Saturday, August 22, 2015

Donald Trump = George Wallace?

When your own fans compare you to George Wallace...

...as a retired welder at the Trump rally in Alabama did...
"Donald Trump is telling the truth and people don't always like that," said Donald Kidd, a 73-year-old retired pipe welder from Mobile.
"He is like George Wallace, he told the truth. It is the same thing."
...you know Trump's hitting the target demographic he wants.
Nativist, reactionary, undereducated.
Wallace was so proud of his racist attitudes that he had them included in a comic book produced in 1960 during his election campaign!
These pages are excerpts of the 16-page comic considered instrumental in Wallace's victory in 1960.
You can see the complete comic HERE.
You'll note an emphasis on "states' rights" of the sort Tea Partiers advocate as well as the paranoid fear that the Feds wanted to "take over" Alabama.
BTW, In his inaugural speech after winning the race, Wallace promised "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever."
Note: Ironically, Wallace was a Democrat.
However, Federally-forced desegregation as well as the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 caused many racist Democrats to switch to the Republican Party (which began catering to the right-wing audience with the "Southern Strategy") or, as in the case of Wallace, joining the newly-created American Independent Party.
In the late 1970s, Wallace became a born-again Christian and recanted his racist attitudes.
But I don't think the 1970s Wallace was the one Donald Kidd was referring to...

Friday, August 21, 2015

Reading Room AMAZING ADVENTURES "Station in Space"

Today, we have the International Space Station.
But what we really wanted in the 1950s was a kool...
...as shown in this never-reprinted feature from Ziff-Davis' Amazing Adventures #6 (1952)!
The designs for the station and spacecraft match Chesley Bonestell's amazing graphics which were used by everyone from rocket scientist Wernher von Braun (promoting the space program which eventually became NASA) to movie and tv studios like Paramount and Disney!

Thursday, August 20, 2015

Reading Room AMAZING ADVENTURES "What the Atom Can Do for Peace!"

Back in the 1950s, we believed this was...
According to this never-reprinted feature from Ziff-Davis' Amazing Adventures #5 (1951), even in the future, all women can do is gossip!
BTW, the identities of neither the writer nor artist are known.

Wednesday, August 19, 2015

Reading Room AMAZING ADVENTURES "Amazing Prophecies"

Let's peer once more into a crystal ball from the 1950s...
...and see they did predict 3-D TV and bigger women (as compared to the females of the 1950s).
But the other prophecies from this never-reprinted feature illustrated by Ross Andru in Ziff-Davis' Amazing Adventures #4 (1951) have yet to occur...

Tuesday, August 18, 2015

Reading Room AMAZING ADVENTURES "Amazing Prophecies"

Let's take a look at what we (in the 1950s) thought the 21st Century would bring us...
...while none of the predictions illustrated by Ogden Whitney in this never-reprinted feature from Ziff-Davis' Amazing Adventures #1 (1950) have yet occured, the US has reached the moon, and the "mechanical means" of knowledge-seeking does resemble the Internet.
Plus, the threat of nuclear war continues to this day, and this past July has gone on record as the hottest July in recorded global history...hmmm...