So last week we featured a story whose view of Japan was mostly vague, inaccurate ideas about samurai warriors, rice fields, geishas, you know, the sort of general Asian tropes rampant in late 20th century Western media. And we made fun of that comic, and then we went on with our lives, not expecting that a day later in the dollar bin of a local comic shop we'd find more bad mid-century orientalism. But we did, and here it is!


The Fastest Man Alive has sped all the way to Japan where he's facing off against an army of robot samurai, or as we like to call them, Samuroids. What with all their transistor radios and cars and technological gadgets, of course Japan would build samurai robots, that's what the West will be labeling a whole generation of science-fiction mecha in a few years, we'll be referencing them in terms of samurai warriors, because that's our only context for Japan. This is also why everything America does is viewed by the rest of the world as either Wild West cowboys, or Elvis. Or both, if it's an Elvis movie where he plays a cowboy.


So I want you to understand that what the writer is doing here, Frank Robbins, the Johnny Hazard cartoonist, what he's doing here is the thing where Japanese people purportedly mispronounce the letters "L" and "R." And there's a lot of this going on here. You'll either find this a hilarously irreverent take on the clash of cultures, or you'll think this is a bunch of tone-deaf, lazy racism. What do we think? Well, this feature isn't called "Stupid Comics" for nothin'!


Barry "The Flash" Allen is definitely NOT out to a Tokyo bath-house, because those bath-houses have big signs out front saying "no foreigners!"


I have estabrished big brain-typhoon! Is how Western man think Japanese people spreak! So funny, yes? No? No!

And YES their elite commando squad is called "The Brack Berets." I don't think Barry Sadler's going to get a song out of *these* guys.


The caption is all "ha ha look at the bad English these Japanese speak," and meanwhile The Flash is mangling his determiners, before remembering he's The Fastest Man Alive and that his whole thing, the entire deal with him, it's that he can run real fast, and maybe he should do that.


Well, that was foorish, Frash.


Being devious Orientals, naturarry - did you catch it? Did you catch the first "Ah-so?" - naturarry our villains subject the hero to some sort of elaborate medieval torture involving slow-moving natural processes. At least this one doesn't involve hundreds of innocent snakes!


The great part about having an invincible robot army is they are tireless and never need to sleep or eat or go on three-day passes. Of course, you still need to stand them in formation and lecture at them every once in a while.


First stop, Nippon Art Films Limited! This is the late 1960s and they'll probably be right in the middle of nine or ten pictures imitating Nikkatsu's "Roman Porno" genre! Whoops, there goes the Comics Code seal.


It's all part of an elaborate plan to disguise Interpol commandos as samurai so they can attack Baron Katana's robots, which are also disguised as samurai. There's only one disguise we're going with, and it's samurai, and that's that!


This story is not really being clear about what exactly The Flash is supposed to know that Baron Katana wants to find out. He can't tell him what Interpol is doing because Interpol made their plans just now, while Flash was a prisoner. But god forbid we put Asians in a comic and NOT have a torture scene, I suppose.


The little editor's note is just their way of saying this comic is perfectly capable of depicting Japanese people speaking properly. This comic just doesn't want to.


Look, just send a guy down to check their permits. If they're a real movie crew they'll have permits! I don't see Divine, this ain't no guerrilla-style John Waters movie.


Sure, the Flash can speed around the world in a second or vibrate through the dimensional barriers, but he also just gets tied up with normal old ropes and has to use every bit of his super speed power just to hold up a couple of buckets of water.


One of the things I actually like about this story is that the Flash's wife Iris is right in the middle of the action, she's no stay at home housewife. A married super hero was rare enough at the time and having her be a part of the heroics is even better. I sure hope they keep Iris around, I would hate for the editors to do something stupid like kill her off.


The mystery trenchcoat fake Barry is following close on Iris' high heels, perhaps not the perfect rock climbing footwear.


What possible counterattack could save Iris and Tushi? And were you aware that "tushy" is an old-fashioned euphemism for "bottom" or "rear"? And that apparently there is a military command of "Abandon Pretense!"? Before you answer, let's pause for a commercial.


Why not embrace your inner... what did they call it in 1968? Today it's "weeb." Hug that internal weeb hard and learn what you'll be reminding your friends is pronounced "Kah-Rah-TAY" as you find out how to floor a 220lb giant with the super weapons that once were your normal hands and feet. Fear no man or giant or samuroid!


"Printed circuits" gets the reality-check scare quotes while "framistan" goes unchallenged?


It should come as no surprise that the same company that's giving us the Brack Berets rooking carefully is the same company that featured an Eskimo character named "Pieface" and once pitted Wonder Woman against a giant sentient Chinese-presenting egg named Egg Fu. There's a lot of eye rolling over the corny stuff Stan Lee was doing over at Marvel around this time, but to their credit Marvel avoided this sort of thing.


You know what would make me hot under the collar is consistently being presented with mangled ethnic dialect that reflects nothing more than somebody's lingering WWII trauma. Get therapy already, somebody!


I bet you thought we were going to get through this story without seeing a banzai charge, didn't you. Well, you were wrong.


How can you call yourself an evil genius unress you have an electric chair ready to go at all times?


The last time I saw a guy with a head this weirdly elongated, the guy was green, he was an irradiated mutant, he had a little moustache, he was drawn by Herb Trimpe, and he was trying to destroy The Hulk.


Once again, The Fastest Man Alive remembers his whole thing, the entire deal with him, that he can run real fast. That's why we're buying this comic book, it's not for the rook out ah-so racist stuff, it's for the run real fast. So run real fast already!


Sure, sure, moving so fast even to cause a sonic boom, flaming out the robot jets, whatever. What is the Flash running ON? Like, what are his feet pushing against?


That's our super hero, heroically defending justice and standing up for the innocent, and then being all like "Don't look at me! I didn't do it!"


The Flash! He can run faster than human vision can follow, except when it's necessary for dramatic reasons that everyone see where he's running at a particular point in time!


Bad guys always want to stand near the giant electrically charged control panels so they can be knocked into them and be electrocuted, that's just bad guy common sense!


You might say their central processing units quit receiving signals from their master control unit. Or you could say they freaked out and are riding hard on a bummer trip, man! Because it's the 1960s!


Of course the bad guy gets away, leaving us wondering what the hell a "UE" is supposed to be. Maybe it's some sort of term for the skull and spinal injuries Baron Katana will suffer after smashing his brains out on those rocks?


Arways I be gratefur that this hacky stereotype dialog was already seen as cringe in 1968 and wouldn't be around for much longer, to be replaced by different and maybe slightly more subtle Japanese cultural cliches. Maybe something about ninjas? They may be hackneyed and overused, but at least they're quiet!

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