Tuesday PSA: Superman’s Code for Buddies

November 10th, 2009

Filed under: Comics

Superman'sWith Veteran’s Day tomorrow, I looked hard to find a public service ad that discussed veterans. I was truly surprised that with all the public service ads DC produced in the 1940s, ’50s, and ’60s, there don’t seem to be any about veterans — or the armed forces at all. This PSA, from April 1950, was the closest thing I could find because it at least includes a scene set in a veteran’s cemetery.

The PSA’s actual theme is tolerance for all religions — which is certainly a sound concept, but I would’ve liked it better had it acknowledged religions other than Christianity and Judaism — or taken it one step further and at least mentioned other options such as atheism. But I suspect that would have been a little too progressive for a 1950s mainstream comic book.

Click on the image for the full ad

This PSA was found Adventure Comics #151, and can be found in other DC comics from April 1950. This ad was written by Jack Schiff, with art by Al Plastino.

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8 Responses to “ Tuesday PSA: Superman’s Code for Buddies ”

  1. Jon
    November 11th, 2009 at 4:51 am

    “Protestant, Jew OR Catholic?” Wow, that’s spreading the net pretty wide…

  2. Bill Waters
    November 11th, 2009 at 7:37 am

    Then again, in the 50s, there was still a significant amount of intolerance for Catholics and Jewish people in the US. When Kennedy ran for President a decade later, there was a stated fear that, since he was Catholic, if he was elected President, he would become a puppet for the Pope. There were also a lot more Catholics and Jews in America at the time, and not a lot of Muslims, Buddhists or followers of other religions, so this marks a first step in the path toward universal tolerance, especially since it uses a type of logic that can be extrapolated to other cases. It’s better than teaching bigotry.

  3. fluffy
    November 11th, 2009 at 12:36 pm

    I remember one of the Charlie Brown animated specials involved the Peanuts gang going to a cemetary and looking at all the crosses, and then at one point they saw a star of David grave marker. They seemed to play it up for laughs, or at least that’s how I remembered it as an easily-offended Jewish kid.

  4. Will
    November 11th, 2009 at 12:44 pm

    Why did Superman fly them all the way to Iwo Jima to make that point? And did he fly them back? I like to think that he just dumped them in Iwo Jima with no passports.

  5. anon
    November 11th, 2009 at 10:10 pm

    I find it amusing that it mentions tolerance no matter what skin color – but every single person in the strip is white.

  6. Metz77
    November 12th, 2009 at 9:57 am

    Best to make your message of tolerance palatable to the intolerant, I guess

  7. Mark
    November 13th, 2009 at 9:42 am

    Wasn’t it Locke who established his reputation as a champion of religious liberty in England of the 1700’s, when he wrote that people of ALL religious beliefs should be accepted and given full rights under the law — excepting only Catholics, because they acknowledge a foreign prince, and Unitarians, because they deny the Holy Trinity. I guess it didn’t even occur to him to consider other Holy-Trinity-deniers, such as Jews, Moslems, Buddhists, Hindus, Animists, Atheists, ….

  8. Sarah
    November 15th, 2009 at 7:02 pm

    Well, as Bill said about the comic, he was probably going with the statistically-most-likely choices for his time and place…..

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