I Love Uncle Sam!

I was just a wee lad when my family moved here from the Old Country. Back in Bialya, I knew how to feel about my country: bad. But once we were in the U.S. of A., I was in confusion. Should I hate this country, too?

Thank the Founding Fathers, comic books had the answer. Yes, with covers like these, Uncle Sam taught me to love this country with a red hot burning fever.

"He does it again!" Half naked, he hammers out his sword of victory into fiery white-hot straightness! His little Buddy in the background leans over intently, eager to provide whatever Sam needs to bring that victory home. How could such a scene not enflame the soul of any red-blooded youth?

At right, a stripped down Unc is poised to shove his projectile of freedom in that waiting aperture in the arsenal of democracy, as fresh-faced Buddy struggles to handle his own projectile, which is almost more than he knows what to do with *chuckle*!

Bursting through in another stirring adventure, Sam inspired feeling in a young Bialyan refugee like none I'd ever known and I began to love my country with swelling patriotism. If only I could be a Buddy to Uncle Sam!

Here, Uncle Sam can barely keep his hat on and Buddy needs to hang on to keep from being blown off while Sam, with a major piece of ordinance between his legs, joyously rides his way into young patriots' hearts, again bursting through. I tell you, as I grew from a Bialyan boy to an American adolescent, it was inspiring images like this that kept me on the straight and narrow.

If only all comics had been this wholesome. Why, Frederic Wertham would have died in deserved obscurity! There would have been no shameless '60s or selfish '70s if our nation had been filled with men modeling their lives on this sinewy super-patriot and his eager young partner.

We still see Uncle Same, occasionally. Partnered with his friends, the heavily mascara-ed Black Condor, Roy Lincoln the Human Condom, the saucy Phantom Lady, the light on his feet Ray, and that young parcel of personal explosive power, Damage.

But somehow ... it's just not the same.