PSA Monday presents “Danger: Prejudice at Work”
Filed under: Comics
I’m sure that like most people contemplating the immigration issue you think to yourself, “What could early-Silver Age DC comics teach me about immigration and getting along with people who are different from me?”
Ponder no longer, for today’s PSA Monday page answers that very question. From the DC Comics published in September 1957*
comes the inspiring tale “Danger: Prejudice at Work” ** by Jack Schiff (words) and Ruben Moreira (art). As with most other Silver Age PSA ads, this was sponsored by the National Social Welfare Assembly.
In the end, this magnum opus reminds us once again that there is no problem in life that cannot be solved with baseball.
*This PSA appeared in Action Comics #232, Adventure Comics #240, Batman #110, My Greatest Adventure #17, Showcase #10, Sugar & Spike #10, Superboy #59, Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #23, and World’s Finest #90. Insome comics it was printed in color; in some, black and white. It may have appeared in the other DC comics that month, but I can’t confirm it.
**An ironic name, as the story is about play and not work.
April 24th, 2006 at 11:41 pm
“Be nice to immigrants! They’re probably good for *something*!”
Oh, it warms the heart.
April 25th, 2006 at 12:01 am
Maybe they meant “work” as “in action”?
April 25th, 2006 at 12:24 am
Caramba! That kid is wearing a blue sweater with yellow pants. He should be made fun of.
What is confusing is that Pete, our good-natured protagonist, is wearing the same outfit (red sweater over a white collared shirt) as the mysterious fellow in the last caption who approves of Pete’s sentiments. At first reading I thought the guy in the last panel was Pete, only missing his cap. But since he refers to Pete as having the right idea, it’s clearly not Pete. Nobody else in the PSA is wearing a red shirt. Who is that guy? Maybe if Sam, the xenophobic boob, was the one concurring in that last panel, it’d have been a little more effective: an I-see-the-error-of-my-ways kind of thing. Or if it was, you know, Batman, because nobody gets his message across to kids better than a guy in tights swinging by on a rope.
But instead it’s Mr. X, the Pete dress-a-like, who comes in with no context and delivers the moral of the PSA. And it ruins the whole thing.
April 25th, 2006 at 2:44 am
That homerun really wasn’t very impressive. It looks like the fence is maybe 20 feet past the infiled.
April 25th, 2006 at 4:17 am
What did I learn?
That guys hwo wear yellow hats are jerks.
April 25th, 2006 at 5:28 am
That’s not ironic, it’s just innaccurate.
April 25th, 2006 at 10:12 am
No-Prize: that’s Pete all grown up, once he realizes how ridiculous his actions were in the past.
I love these kind of ads, and wish we had more like them. Heck, I love this kind of sensibility. It’s not that the immigrants “could be good for something,” it’s that there are many things that we all enjoy that span cultural differences. I can’t speak Spanish, but I can speak baseball a bit.
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