It's... the AzuComixLog!!!
Yes, I don't just review movies anymore. In fact, given those ANTM and CNTM mini-synopses I've given, in a sense I've never restricted myself to just doing reviews of movies. So, now I'm implementing an idea that I've had for quite a few months now, which is to review books and comic books. I was originally going to start off by doing a review of Dracula, the original novel by Bram Stoker. I've also given thought about doing reviews of the Target Doctor Who novelisations, and the 1980's role-playing gamebook phenomenon Fighting Fantasy. On the comic book side, I have quite a few comic books that are suitable for reviewing that are just outright awful, like an issue of a Chuck Norris comic put out under Marvel's Star Comics imprint.
Of course, I am not done putting up reviews of movies in this journal. In fact, I have at least six movies in the pipeline to be done, including the Youtube mystery turtle movie that I mentioned in my last review. The reason you haven't seen it yet is because what with six reviews pending (and the book and comics reviews to boot), with that much on my plate, it's obviously going to take some time. And of course, I also do s**t that's not connected to reviewing or Gaia or Internet in any way.
Anyhow, I picked a really weird comic to start off the AzuComixLog with. Or, more accurately, it picked me. You're probably familiar with a website called Superdickery, which is basically a gallery of bizarre comic book covers. Now, one of the comics whose cover appears on that site is "Hansi, The Girl who Loved the Swastika." And
the cover depicts this smiling blonde ponytailed Aryan lass, and in the background is a German town festooned with Swastika flags, as well as Adolf Hitler travelling in his car. How many Nazi flags are there on the cover? Twelve, to be precise.
Now, one would think this is some ******** up Nazi propaganda comic that somehow managed to get printed and sold at a newstand for kids, but you'd be wrong. Immediately intrigued by such a provocative cover, I did a Google search. Well, it is NOT a ******** up Nazi propaganda comic, it is a ******** up Christian propaganda
comic published in 1976 by a company called Spire Christian Comics. Other titles by this company include "The Cross and the Switchblade," "God's Smuggler," "The Gospel Blimp," "Tom Landry and the Dallas Cowboys," and perhaps most disturbing of all, "Hello, I'm Johnny Cash." They also have a series of "Archie" comics (one of them is called "Archie's Something Else," and I can't even guess as to what that is...) - surely, not THE Archie. I mean, I hope not. Presumably it's a completely different fictional comic book individual who merely bears the name Archie. I don't know for sure which it is, since they don't have the cover to any of those comics shown in their ad, but I think there should only be room for one Archie in the comics books world. (Well, maybe two Archies. In 7th grade, in French class, on the shelves was a French comic featuring a man named Archie, who looked like Charles Bronson, but even more badass. The character's last name was in the title, but alas, I don't remember what that is. It buggers me when I can't remember s**t like that. I've been trying to remember what it is for years and years now. ********. I never even ******** READ the thing.) [Since I've written those last sentences, I checked out the Spire Christian Comics entry on Wikipedia, and yes, I'm sad to say, it IS that Archie.)
Synopsis
OK, back to "Hansi The Girl who Loved the Swastika." You may be wondering by now how the ******** I intend to review this when I don't even have a copy of it? Well I do,
thanks to the magic of the Internet. Somebody kindly scanned it and put a .pdf of it online. (Nope, I'm not telling you the address. Find it yourself.) So now we can experience the appalling mediocrity of this opus in all its glory. It makes me feel like I've soiled myself.
First of all, the title, "Hansi the Girl who Loved the Swastika," does not even make any ******** sense. This being a Christian comic, Hansi converts to being an Evangelical Christian, so a more accurate title would be "Hansi, The Girl who Loved Jesus" or even, "Hansi, The Girl who USED to Loved the Swastika."
Our story starts in the Sudetenland in 1938, which had recently been taken over by Nazi Germany. Our heroine is one of many ethnic Germans living there. Already she doesn't seem to the brightest bulb in the box, for the very first words she utters are "What a strange cross! It has hooks on the ends!" I know she's supposed to be a teenager at that point, but surely anyone above the age of seven must have seen that flag already. The Nazis have come to bring the Sudetenlanders FOOD and JOBS and BOOKs. Yes, that's exactly how they put it in this comic. Apparently it's the books that Hansi is all excited about: "Before I had only your Bible to read," she says to her mother. (No wonder she seems so thick.) These books are apparently her key to the top ("What top, Hansi?" her mother asks), as she wins a competition to attend a Nazi school in Prague. As she says goodbye to her mother, her mother says, "Hansi... Don't ever forget Jesus." Now, I kind of doubt in such a Catholic region as that, that her mother is some kind of Evangelical Protestant.
Anyways, Hansi is sent to her new school - the building of which used to be owned by a Jew! When it's pointed out to her what Nazis think about Jews, Hansi blurts back
"Jesus was a jew!", her teacher says, "Hitler is showing is NEW things... and more SCIENTIFIC ways!...We're changing Gods, Hansi!" So I guess not only is it ixnay on
the ewsjay illedkay istchray, but it's already page 4 and we've got our first mendacious evangelical trope so far. It could be worse - at least this comic never goes into overt Jack Chick levels of bullshit.
On the next page, we have a panel of Hitler making a public speech, and in the audience, the artist saw fit to draw a whopping 19 swastikas on Nazi flags. (Maybe it's just this comic that loves swastikas...) The war's on and instantly, Germany is losing. You'd never know that for the first half of the war, the Axis seemed well-nigh invincible. Hansi becomes a nurse of sorts, being exposed to complainers largely as a pretext for her to spout some stupid line about Germany's greatness. ("The War gets bigger...our rations smaller!!!" Hansi: "I'm proud to be hungry...for Germany's great future!!!" Yes, those are the number of exclaimation points used.)
Hansi's also been romantic pen-pals with a man named Rudy (very German name, nein?) who's serving on a U-Boat. They meet for the first time, and in the second panel thereafter, he asks her to be his wife. I guess I can cut the story some slack on this point, since it's only about 32 pages long. But Rudy's parents won't have any of
it, and like a good little girl, Hansi writes to him breaking off the engagement and refusing to receive letters from him. Which is kind of stupid, and seems to be there only as a pretext for another character to say, "My boyfriend was at Stalingrad just before it fell...his last letter said: SEND US BIBLES!!!" Now I don't know why any soldier in Stalingrad would ask for Bibles when bullets would seem to be a more direly needed article. But this is a Christian comic. Logic and common sense need not apply. I mean, are we to believe that the Russians are to be converted to death or something? Anyway, the same character continues: "Why would our soldiers call for BIBLES - isn't it some sort of JEWISH book?" Which in a way is an even ODDER line, since you know, Germany. Martin Luther. Translated the Bible. And founded, you know, PROTESTANTANTISM?! You would think people actually knew this. But I'm going by the standards of real life - my bad. I mean, I know I vent on how ******** stupid the writers of this comic are, but dammit, do they ever deserve it! You know, I'm pissed off - like so many other people - when these religious twinks come knocking on my door trying to tell me about there religion - especially when it's non-Mormon, non-Jehovah's Witnesses doing it. Like I haven't heard of it before, or the whole backstory about how Jesus gave his live for the world's sins, etc. etc. Do these guys seriously belive the "news" part about the "Good news?" It's almost 2000 ******** years old now, anything being pimped around for 2000 years it's NOT ******** news.
Back to the story. Hansi yells back, "The Bible is OUTDATED! It's for COWARDS and WEAKLINGS!" And in the panel, it's pointed out that the soldiers weren't cowards, and somewhat rhetorically it's asked why was the Bible so important to them? We don't have time to dwell further on this thought (thankfully) since Prague is being invaded and must be evacuated. A soldier tries to tag along with Hansi, who reminds him that his duty is to stay behind, but he replies (with a grin on his face) that he'd rather spend his time with her... (nothin' like a good ol' invasion to stir the libido!) She spurns his advances, saying "I believe in Hitler and VICTORY!" Soldier: "You dumb girl!" (Anonymous German soldier, I must salute you. You're just about the most perceptive person in this lousy comic!) On the train, the news is received that Hitler had become An Hero. Hansi narrates: "Germany surrendered. The Dream ended - The Nightmare began!" Now, I don't mean to belittle or justify anything that happened to the German civilian population as the War ended... but, come on, talk about the country that asked for it. Hansi is taken to a Russian labour camp: "The days were UNBEARABLE! The nights UNTHINKABLE!" (the panel shows some smiling Russian soldiers entering the woman's dormitory whilst taking off their uniforms) So we are lead to believe that the German women got raped... well, the German women EXCEPT for Hansi: "You're lucky you're skinny Hansi! They don't want you!" OH, GET THE ******** OUT OF HERE! A cute blonde German chick like that - and they're not going to rape her 'cause she's TOO SKINNY!?! I call major bullshit on that! Hell, I bet Hansi wouldn't been safe even if she were an senior citizen!
Well, Hansi and her friend try to escape the labour camp. She says they should try to make their way to West Germany (Wait, HOW LONG has Hansi BEEN prisoner in that camp?! It can't have been that long, she's wearing her ordinary clothes! If she'd been in that camp since the end of the war until the official founding of the FDR, those clothes would have been so funkified that they wouldn't need dogs to track her! Well, when her friend hears that Hansi wants to seek refuge with Americans, she replies that Americans are "all gum-chewing GANGSTERS!!!" Hansi: "Well, I've heard they don't force their attention on women!" To which I'd like to know, where exactly would she have heard this? Her friend asks if she, Hansi, thinks there's any peace and love left in the world, Hansi replies in the affirmative, having a flashback in a thought bubble to her mother reminding her never to forget Jesus.
Hansi and her friend come to a bombed out town, and find it ludicrously easy to find a guy who can tell him whom to ask if you want to be smuggled into West Germany, who turns out to be the local ferryman. As payment, they give him an implausible amount of baubles. Where the hell could they have hidden them all this time to keep them from the Russians? Up the a**? Well, I can only suppose they were up Hansi's a** and her other orifice, since the Russians never plumbed those depths, a claim I personally find hard to buy. The ferryman points at a forest and says, "Those woods ...at midnight!" You'd think that being a ferryman, he would take them by water, but no. That night, in the rain, he leads Hansi, her friend and about seven other refugees. A mere hundred yards from the border, they are set upon by Russian soldiers. Hansi
helps a little girl cross a stream - leaving her doll behind. (A trope I've never gotten, as kids in real life must have a grip of ******** steel when it comes to their stuffed toys.) "We MADE it!" Hansi exclaims. "What miracle prevented them from firing at us?" The miracle of the idiot plot, my dear!
A top of a hill on the other side of the stream is a house. Hansi knocks on the door, which is opened by an American soldier, who is chewing gum. I know this (he could be
sucking on an invisible d**k for all it looks like) because Hansi has a thought bubble saying, "An AMERICAN!!! And he's CHEWING GUM!" (All the funny stuff in
these kind of comics are strictly unintentional, folks. At least, I think so.) Hansi also says, "This child needs warm clothing ...or she'll DIE!" Talk about melodrama... The Americans seem nice and all, well at least until they tell her that she looks tired, and ask her if she wants to sleep. "So THAT'S it!," she screams, "You soldiers are ALL ALIKE!" Two things come to mind: (a) did the Russians use lines like that as some sort of foreplay before going on to the actual rape? (b) Doesn't Hansi's response look like something that would not be considered fit to even be used as a line for Chrissy Snow on an episode of Three's Company? (One of the American soldiers is reading an Archie comic, incidentally) After that little confusion is cleared up, Hansi goes to bed and is even served breakfast the next day by the soldiers. (Every American soldier, with the exception of Mr. Gum Chewing Gangster, have these beaming smiles on their faces. VERY DISTURBING beaming smiles.) They drive Hansi to the local Red Cross. I wish I could show you the panel where they're driving in the jeep, because it's all kinds of unintentionally hilarious. Hansi is thinking to herself "How could these boys be ALLIES with the RUSSIANS???" Which proves to be both anvilicious in eschewing any semblance of a shade of grey between the Russians and the Americans and shows how ignorant Hansi continues to be. But it's the look on her face that's even funnier. Her mouth is hanging open in a canonical "c**k goes here" look, and she's staring directly at the reader from the page. I'm not even going to comment on how ******** creepy the soldier in the back of the jeep looks.
When she gets to the (bombed-out) town she conveniently bumps into Rudy's sister, who is a nurse there (and is also drawn as if she was portrayed by a man in drag). She tells Hansi that Rudy's U-Boat got sunk, his whereabouts unknown. "Write to us Hansi...you're all Rudy left us!" Anyway, (West) Germany recovers from the devastation of war, Hansi becomes a first grade teacher (I guess that's about as much as she can handle). And what do you know? Rudy's not dead after all! He survived the U-Boat sinking. "These last two years havce been a lifetime, Hansi! Everything's changed! Except my love for you! I NEED you, Hansi!" So, do you think they're going to get married? Let's ask Hansi!
Sure enough: "I married Rudy ...and after one year, we were sure it was a MISTAKE! Something was missing in our lives!" I would guess that Rudy couldn't satisfy a woman if his life depended on it, but that's not where this comic is going. One day (literally) Rudy brings home a Bible. "Hansi...I have something that seems worth trying ...We'll learn about Jesus!" It's as if he were saying, "I have something that seems worth trying ...We'll learn about the Vedas and Upanishads!" You'd never know from his
words that the Christian religion had been the unquestioned indigenous faith in Germany since even before Charlemagne. But then we're not talking about thatChristianity. We're talking about the "real" Christianity - Born-again Sectarian Evangelical Protestant Christianity. It is in this context that we must interpret Rudy's next line, "I've met Christians at the university...Jesus has done a LOT for them!"
"Rudy..." Hansi says, "Do we DARE to BELIEVE???" This is not a dumb question as it sounds, since Hansi has already been (so to speak) suckered into one cult. You'd think some people would wise up at such a stage. But not Hansi. Rudy says: "Is it possible??? That HE DIED for US?" Hansi: "And even more... that he
LIVES for us!" And with that melodramatic dialogue, the happy couple become Born-again Sectarian Evangelical Protestant Christians. And before you know it, for no clearly explained reason, they fly to live in America. (Some time must have passed - indeed, many years must have passed, since the America herein depicted seems to be that which is contemporary to the comic's times (1976), or shortly before it. The Hansis are stupified by the filth (literal filth, not smut) and material abundance of the USA. Hansi (who ages not a whit in the comic) is working as a high school teacher. During the Pledge of Allegiance, Hansi has this long internal monologue about whether it's all right or not to have nationalistic feelings ("I did that once as Nazi and I was wrong" wink but these doubts melt away like an ice cube in a desert once they get to the line "...One nation under God." "THOSE words make all the difference! It's all right to love what God has blessed!" I mean, Nazi Germany didn't seek God's blessing at all. Or DID they?
However all is not complete, because every Born-again Sectarian Evangelical Protestant Christian is obligated to recruit others to the the BASEPC cause, so Rudy and Hansi open their house up giving help to hopeless people, like former pill-popper and ethnic sterotype Carlos. The comic winds out by having Hansi deliver a hackneyed speech about freedom and America to some prisoners. Maybe a prison is not exactly the best place to talk about how free any country is. But then again, Hansi is stupid. And so is her comic.
Review
This comic book is pure blatant propaganda. But I risk stating the obvious. It's also an adaptation of a longer, autobiographical work of the same name (something Spire specialized in when they weren't doing Born-again Bizarro Archie) by Maria Anne Hirschmann (the real-life Hansi). Apparently all this s**t that went on in this comic actually happened. Who could have guessed? I don't know much about the original book of Hansi - the Girl who loved the Swastika, but it turns out that Rudy IS her husband's real name. The comic book also considerably truncates their conversion to Born-again-dom, omitting someone named Brother Schneider, who apparently was instrumental in that event. I'm also curious about what the other differences are - but not so curious as to actually look up the original book and find out.
I've also done considerably more Intarwebs research on Spire and its use of the Archie brand. Spire was founded by the late Al Hartley, whose father was one of the United States' most reactionary "statesmen," Fred Hartley of Taft-Hartley Act (1947) fame. Son Al worked on a number of comic book titles, like "Patsy Walker" and the risqué (for the time) "The Adventures of Pussycat," which he would later quit doing. He became born-again in the late 1960's, around the time he came to work on Archie. That was "normal," i.e. real Archie, though Hartley tried here and there to squeeze in bits and pieces of the born-again message (until he was told by his employers to knock it off). Spire Comics began when Hartley was tapped by the Fleming H. Revell Company to do a comic book adaptation of born-again book The Cross and the Switchblade, which had already been made into a movie. After Spire became established, Hartley approached the publisher of the Archie comics, John L. Goldwater, for permission to use the Archie characters in Spire Christian Comics titles. Goldwater not only agreed, but waived any licensing fee, which is doubly odd since Goldwater was a Jew. From what I gather, the Spire Archie comics are really weird. I mean, if the characters from the Archie comics were praising Jesus 24/7, what other word would you describe the phenomenon but weird?! All the more weird since as the Spire line ran out of gas (the last Spire Archie was published in 1984), the titles were as much used for shilling other Spire titles as for delivering the born-again message.
As for the other Spire titles, I wouldn't be interested in reviewing any of them, except maybe "There's a New World Coming," which is an apocalyptic, Book of Revelations "exegesis" straight from Hal Lindsey himself. That has to be all kinds of ******** up. There's also "Born Again," (a nondescript title if there ever was one...) which has as its only point of interest the fact that it's an adaptation of the work by convicted Watergate criminal Chuck Colson. I'm awfully tempted to go off on an anti-Nixon rant...
....but I'm going to let an honest-to-God evangelical Christian have the last word on "Hansi." During my research I found a post on a forum discussing it by someone called Witch King:
Quote:
I'm an evangelical Christian and I think it's psychotic.
'Nuff said.
3/10 (I'm in a generous mood...)
This review © 2008 azulmagia
The "turtle" review for the Film Log is coming. Soon. I SWEAR it.
