similar violence and even worse was rained down upon black Americans staging peaceful protests attempting to be served in restaurants, join schools, or ride a bus — and it was accompanied by the same sort of flag-waving idiocy and bible-thumping madness that too many have used to advance an agenda of racial subjugation that has nothing to do with our country’s ideals of equality nor the peaceful teachings of Jesus of Nazareth.

John Lewis passed away last year, in 2020. But we are fortunate that he left us with this memoir. It is a monument to how far our country advanced in terms of equality in his lifetime and, especially in light of recent events, a reminder of just how far we have to go.

Collector’s Guide: Find the original issues of March at MyComicShop or, for less than $30, the collected edition on Amazon. Also available in digital format for Kindle.

UPDATE: Eight days after I posted this, a newspaper in Dekalb County, Georgia, reported that a memorial to John Lewis will replace a now-removed Confederate monument at the County Courthouse.

Big Box of Comics: Maus

Tags

art spiegelman, big box of comics, black and white, book review, holocaust, jews, maus, nazis, racism

What can I say about one of the most widely acclaimed and influential graphic novels ever published? I re-read Maus this month for the first time since the mid-90s, and its combination of sequential art and novelistic storytelling have held up remarkably well over the years.

Maus tells the story of the persecution of Jews in Poland under the reign of the Nazi Third Reich, framed by sequences where the author interviews his father to get the memories that form the basis of the historical narrative. Throw in some detours such as a short comic-inside-the-comic that deals with the author’s mother’s suicide, and a meta-examination of the work where the author deals with his guilt and ambivalence towards the series and visits a therapist. Maus subverts the idea of “funny animal comics” by making the characters animals but telling a story that is tragic and horrifying.

Maus was one of the first books I can recall that gained national—even global—attention for telling a serious story that did not involve any superheroes yet brought an air of literary legitimacy to the term “graphic novel”. These days, any six-issue story arc about a mainstream superhero can be collected into a paperback and labeled a graphic novel for marketing purposes. Maybe the term has become so watered down that we’ve lost the meaningful distinction between graphic novels and comic books.

But I don’t plan on losing any sleep over it. Categorize them however you want! There’s room in the Big Box of Comics for all of them.

Collector’s Guide: MyComicShop usually has the two-part hardcover and paperback editions in stock, but you can always find The Complete Maus collected edition on Amazon.

indie box: Nemesis

Tags

2000AD, alien, Eagle Comics, indie box, Indie Comics, Kevin O'Neill, Nemesis, nemesis the warlock, Pat Mills, racism

What’s inside the short-box of indie comic books this week? Nemesis, published by the UK-based Eagle Comics, and originating in the pages of 2000AD. Thanks to Brian and his older brother Michael, the insanity of British comic books was percolating into my awareness by the mid-1980s. By the time creators such as Alan Moore, Grant Morrison, and Warren Ellis (to name just a few) were working on mainstream franchises at Marvel and DC (or their subsidiaries), I was primed for a ‘British Invasion’ of American comics that rivaled that of blues-based rock music in the 1960s.

For me, it began with Nemesis. When Brian saw this creative team sparked my interest, he also shared with me Marshall Law and Metalzoic. Since then, I’ve dug O’Neill’s art on League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and Mills’ work on Flesh, which I only discovered decades after its original publication.

The following story about Nemesis begins in a dungeon where alien species are imprisoned, along with humans suspected of harboring or assisting aliens. Though they suffer, their spirits are lifted by memories of the revolutionary alien warrior: Nemesis!

Nemesis the Warlock! His name strikes fear into the hearts of humans everywhere — humans living in a religious monarchy that persecutes and exterminates all aliens! Just look at this glorious propaganda poster for Torquemada, the arch-nemesis of Nemesis and totally disgusting scumbag.

BE PURE! BE VIGILANT! BEHAVE!

That’s right. This evil freak is everywhere, spearheading an inquisition across the galaxy to torture and murder peace-loving aliens! It’s almost like living in the United States in 2019!

But take heart, species of the universe. Nemesis the Warlock has an even freakier face than Torquemada, and his sword is way more huge! So huge that it has its own origin story — a violent, grotesque space epic of suffering and sacrifice for all the wrong reasons. Suck it, humans!

Collector’s Guide: From Nemesis the Warlock; Eagle Comics, 1984. By Pat Mills and Kevin O’Neill.

tigers and traitors: classics illustrated 166

Tags

Classics Illustrated, Classics Illustrated 166, Colonel Munro, Frederick Barbarossa, Gilberton, India, Jules Verne, mechanical elephant, Nana Sahib, racism, The Steam House, Tigers and Traitors

Classics Illustrated #166: Tigers and Traitors adapts the Jules Verne story The Steam House. Verne’s loquacious style and many of his scenes are simplified and compressed in this 1962 adaptation for younger readers, but the main plot and adventure remain intact. A British group hell-bent on shooting many tigers travels India using a steam-powered mechanical elephant.

Verne uses a historical figure named Nana Sahib in this story. Nana Sahib took part in the Sepoy Revolt, which you can read about in the text pages following the main story. (Today, this event is often called The Indian Rebellion of 1857, and Verne’s original narrative refers specifically to events in Cawnpore and Lucknow.) Nana Sahib’s fate following the revolt remains a mystery, and Verne takes that mystery as the starting point for this fictional adventure.

As a tale of two cultures, The Steam House seems to favor the British imperialists as the heroes of the narrative. In the original text, Verne spends a bit more time exploring the culture and religious beliefs of India as encountered on the journey. Verne’s original description of the Sepoy Revolt also spends time describing the horrors committed by both sides. But his scenes which build sympathy for the Indian characters are largely eliminated in this adaptation. And, as a work of historical fiction, one can hardly fault The Steam House for portraying the British as the victors of the central conflict.

Nevertheless, a student of the culture and music of India will undoubtedly find this adaptation sadly one-sided. If the treatment of Indian characters and the wanton slaughter of animals for sport are offensive, then we should perhaps reserve our offense not for the book but for histories of exploitation and the attitudes of the ruling class which Verne portrays in this story. In the final panel, ending the life of an Indian man is counted towards a goal of murdering 50 tigers, a statement which says less about the ferocity of the killed man than it does a colonialist attitude that the men they ruled were no better than beasts.

The story also has little use for women other than as motivating factors for male revenge, with Colonel Munro and Nana Sahib each having sworn vengeance for killing the other’s wife. If you’re looking for a strong female lead, you won’t find her in this book. The steam house is a boys’ club on wheels, a glorified version of a fort or treehouse with a ‘no girls allowed’ sign hanging on the door. (Plus, the back-up story about a German king in this issue fails to include a single female anywhere in the story, not even in faces in the background.)

But, as lovers of the visual splendor of comic book art, our biggest criticism of the adaptation is the lack of huge, awesome panels dedicated to the majesty of the mechanical elephant. Surely the wonder of this steam-powered beast merits the reader’s and the artist’s attention, not to mention the savagely ironic imperial subversion of the form of the welcoming elephant-like Indian god Ganesha for use as a tool to trample and ravage the continent, its animals, and its people. (For a modern take on the mechanical elephant, visit the page of the French theme park full of mechanical animals, including a giant walking, rideable elephant that sprays water from its trunk: Les Machines de L’Île.)

Gilberton Company, the Classics Illustrated publisher, printed this book three times: in 1962 (identified as HRN 165), 1964 (HRN 167), and 1966 (also HRN 167). You can find them in MyComicShop, though they are rarely in stock. We ordered this copy from a Canadian seller on eBay at a steeply discounted price due to the torn cover. Depending on condition, this comic typically retails for $6 to $30 or more. (We also discovered some unrelated illustrated adaptations of the story, one in Spanish and one in Turkish, but we have yet to see those publications.)

In the gallery below, you will find a cover-to-cover scan of the complete issue, including a brief biography of Jules Verne, a text page about the Sepoy Revolt, a text page which concludes a short story by Guy de Maupassant, and a five-page illustrated history of the German king Frederick Barbarossa.

black panther’s unfinished business with the kkk

Tags

Black Panther, Don McGregor, Ed Hannigan, Gene Day, Jeremy Bingham, Jungle Action, KKK, Marvel Comics, Marvel Premiere, racism

When Marvel cancelled Jungle Action in 1976, they left an unfinished story about Black Panther and the KKK. Author Don McGregor moved on to other projects, and his Black Panther run is one of the Bronze Age’s great “unfinished symphonies.” We have scans of Jungle Action #21 where the story began with T’Challa’s nightmarish and fiery crucifixion. And you can buy the Marvel Masterworks Black Panther to read McGregor’s complete run.

The story eventually found closure in the pages of Marvel Premiere #52. With Jeremy Bingham and Gene Day on artwork, Ed Hannigan gives a decent wrap-up to the Panther’s KKK battle. Even the racist-themed super villain looks pretty awesome in his splash panel, which is kind of a weird thing to say, but there you go. Nicely drawn.

Before we listed these two issues as a lot on Ebay, we snapped some photos you can peruse below. If you understand the sort of madness that would drive us to photograph the page with the Marvel Value Stamp, then you are truly one of us. Enjoy!

Men of War #1: The Origin of Gravedigger

Tags

David Michelinie, ed davis, first appearance, first issue, gravedigger, men of war, origin, racism, Romeo Tanghal, war, war comics

Men of War #1 gives us the first half of the origin of Gravedigger in his first appearance in DC Comics. Author David Michelinie would conclude next issue with a tale of Gravedigger’s breaking into a military installation, an unlikely story that plays well as a comic book nevertheless. Gravedigger earns his nickname digging graves in a non-combat unit. He wants to fight in the war, but the color of his skin gets him assigned to an all-black non-combat unit.

While films and novels have dealt with racism in the military before, Michelinie sticks to a theme of institutional racism. We do not see Gravedigger suffer from physical and verbal abuse, but we do see him confronting a racist system. Artists Ed Davis and Romeo Tanghal deliver a realistic style in the vein of DC’s other 1970s war comics like Sgt. Rock. Let’s have a look!

Collector’s Guide: Men of War #1; DC, 1977.

Sgt Rock 347: Go Down Moses by Rick Veitch!

Tags

Go Down Moses, Harriet Tubman, racism, Rick Veitch, Sgt Rock, slavery, war, war comics

Before taking on Swamp Thing and moving on to careers producing their own works, artists Steve Bissette and Rick Veitch drew stories for DC’s Sgt. Rock. This week we’ll look at a few of their back-ups for DC’s once-popular war comic.

Collector’s Guide: From Sgt Rock #347; DC Comics, 1980.

Black Panther Vs. The KKK!

Tags

Black Panther, Don McGregor, Jungle Action, KKK, racism

Don McGregor might have created the concept of the comic book as Graphic Novel with his epic treatment of the Black Panther in Jungle Action in the early 1970s. There’s no evidence to back that up as powerfully as this horrifying Black Panther story from Jungle Action 21, so just check it out already!

Collector’s Guide: If you find collecting the individual issues to be a bit pricey, we sometimes see the 2010 Marvel Masterworks: Black Panther Vol. 1 in stock on Amazon. Or, put the Marvel Masterworks Black Panther Jungle Action HardCover on your want list at My Comic Shop.

His Mechanical Brain Is Charged with All Knowledge!

Tags

brains, EC Comics, golden age, Judgment Day, racism, robot

Judgment Day! Does the planet of the robots have the moral fortitude to join Earth’s Great Galactic Republic!? This is it: the famous censored sci-fi story from Weird Fantasy #18 by EC Comics.

Why was it censored? It was 1953 in the USA, and the story deals with historical racism being taught to citizens by their society. You can imagine how “The Man” had a cow over this story back then. And if you can’t, you can read all about it in the EC Comics article on Wikipedia.

The story came out uncensored in Incredible Science Fiction #33 — which is hardly ever in stock. You can find it in the Russ Cochran/Gemstone reprint series under Incredible Science Fiction and also Haunt of Fear #3. (For the sake of their profit margin, Gemstone eventually combined 1992 reprints of Haunt of Fear and Weird Fantasy into one magazine each month. That’s a lot of EC Comics inside of one cover!)