Scarlet Seal - Fighting Crime with Yellowface

[strannik01]

When DC Comics decided to bring back Quality Comics characters, it only revived some of them. The most recent Freedom Fighters series (whatever it was called) gave them an opportunity to revive a few more. But there is one character DC Comics will never, ever revive. A character with an origin that, quite frankly... Well, see for yourself.

The following story originally appeared in Smash Comics #16. Art and writing by Harry Campbell.

Comments

[zordboy]

Wow.

Just.... wow.

"Yellow make-up"? Oh no :(.

[crinos]

Oh God the way he talks.

Its like if Charlie Chan was a super hero.

I'd just like to apologize on behalf of white people to any Chinese folk (or any Asians for that matter) who might be reading this. Sorry, our bad.

[ravenous_raven]

apology accepted :) the pink coloring on the Caucasians kind of evens this out.

[perletwo]

(o_o)
...
(O_O)
...
...this is how Kate felt when she woke up in that tree last night, isn't it?

[strannik01]

Wait, what?

[fungo_squiggly]

"For gosh sake, Mr. Chink! Will you please stop beating the crap out of me and give me a loaded gun?"

Even if he hadn't been shot by the crooked lieutenant, that guy would have won a Darwin award soon enough, anyhow.

[omgwtflolbbqbye.livejournal.com]

He must play a damn good actor if he didn't need to use duct tape to pull his eyes tighter.

[box_in_the_box]

Yeah, you'd have to hire an Asian writer, and have some sort of absolutely brilliant Black Like Me style of storyline to justify it, and even then, it'd STILL be an unholy mess to revive this character.

Jesus Christ.

[perletwo]

And the wank, think of the wank! If Super Young Dancing Justice Team or whatever that hot mess from Final Crisis was, caused a ruckus among fandom, imagine what a revival of this could do.

[aaron_bourque]

A body-swap might help to justify it, but yeeeeeeeeeeee-eeeeeeeeeesh.

[thanekos]

Incogchink.

[cleome45]

"Boy, am I glad to get out of that outfit!"

We're gladder!

[strannik01]

I am wondering whether or not to post the other Scarlet Seal stories I have downloaded. They don't get any better. Like, at all. Like how, no matter how many actual Chinese people Barry runs into, nobody realizes he's a white guy in make-up.

[foxhack]

You know, it could work... but as a one off character. Or possibly as a character origin.

I like the idea of a cop disguising himself as several different people to serve as a vigilante is good, and I'm 95% sure it's been done in other series (or is a trope). Yes, the ah, yellowface and the way he speaks are bad. If he did it today, the bad guys would probably react in much the same way everyone here did. ;p

[psychopathicus_rex]

That sounds a lot like Moon Knight, really - I think he had something like three or four secret identities at one point. And then there's the Shadow, who (in the pulps, anyway) had zillions of secret identities - you never found out just who he really was, and which one of them (if any) was the real him.

[kashmirkong]

I think this would be great as a miniseries with the right writer.

Set it during that time period and keep the racism intact. We try to hard to whitewash the past. It would be a good,hard look at who we were back then, and how far we've come culturally.

[strannik01]

Yeah. That's really the only way it can possibly work.

[psychopathicus_rex]

Here's a thought - what if the character were retconned into being partly Chinese himself, looking Anglo enough so that he could pass for white, but looking just 'oriental' enough that he could specialize in playing yellowface villains in Hollywood? He'd be living a double life - he'd probably have to have changed his name to a westernized one just to be able to get a job in the movies in the first place, so everyone would think that he was just a white guy with a knack for playing Asians - sort of a male version of Myrna Loy's early career. He could be disgusted with the racist country he lived in, and, having had his attempts at helping out his Dad the normal way fail, he'd go 'these racist pigs are so afraid of 'cruel, cunning orientals' - OK then, I'll give 'em one!' So he'd dress up in 'evil Chinaman' garb and slather on the makeup, and by golly, it would work PERFECTLY, simultaneously solving his father's problem and confirming his worst fears about western society. He'd be caught smack-dab in a moral dilemma - continue the farce, and thereby do some good by putting violent criminals away, or reveal what he'd been doing, and expose the raw racism simmering at the heart of America? It could be very interesting, if done correctly.

[freezer]

This is like someone thought "That Charlie Chan guy is pretty popular! You know what would make him better? If he were actually a white guy!"

[psychopathicus_rex]

It's the same general thought process that gave us all those corn-fed all-American Ninjas back in the '80's. 'Ninjas are cool, except they're foreign! So we'll make them AMERICAN ninjas! Yes!'

[psychopathicus_rex]

While I agree that this is extremely racist, I have to admit that that's not the first thing about it that strikes me. After all, I knew it was going to be racist coming into it. What strikes me most is the notion that treating crooks civilly is ridiculous. 'The only thing crooks respect is the business end of a nightstick'? Yeeeaaaah, OK. I know this was before Miranda laws and all that, but still - police brutality, people. This was back when a cop could still beat a confession out of you with a length of hose. The commissioner may be carrying things a tad far, but I'm certainly more on his side than Barry's Dad's.

[bradhanon]

Okay, that wasn't just me. I was surprised at my reaction to the pro-police-brutality sections. Maybe it's that I was braced for the racism, but not for the authoritarianism. Or maybe it's that racism of this kind has lost the social sanction it used to enjoy (we've developed NEW kinds of racism instead!) but that "business end of a nightstick" mentality is still very prevalent indeed.

[halloweenjack]

Not to be confused with Yellowman.

[endis_ni]

I can stop cringing now, right?

[v_various]

lol, OOOOH the past, never change.

I would love to see comics from other countries, and how they portray westners. I mean, I know America wasn't the only one who had bad racial stereotypes in comics. Anyone up to the challenge? I'm honestly quite curious about this. All I've seen were some asian parodys where the westerns have big traiange noses, but I know it must go further than that.

[psychopathicus_rex]

From what little I've seen, they usually seem to be cowboy-types or gangsters. There's a Japanese movie I saw once where a radio station is frantically rewriting a radio play while the thing is actually being broadcast, and someone realizes that they've set the thing in Chicago. They go 'Holy crap, what have we done?! Chicago is gangland territory, everyone knows that; now we've got to add gangsters or it'll be unbelievable!' So they foley in some tommy gun SFX and randomly add in gangsters. It's pretty funny.

[salad_barbarian]

I know I shall dress as an asian for criminals are a racist and bigoted lot!

[strannik01]

Heh. I chuckled in spite of myself.

[just_kazari]

As an Asian, I guess I should be offended, but right now I'm in stitches that he left a red seal stamped on the guy's forehead as a signature. HAHAHAHAHA!


One wonders why he didn't tape up the corners of his eyes too. Maybe they were worried about seeming racist.