I’ve always had a weird fascination with Nazis…wait, not in a Todd Bowden kind of way, but in a…a…I don’t know what kind of way. I’ve just been interested in Nazis. I’m not talking about skinheads or Neo-Nazis, but the old school Nazis…the “comic book Nazi” that would get his ass handed to him by Captain America or the “horror movie Nazi” that turned into a werewolf and rode a motorcycle or something.
You know, the Nazis I grew up with. They weren’t so scary to a young, non Jewish, boy growing up in the Seventies. I understood that they were the “bad guys” who were wrong and evil…but they just looked so amazing. They had scars and monocles…they smoked with fancy cigarette holders and had the most amazing uniforms…even at a young age, the fastidious Virgo in me could appreciate their attention to detail…or maybe I’m just kind of gay.
Want to hear a Mr. Canacorn fun fact? I remember making my mother a card in Elementary School for Christmas. It said “Merry Christmas” across the top and underneath I drew a snowman…wearing a Kaiser Helmet?! Wait, it gets weirder…standing next to the snowman was none other than Adolph Hitler.
What the fuck, right? I don’t even remember my mother being surprised or asking me why I would draw Hitler and his frosty Nazi friend on a Christmas card. Shit, I don’t know why either. I was also really into drawing Ziggy at the time and she never asked me about that….I wonder if she still has that card…
Anyway, as I got older, Nazis got really cool in a creepy way….not in a totally depressing concentration camp, “We hate the Jews,” kind of way…but in a unrealistic, fantasy, Nazisploitation kind of way.
They were into all sorts of occult shit and freaky experiments! And, get this, according to all the comic books I was reading, they created NAZI GORILLAS and a goddamned NAZI FRANKENSTEIN’S MONSTER!
HOLY FUCK! What’s worse than regular Nazis? NAZI GORILLAS and NAZI MONSTERS!
In addition to being gorillas, the Nazis of WWII have also been zombies, werewolves, and all kinds of psychotronic beasties in popular culture. They were the living, breathing manifestation of evil that resides in every man…and for young boys, there’s nothing more alluring than the bad guy….and nobody has done bad guy as good as those damn Nazis.
Those who know me know I’m not some Nazi-freak who collects memorabilia and atrocity photos or a delusional Holocaust denial idiot…I’m just a guy that’s a sucker for a sharp dressed villain that maybe turns into a werewolf or is a talking gorilla or whatever.
In my image search for this blog I came across an interesting article that seemed to mirror what I’ve been talking about…I thought I’d share a snippet with you guys:
“This, I believe, is the cause of the fetish: the human attraction towards evil. The Devil not only gets the best tunes, but, in the case of the Nazis, the best costumes, the best generals, the best weapons, the best iconography and even the most powerful-sounding language. From Göttermorgen to Götterdämmerung, it is the blackest story ever told, and it’s still being told everywhere. And some boys will always want to play the baddy.”
–GUY WALTERS
Well, that’s about all I have to say about Nazis…but I’d like to share one more Nazi image…here’s a piece of original art that hangs in my office:
It’s by Daniel Johnston. It has Captain America knocking the crap out of the Red Skull while Superman and Batman get all concerned in the background. It might be hard to read the word balloons, so this is what it says:
SUPERMAN: Hey, don’t you think you’re hitting him a little too hard?
BATMAN: Do you know him from somewhere?
CAPTAIN AMERICA: Well I just don’t care anymore.
RED SKULL: AHHGH!
Pretty cool.
Awesomeness For Awesome's Sake. 