Later writers increased Chop-Chop's role in the team, including making him a pilot and then a martial arts expert (it's interesting when you see a writer try to fix one stereotype by using another). He also had a popular back-up gag-strip in the series (and it's that back-up gag-strip that provides the depiction of Chop-Chop for this entry). Over the years, Chop-Chop's role in the series expanded, as he became more of a sidekick to the main character (just called "Blackhawk"). Originally, they also had their Chinese cook, Chop-Chop, who was an extreme caricature of a Chinese man. Dubbed "Blackhawks", it followed around a fighter squadron manned by fighter pilots from all around the free world. In 1941, Will Eisner launched another popular comic book series, this time for Quality Comics and mostly created by artist Chuck Cuidera. Luckily, since everything else about Ebony was good, the simplest solution was just to do what Darwyn Cooke did when he began writing and drawing "The Spirit" - simply don't draw Ebony like a cariacture and don't have him talk like he was in a Minstrel show. However, he was also clearly drawn as a caricature of a black person, with huge white eyes and huge pink lips and he spoke like he was right out of a Minstrel show.Įisner defended the use of the character until his death, arguing for Ebony in the context of the time, specifically noting "at the time humor consisted in our society of bad English and physical difference in identity." There were not a lot of protests of Ebony White at the time, due to his general heroic portrayal, but it is hard to get past Ebony's general depiction as anything but a mistake on Eisner's part. Ebony was always portrayed as a hero and all the other characters in the book treated him with respect. One of the most divisive comic book characters of all-time is Ebony White, the sidekick to Denny Holt, the Spirit, in Will Eisner's classic "The Spirit" comic book (which was included as a newspaper supplement across the country). Years later, Len Wein paid tribute to Wing by having him sacrifice himself to save the other Soldiers and have them finally honor him as a member of the team. So whenever people act like an era fully excuses stereotypes, you'll know better.Ĭrimson Avenger and Wing fought alongside the Seven Soldiers of Victory, but, of course, the Asian sidekick wasn't actually counted as one of the eight. The weirdest thing is that a superhero peer of the Crimson Avenger was Vigilante, who also had an Asian sidekick, Stuff the Chinatown Kid, but Stuff was actually depicted well. Wing was depicted very stereotypically, including his accent (he referred to the Crimson Avenger as the "Climson Avenger"). Wing interestingly didn't bother disguising himself, really, and called himself his real name, so it was nice that no one ever put two and two together to figure out the Crimson Avenger's identity. They were both vague knockoffs of the Green Hornet and Kato. Wing was the chauffeur to Lee Travis and then became his sidekick when Travis became the superhero known as the Crimson Avenger.
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