Orwell on Comics
1. Left Wing Stories for Boys
In March 1940 in issue 3 of the literary magazine Horizon there was an article by George Orwell on the subject of Boys' weekly story-papers. These were magazines for boys, a kind of early comic book, that mixed text and illustrations, though with the two less intermixed than in the later comic book style.
He notes that the world weeklies such as The Magnet and Gem seem to live in as being: "1910 - or 1940, but it is all the same... there is a cosy fire in the study... The King is on his throne... Everything will be the same forever." He also complains that the working classes are depicted in a stereotyped manner, noting: "The working classes only enter into the Gem and Magnet as comics or semi-villains (race-course touts, etc.). As for class-friction, trade unionism, strikes, slumps, unemployment, Fascism and civil war — not a mention. Somewhere or other in the thirty years' issue of the two papers you might perhaps find the word ‘Socialism’, but you would have to look a long time for it. If the Russian Revolution is anywhere referred to, it will be indirectly, in the word ‘Bolshy’ (meaning a person of violent disagreeable habits)."
Orwell observes that the real experience of the majority of people was not gone into: "The major facts arc simply not faced. It is admitted, for instance, that people sometimes lose their jobs; but then the dark clouds roll away and they get better jobs instead. No mention of un-employment as something permanent and inevitable, no mention of the dole, no mention of trade unionism. No suggestion anywhere that there can be anything wrong with the system as a system; there arc only individual misfortunes, which are generally due to somebody's wickedness and can in any case be put right in the last chapter. Always the dark clouds roll away, the kind employer raises Alfred's wages, and there are jobs for everybody except the drunks."
He concludes by saying that due to various economic and social factors: "At this moment, therefore, a paper with a ‘left’ slant and at the same time likely to have an appeal to ordinary boys in their teens is something almost beyond hoping for... in England, popular imaginative literature is a field that left-wing thought has never begun to enter. All fiction from the novels in the mushroom libraries downwards is censored in the interests of the ruling class. And boys' fiction above all, the blood-and-thunder stuff which nearly every boy devours at some time or other, is sodden in the worst illusions of 1910."
1. Left Wing Stories for Boys
In March 1940 in issue 3 of the literary magazine Horizon there was an article by George Orwell on the subject of Boys' weekly story-papers. These were magazines for boys, a kind of early comic book, that mixed text and illustrations, though with the two less intermixed than in the later comic book style.
He notes that the world weeklies such as The Magnet and Gem seem to live in as being: "1910 - or 1940, but it is all the same... there is a cosy fire in the study... The King is on his throne... Everything will be the same forever." He also complains that the working classes are depicted in a stereotyped manner, noting: "The working classes only enter into the Gem and Magnet as comics or semi-villains (race-course touts, etc.). As for class-friction, trade unionism, strikes, slumps, unemployment, Fascism and civil war — not a mention. Somewhere or other in the thirty years' issue of the two papers you might perhaps find the word ‘Socialism’, but you would have to look a long time for it. If the Russian Revolution is anywhere referred to, it will be indirectly, in the word ‘Bolshy’ (meaning a person of violent disagreeable habits)."
Orwell observes that the real experience of the majority of people was not gone into: "The major facts arc simply not faced. It is admitted, for instance, that people sometimes lose their jobs; but then the dark clouds roll away and they get better jobs instead. No mention of un-employment as something permanent and inevitable, no mention of the dole, no mention of trade unionism. No suggestion anywhere that there can be anything wrong with the system as a system; there arc only individual misfortunes, which are generally due to somebody's wickedness and can in any case be put right in the last chapter. Always the dark clouds roll away, the kind employer raises Alfred's wages, and there are jobs for everybody except the drunks."
He concludes by saying that due to various economic and social factors: "At this moment, therefore, a paper with a ‘left’ slant and at the same time likely to have an appeal to ordinary boys in their teens is something almost beyond hoping for... in England, popular imaginative literature is a field that left-wing thought has never begun to enter. All fiction from the novels in the mushroom libraries downwards is censored in the interests of the ruling class. And boys' fiction above all, the blood-and-thunder stuff which nearly every boy devours at some time or other, is sodden in the worst illusions of 1910."
However, he has a cautious point for us to consider that such left wing stories and comics are possible and that he saw something of the kind in Spain when he was fighting there in 1937: "But it does not follow that it is impossible... There is no clear reason why every adventure story should necessarily be mixed up with snobbishness and gutter patriotism. For, after all, the stories in the Hotspur and the Modern Boy are not Conservative tracts; they are merely adventure stories with a Conservative bias. It is fairly easy to imagine the process being reversed. It is possible, for instance, to imagine a paper as thrilling and lively as the Hotspur, but with subject-matter and ‘ideology’ a little more up to date. It is even possible (though this raises other difficulties) to imagine a women's paper at the same literary level as the Oracle, dealing in approximately the same kind of story, but taking rather more account of the realities of working-class life. Such things have been done before, though not in England. In the last years of the Spanish monarchy there was a large output in Spain of left-wing novelettes, some of them evidently of anarchist origin. Unfortunately at the time when they were appearing I did not see their social significance, and I lost the collection of them that I had, but no doubt copies would still be procurable. In get-up and style of story they were very similar to the English fourpenny novelette, except that their inspiration was ‘left’. If, for instance, a story described police pursuing anarchists through the mountains, it would be from the point of view of the anarchist and not of the police."
An interesting extension of this story is that the actual writer of many of those boys weekly stories, Frank Richards, had his reply published in Horizon's May 1940 issue, concluding: “Mr Orwell hopes that a boys paper with a left wing bias may not be impossible. I hope it is, and will remain, impossible. Boys minds ought not to be disturbed and worried by politics. Even if I were a socialist or a communist I should still consider it the duty of a boys author to write without reference to such topics…” The obvious answer to this being that if, as Orwell claimed, the stories were shot through with conservative bias then they already were making reference to politics. Not overtly with reference to specific right wing political ideas but perhaps all the more effectively for that.
As to Orwell imagining a situation where popular story papers and comics might be from a left wing perspective - has that not come to pass? For example, 39 years after Orwell's article appeared Pat Mills and Joe Colquhoun Charley's War was, i think, very much what Orwell would have hoped for. It was published in a comic aimed at young boys and teenage readers, and features a working class soldier in WW1, the story is told from his point of view and it often criticises the officers, even specifically going into class politics.
Since then there have been many comic books and graphic novels from a left wing point of view, even specifically from an anarchist one. Alan Moore and David Lloyd's V for Vendetta has an anarchist character who fights against an English fascist state. Anarchy Comics was a series of underground comic books published by Last Gasp between 1978 and 1987. AK Press, Seven Stories, New Internationalist, and several other specifically left wing publishers of the type that Orwell may have worked with have published many comic books, including my own graphic novels. Whilst most of these are not being aimed at young boys, they could be read by them. Our book Fight the Power is about the history of popular struggle against elite oppression, and our book Parecomic is about an anarchist type economic system and has an introduction by probably the most famous left winger in the world, Noam Chomsky. And we are currently making a graphic novel version of one of Orwell's own stories.
How's that for left wing story papers Georgey old boy? Not bad, huh?
How's that for left wing story papers Georgey old boy? Not bad, huh?
2. Six years later Orwell commented with disdain about the new style US comics:
“English children are still americanised by way of the films, but it would no longer be generally claimed that American books are the best ones for children. Who, without misgivings, would bring up a child on the coloured "comics" in which sinister professors manufacture atomic bombs in underground laboratories while Superman whizzes through the clouds, the machine-gun bullets bouncing off his chest like peas, and platinum blondes are raped, or very nearly, by steel robots and fifty-foot dinosaurs ? It is a far cry from Superman to the Bible and the woodpile.”
- From his 'As I Please' column in Tribune (specific title of ‘Riding Down from Bangor’), November1946
“A correspondent has sent me a copy of one of the disgusting American "comics" which I referred to a few weeks ago. The two main stories in it are about a beautiful creature called The Hangman, who has a green face, and, like so many characters in American strips, can fly. On the front page there is a picture of what is either an ape-like lunatic, or an actual ape dressed up as a man, strangling a woman so realistically that her tongue is sticking four inches out of her mouth. Another item is a python looping itself round a man's neck and then hanging him by suspending itself over a balustrade. Another is a man jumping out of a skyscraper window and hitting the pavement with a splash. There is much else of the same kind. My correspondent asks me whether I think this is the kind of thing that should be put into the hands of children, and also whether we could not find something better on which to spend our dwindling dollars. Certainly I would keep these things out of children's hands if possible. But I would not be in favour of actually prohibiting their sale. The precedent is too dangerous. But meanwhile, are we actually using dollars to pay for this pernicious rubbish? The point is not completely unimportant, and I should like to see it cleared up.”
– From his 'As I Please' column in Tribune, December 1946
Notes
As we can see from the above words Orwell suffered from the bad habit, very common then and sadly coming back now, of calling the UK just England and British kids just English.
Orwell’s article in Horizon No 3 1940
www.orwell.ru/library/essays/boys/english/e_boys
www.friardale.co.uk/Ephemera/Newspapers/George%20Orwell_Horizon_Reply.pdf