I don’t know when I first saw an English edition of Barefoot Gen. It was probably sometime in the mid 70s, when I was editing for the modest enterprise that has become the mighty Marvel Entertainment. In those days, a lot of stuff crossed editorial desks and we read most of it, if not all. So: Japanese comics? Sure, I’ll give it a look. It was probably my first experience with manga and I remember feeling a mild taste of cognitive dissonance – a perceived disconnect between subject and form. (I am choosing to ignore, because it’s a bit off-subject, the hybrid of cartooning and illustration that’s most superhero art.)

The subject was grim. Barefoot Gen is the autobiographical tale of a child who witnessed and survived the atomic bombing of Nagasaki. But it was presented in a visual style I would have described as “cartoony.” Like most American pop-cultch consumers, I associated bright, simple, exaggerated drawings – cartoons – with material that was at least supposed to be humorous, and there was nothing remotely funny about Barefoot Gen. It was, and is, a powerful anti-war document and, because it is that, deeply humane.

It’s creator, who did both art and copy, is named Keiji Nakazawa, and Barefoot Gen is his story. He had this to say about it: “People should be told what happened. If you live through something like the A-bomb, you know that war is too horrible not to be avoided at all costs, regardless of the justifications offered for it.”

The work first appeared in 1972 as a serial in a mass market Japanese publication, Shukan Shonon Jampu (and perhaps some kind reader will translate that for us). Later, it migrated to smaller magazines, and later still, it was published in English as a paperback book series. The most recent English iteration appeared in 2004, with an introduction by Art Spiegelman.

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Well, that headline ought to cause some Google searcher meltdown. But the fact is, right wing poster child Little Orphan Annie has a lot in common with mega-leftie songleader Pete Seeger.

This dawned on me because of the confluence of recent events. IDW released the first volume of The Complete Little Orphan Annie last week. American Masters ran its documentary about Pete earlier this month and, yes, it’s PBS so it’ll be rerun forever. Which is fine; both are absolutely first rate. Both are American legends.

Little Orphan Annie was created by Harold Gray, a man who fit in nicely with his boss, the contemptible isolationist Col. Robert McCormack, a man so far to the right when he disagreed with the politics coming out of Rhode Island he removed their star from the American flag that was raised right above his office atop Chicago’s Tribune Tower. Until he was told he could go to jail for desecrating the flag, McCormack and his employees – including Gray – worked right under America’s only 47 star flag. Both Gray and McCormick loathed Franklin Delano Roosevelt to the point of histrionics. Gray’s comic strip fully represented those values; Annie’s Daddy Warbucks even did a little jig on FDR’s grave. (more…)