The History of Mighty Man: The Forgotten Propaganda South African Superhero

Welcome back to the Tramway.

Today we delve into the history of another forgotten superhero, though unlike our previous characters of discussion, this one is more recent. Another difference from previous posts is that this character is not from an American publisher, but a South African one. Prepare for a wild ride folks, because we're looking into the history of Mighty Man: The Forgotten South African Propaganda Superhero.

Cover of Afri-Comics #1. Source: UCLA Library, International Digital Ephemera Project. http://idep.library.ucla.edu/search#!/document/africanephemera:20

Before we begin, I want to mention that this series was inspired by Mr. Rogues, who does videos on superheroes and super villains. You can find one of his videos here.

General Info/Origin Story

Mighty Man's alias is Danny Ndhlomo, who lives in Soweto, South Africa. In Afri-Comics #1, published by.... we'll get to that later (believe me, the history behind this comic deserves a section to itself) we learn that Danny is a Cop. He's injured in the line of duty and shot. Thankfully, Danny survives, but the doctor (a white doctor I should mention, keep that in mind, it will become important later) cannot remove the bullet, because it landed too close to Danny's heart.

Still wanting to help the public, Danny re-enlists and is transferred to the records department, where he meets Donna Buthelezi, his boss and love interest.

Danny and Donna get along well, which helps. Donna's brother is kidnapped, and she's blackmailed by a local gang to steal police files on the gang. Danny catches her leaving with the files, but takes the blame, and goes on the run. He climbs onto a truck, which he falls off of in the jungle. As it goes during superhero origins, things go from bad to worse.

It begins raining, and Danny's heart begins to give out. The universe, deciding to give Danny a hand, shoots down a lightning bolt and opens a path to an underground cavern system. Danny crawls in for shelter, but the pain returns when he tries to get a drink of water, and falls in.

Then... underground aliens find him? It's-really hard to explain, so I'll just let you read it and see for yourself.

You REALLY can't make some of this shit up, can you? Image Credit: Afri Comics No. 1, UCLA Library. https://idep.library.ucla.edu/search#!/document/africanephemera:20

The underground aliens heal Danny, removing the bullet and give him powers. Returning with a costume the underground aliens give him, Danny swears to use his powers for good. Thus, Mighty Man is born.

All things considered, I think Mighty Man has an all right costume. The mask is slightly weird, but the color balance is pretty good. It might seem similar to another, more popular American superhero. That's right, Mighty Man is a rip off of... Superman.

Big surprise am I right? 

The costume is nearly identically, color wise, except the M is moved to above the belt, with some yellow lining added for good measure, and of course the addition of the mask. However, there is one big difference between Superman and Mighty Man.

Superman has a history of fighting against discrimination, that's what he stands for. Most famously, he fought the KKK in a 1950's Radio Show, which was retold in a recent comic run "Superman Smashes the Klan," (I won't go into too much detail on that here, as that's a blog post for another day).

Mighty Man, on the other hand, was a propaganda weapon who NEVER addressed the issues in South Africa at the time, in particular the Racism of the Apartheid Regime. Let me explain.

Real Life Background

So who published Mighty Man and Afri-Comics? The South African Apartheid Government.... kinda. You see, according to an article by Business Insider South Africa, the Apartheid Government were trying to find new forms of propaganda to counteract Communism, and Anti-Racism, while trying to make themselves look like the source of Law and Order. AND, encouraging Law and Order by telling people to not not question the system in place.

Though one quote claims the comics were to "help educate the black man in the ways of Western society, social concerns and free enterprise,” according to John McGoff, an American collaborator on the project, we all know. We all know.

That's right, Americans also helped with this. Afri Comics were made in New York by Manville Inc., a market research company which did an analysis of what the Apartheid's government in 1973 was to the rest of the World. The man who oversaw the comics was Eschel Roodie, the Secretary of the Department of Information. Jan van Zyl Alberts, a South African businessman, was the front man of the business. 

Now if you're like me, you might know much about South African Apartheid. (We learned it in high school, but it wasn't very in depth). Let's backtrack a little. In 1948, according to History.com, the National Party began Apartheid, essentially the South African equivalent of Jim Crow. (Even to the point where, on the History.com website, there's a photo of a sign that reads "Caution: Beware of Natives.)

Indigenous Africans were forced to live in separate areas from their White Overlords, and contact was made as limited as possible. Which's why there's so few white people in the Mighty Man comics. 

Interracial marriage was outlawed in 1950, and that was with 4 groups: Bantu (Black Africans), "Colored" (their language choice, not mine, biracial), white, and Asian (people from India or Pakistan). 80% of the land was set aside for the White Supremacists, and non-whites were forced to have passes to go into the "restricted" areas. The term used was "Separate Development," aka "Separate But Equal," aka "We're racist and we don't want to interact with you." 

Now that we have that context, let's return to Mighty Man

Backlash/Death of Mighty Man

17 issues of Afri Comics were produced, and 470,000 copies were made from 1975-77. Now, Afri-Comics failed as propoganda. Why? Because people were not fooled by it!

The worst example of the racism is in the roles people play in the comics. For example, white people are never portrayed as the villains in any of the stories. Also, the doctor who heals Mighty Man is white, while the nurses are all black. There's a lot of coded racism that's trying to subconsciously tell people what they can and can't do. Thankfully, the young people of Soweto saw right though it.

In 1976, Soweto students burned Afri Comics in protest of the Apartheid Regime, during the Soweto Uprising (You can read about that here). The University of California Los Angeles, who have preserved the comics, go into more detail on their website. During the uprising, students burned newsstands and threw the comics onto the ground, which caused the US Publishers to back out. 

What was "worse" for the Regime, the amount of money they were spending (secretly) on the comics were revealed by the Rand Daily Mail, a South African newspaper, during what was called the "Information Scandal." Eschel Roodie, according to the ACLU website, had to leave South Africa after being charged with misappropriating funds, (even though they told him to go ahead), he escaped to the US where he stayed until he died in 1993. 

The Apartheid Regime spent R64 Million (In US Currency today is around $4,133,969.92). That's a lot of money to spend on a comic that doesn't do it's job. With their propaganda exposed, the Apartheid Regime ended Afri Comics, and Mighty Man fell into obscurity.

If it were not for the UCLA Library, Mighty Man might've been lost to our general knowledge. Thankfully, Professor William H. Worger had collected all of the comics, and they were digitally scanned. So now you can read the comics for free, and the history of the lesser known propaganda has been preserved.

Which is thankful, because so few copies exist. This' likely due to the Soweto Uprising and the negative reputation the character had.

And before I finish up with my personal thoughts, a quick fun fact:

The Apartheid Regime gained the idea for making a comic... from the CIA. According to the ACLU Website, according to a quote from Jan van Zyl Alberts, who had friends in the CIA.

If I Rewrote Mighty Man...

So here's a little fun, for these history posts I'm going to do a segment called "If I Rewrote," where I'll give ideas for how to improve on what came before.

Which's ironic, because I wouldn't rewrite this character. I considered it (genuinely, I should say) and I had a discussion with a fellow comic fan over whether or not you could use Mighty Man. My friend said no, because of the history. I argued that you could make the character stand for something new.

And maybe you could. However, I don't think I'm the person for the job, as a white guy and someone who knows nothing about South Africa, this' a character that is best left in the past, as a historical example of what not to do.

And honestly, I do not think the world needs a re-imagined Mighty Man. We have good African Superheroes such as Storm, Black Panther, and Shuri, and African-American superheroes such as Ri Ri Williams (aka Iron Heart), Falcon, War Machine and who could forget Miles Morales Spider-Man?

All right, so I can actually set a tone for this mini-series,

If I Rewrote Mighty Man, I would make him tackle South African Apartheid, and have the Apartheid Regime freak out when he goes public. Which makes sense, and they WOULD freak out if a super powered African came into existence.

The Apartheid Regime would probably hunt down Mighty Man, making him loose his faith in the Police Force, and I could see him joining the Soweto Uprising.

In any case, we're not likely to see Mighty Man re-imagined anytime soon, which I think is fine. The legacy of the character's Apartheid Creation would always haunt any new version.

If you want to read a perspective of someone who lived in South Africa at the time, I ran across this blog, but didn't feel a need to cite it, but still want to give it a shout out. You can find it here.

So what do you think of Mighty Man? If you were to try and tackle remaking Mighty Man, what would you do? Let me know in the comments below, or my Facebook page for the blog, @TugTramBlogging. Thanks for reading, and I'll See You on the Tramway!

Sources:

"Afri Comics." UCLA Library, International Digital Epherma Project.

http://idep.library.ucla.edu/search#!/collection=Afri-comics

"Apartheid." History.com. www.history.com/topics/africa/apartheid 

"Information Scandal." SAHistory.org. www.sahistory.org.za/article/information-scandal

Villiers, James de. "The apartheid government created a black superhero called Mighty Man – and in 1976, black youth set him on fire."

www.businessinsider.co.za/apartheid-government-spent-millions-educate-black-man-comic-youth-day-2018-6 

Essenhaus Model Train Show Loot Haul

Welcome back to the Tramway!

Hello everyone, I hope I find you all in a good state. Well, it's Spring Break finally (as I mentioned in my last post) and what a weekend I've had.

On Friday I went to a minor hockey league game, which was my first hockey game I ever saw. It was a pretty fun experience. I won't get into too much detail here, (since I don't feel I have anything to really say, other than I got a cool bobble head), but if you are interested, me and my friend Zack did a Podcast episode on our series "Patrick Badly Explains. Link right here.

Saturday was definitely a highlight for me. On Saturday I went to the 10th Annual Essenhaus Model Train show, which's held every February. I hung out with my best friend Jefrey and his brother Al (getting the trio back together again). I haven't seen them in a while, so it was nice to see them and their parents again. (Jefrey's Mom, shout out to her, always spoils me with items. I got a book, a shirt and cup from her. I may share photos of those later on the social medias).

All right, for this post I want to quickly show what I bought at the train show. The items cost me $30, which I paid with Christmas money ("Pro" tip for people getting into model railways: go to train shows, that's the best way to buy model train rolling stock, track, accessories and locomotives at good prices).

The first item I bought was a caboose, labelled for the Detroit & Toledo Shore Line, a company I am not familiar with. I saw that it was only $5, and decided "Why not?" (Train Show purchases in a nut shell 😜). I try to buy an item from as many vendors as I can, and this seemed too nice to turn down. 

The items I purchased are all HO scale, for reference, here is a photo of my hand, so you can see how big the first caboose is. The scale of HO refers to the size compared to their real life counterpart, in the case of HO: 1:87. In terms of model railways it's a medium size, there's even smaller forms such as N and Z scales. Unfortunately, I looked underneath the caboose and it doesn't have the manufacturer underneath. I did a quick eBay search and I believe it was made by Atheran, who I bought a newer caboose from.

For reference, here is a modern caboose by Atheran, with metal wheels. It really shows how far model trains have c

Now, key word in that last paragraph was first caboose. Yeah, I'm a bit of an addict for cabooses. 

So I ran into Jefrey's Mom again when we went to the second building. And she told me about a great bargain: a vendor had a deal of 7 cabooses for just $1. $1?! Surely that wasn't right! I was intrigued, and made my way over. I spoke to the vendor, who said that the deal was in did 7 for $1. Or rather, 6 for $1. When he looked down he realized one was missing. Which means two things:

A) Someone stole a caboose, or 

B) Someone purchased just one caboose.

I hope it was the latter, because I'd hate for a vendor to get stolen from, it's not good for the hobby. In any case, I got a pretty good bargain. Below are the cabooses I bought (some put together to not clog this post with photos. 

 

So here we have a Union Pacific Caboose (on the left) made by Bachmann and Chesapeake & Ohio on the right, no manufacturer . I figured it would be nice to put the two yellow cabooses together. Little fun fact: I have another Union Pacific caboose I bought on eBay (I got it for $1+ shipping) which is numbered 207. So these will look really nice together. 

This caboose is in a fictional livery, made by Cox (all right, get it out of your system). According to this model train thread (you can read here) the caboose was built in either 1975 or '76 as part of a train set, which had a locomotive in the same livery. Sadly for this poor caboose, it's been separated from its set and fellow locomotive. Maybe I'll buy a used Championship locomotive to complete the set (partly). In any case, I'm very happy to own this historic caboose. 

 

Now this Burlington Northern Bay window caboose (named for where the windows are placed so you could see out). This' my first piece of rolling stock owned by Lima, an Italian company that got purchased by British based Hornby. As you can see in the second and third photos, the caboose is going to be a fixer upper. 

I believe (see image 2) that it's missing roof details where the holes are, and at the front it's missing the handrails. Also somewhat annoying is that the caboose is missing its couplings. But again, 6 cabooses for $1, I can't really complain. Plus, this gives me an advantage, where I can decide what couplings to put on it. I might make this a converter car (ie. have two different couplings so I can have different couplings in the same train). 

All right, this' the Crown Jewel of my Train Show loot. This boxcar, built by Tyco, is a special DC painted boxcar, made in 1977 according to the Copyright information underneath Shazam/Captain Marvel. Don't you love it when your hobbies cross over?

Once I saw this, I knew I had to buy it. It's in pretty good condition, some of the paint is chipped, asy ou can see on the left and the ladder on the right, but for a boxcar around 40+ years old, this' pretty nice. According to a quick search on eBay, there was a whole series of boxcars like Shazam, including: Batman, Wonder Woman and Superman. You'll have to spend a pretty penny to buy all of these (link if interested here).

I decided to put these two special cabooses together. On the left we have a Lifelike caboose, which seems really ironic, because it's in a fictional Campbell Soup Company livery! On the right is something I've wanted for a long time: A Tyco Silver Streak caboose. The Silver Streak caboose is similar to the Cox Championship Caboose, this caboose originally came in a set where it shared the livery with the locomotive, but not the rolling stock in between. 

I almost bought a Silver Streak locomotive and Caboose on eBay, but I decided not to to save my $$, which was the right decision. In any case, the platinum caboose looks amazing. Even still it screams speed. (which's ironic, again, because the locomotive it's paired with was built for freight traffic). I might pair the Silver Streak caboose with the purchases below.

The last two pieces of rolling stock I bought are these coaches from Lifelike, which I found at the last building (which my friend Jefrey calls the "leftovers," with no offense to any vendors who are in the building). 

Now throughout the train show, I had a goal: find some coaches for a good price. I realized at the beginning that there's a lot of freight cars on sale, but not a lot of coaches. I asked Jefrey about why this was, and he explained that coaches are more expensive because of the details. After hearing this, I was determined to find at least SOME coaches to buy.

My main reason is that I purchased two British HO steam locomotives on eBay for my birthday. Both of them are passenger locomotives, one of which has an American coupler on the back. So when I saw these two together, I knew it was a match made in heaven. The coach in the top photo is named Dana, and is a later steel Pullman coach labelled for the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, in the days when the big freight railroads still hauled passengers, before the dark times, before.... the Interstate Highways.

Now these weren't the first coaches I saw. I saw someone selling a set of coaches for $10 per coach, which would've been around $40 for a whole set. I considered buying just a few, but Jefrey advised against it. He said it wasn't right to separate sets, which I had to agree with. As pointed out with the Cox Championship caboose, it's sad when they're separated.

So when I saw the second coach, Starlight, I knew I wanted to keep these two together. Starlight is a dome car, which mean it has a second mini layer with extra seats and a glass dome for looking at the skyline above as passengers rolled along. I've never been in a dome car before, but I figured that if regular coaches were expensive, than dome cars would be more expensive!!

The prices were pretty nice. Dana cost $5, and Starlight $7, so only $12 for two coaches. Not a bad deal. Another thing I like about the coaches is the silhouettes of passengers. While it may not be the most realistic, I like it. The silhouettes remind me of Thomas Wooden Railway coaches that had a similar effect. 

So overall, 10 pieces of rolling stock for $30. I'm pretty pleased with my haul, though it would've been nice to get some more coaches. But there's always more model train shows to attend, so I'll wait for my chance. Now, all I have to do is build a layout to run all my collection on. 😝 In all seriousness, I do want to build a model layout, but it will probably be a long time before I can, since I'm in college. But never say never, right? 

I hope you all enjoyed exploring my Model Train Show Loot Haul with me. Do you have any bargains you got on your hobbies? Let me know on my social media, @ConductorPat on Twitter, and @PatrickWebb and @TugTramWay on Facebook. 

Thanks once again for reading, and I'll see you on the Tramway!

Tramway Updates (Midterms, Occasional Express, & Avatar: TLA Reaction)

Hello everyone, welcome back to the Tramway.

As you've probably seen, I haven't been very active on Tug & Tram Blogging for a while. I'm sorry folks, life has gotten a bit hectic recently. I have said in the past that real life will have to take priority, but I still want to try and write regularly. I guess that's the perfectionist in me showing.

All right, I'd like this post to not be 100% negative, so let me talk about what's going on in my life.

Midterms & Spring Break

.... I'm off to a GREAT start aren't I? Well, as I'm sure you can predict, midterm week has kept me busy, which is why I haven't been able to write a lot.

Funnily enough, despite it being midterm week, I haven't had any midterms yet. Which is a blessing and a curse, because both of my midterms (that I know of) are on the Monday... that we come back from break.......

Yay.

In all seriousness, I feel all right about the upcoming break. I'm going to a hockey game tonight with my Mom, and tomorrow I'm hoping to go to the Essenhaus Model Train show tomorrow and hang out with my best friend and his brother. It's an unofficial tradition that we go together. So stay tuned, I might take some photos for the blog (that's a blogging thing to do, right?)

So speaking of the weekend (and as I mentioned earlier) it's almost Spring Break!! You read that right. My college has a really early spring break, which, again, is a blessing and a curse.

My current plans for the break are to

A) Work on homework
2) Try and get some time in to write (in particular for Lady Luck, which will hopefully include some research)
Banana) Not lose my mind and
Penguin) try and do some networking.

Nothing says serious net-worker like that listing, right? 😛

I'm not sure how much writing or networking I will get done this break (as always, homework has to be the priority) but I'm sure I can manage to get some time in.

All right, onto the next topic.

Occasional Express Blog

So for those who've been following my blog for a while, you know that I created a second blog to act as a train related news source, just for fun. (And hopefully I can use it as a reference for a future job, if I decide to go into journalism).

If you're curious, you can find my secondary blog here.

So far posts have been pretty popular, though I do need to be careful not to get stuck into the numbers game. I will say that I have learned a fair bit about how time consuming writing articles is, and gained some experience interviewing people and asking questions via email.

When I was super stressed a few weeks back (part of the reason why I wasn't writing in a while) I considered dropping the Occasional Express. However, I have decided I will persevere and not abandon it, though I will make sure not to pressure myself too much to work on it. I recently wrote an article about the retiring of an excursion locomotive, which you can read here if you're interested.

Avatar: The Last Airbender Reaction

My last topic is on a show I've finally gotten the chance to watch. Me and my friend Jacob have been watching it on the occasional evening we both are free. So far we've made it into Book 2 and are almost done.

I have heard a lot about this show, and Avatar has certainly lived up to the hype. I love all the characters, the animation style, it's just, magnificent. I in particular love the comedic moments with Momo, the flying lemur and seeing Aang's character development over the two seasons.

Can I really add anything else to what has been said by the army of fans? Not at the moment. I will say that I started watching Avatar at the right time.

As I was planning to write in an earlier post (before life got a little too chaotic) I've been struggling with my own world building (in a term I dubbed "over worldbuilding") where I basically overthink my worlds and forget to focus on characters. I was also feeling very burnt out and didn't have any motivation to create.

Avatar has helped me relax and shut my brain off from my real life concerns and given me an excuse to hang out with a friend, which is a double bonus. On top of that, I have felt re-inspired to get back into writing. I'm not sure what that means yet, but I do know that I'm not out of the game yet. I might try and write some short stories, and visit one I worked on Freshman year of college but haven't finished. I will also continue and try to get "Ticket to a Wrong Time" published somewhere. But that's a post for another day.

Final thought: It's hard to hear Uncle Iroh and not hear Aku from Samurai Jack, since they were both voiced by the legendary Mako (Rest in Peace Mako).

All right, that's all from me for now. I'll try and get back into the habit of writing weekly once again, and I want to say thank you for those who've stuck around. I really appreciate it. Thanks once again, and I'll see you on the tramway.