London Can Take It!

...even if Hitler can't.

Monday we had a picture of The Escapist punching Hitler. Today is a great day to put up a picture of a lesser known character that seems to have provided inspiration for Chabon:

London!

The personification of the indomitable fighting spirit of the British people during the Blitz, London was a wish-fulfillment comic writ large, much as Chabon wrote about in Kavalier and Klay.

I'm not 100% certain, but it looks like this is the splash panel for the first London story, "London Can Take It," which appeared in Daredevil #2, with story and art by comics legend Jerry Robinson, who main claim to fame is that he invented a little known Batman villain with a bit of a cult following, a murderous clown called "The Joker." A rather fascinating interview with London's creator can be found here.

An excerpt:

Robinson acknowledges that anti-Semitism likely played a factor in the growth of the comic book industry: Most traditional graphic design studios of the era eschewed hiring Jewish artists, leaving many to find their way to the comics.

Robinson, 84, who admits ruefully that as a green, young artist, his older colleagues would sometimes call him "The Boy Wonder," notes the unprecedented Jewish influence on this American hybrid that combines storytelling with graphic arts: "Jewish artists, writers, editors and publishers dominated the origin of the comic book. Our villains [at that time] immediately became Hitler and Mussolini."

He recalls drawing a character he named London in 1941, who was meant to rid the earth of its Nazi-like enemies. Robinson points out how the Superman origin story describes a baby sent away to be raised by strangers, which recalls the infancy and upbringing of the biblical Moses.

Thanks to Olaf.