American manga: I drew Superman in the Great Depression

Green light enveloped Colin's consciousness, which was constantly being pulled.

There seemed to be countless figures changing in the light, either laughing or wailing, quarreling or fighting. These images were vague but extremely unreal.

When Colin opened his eyes again, the surrounding environment was completely different.

From the cold concrete floor of a New York alley to a warm interior.

"It's true..."

Looking at the scene in front of him, Colin didn't have any surprised expression on his face.

In fact, Colin experiences this situation every day.

Once he closes his eyes, his consciousness will be pulled by the light into another world, where he will experience a completely different life as Colin Looper.

Colin had doubted whether this so-called other world was just a slightly special dream.

However, as he kept trying, he finally settled on it.

All of this is not just a dream that he imagined, but a real world that actually exists.

"Who would have thought that these days, even time traveling has a buy-one-get-one-free offer."

Colin complained about this more than once.

Traveling between the two worlds frequently every day and night, even Colin, a traveler, gradually became confused.

Therefore, in order to accurately distinguish the two worlds.

He calls the world in front of him the real world, a normal world without superheroes.

He also calls another world where superheroes exist but is completely different from his own memory a counter-world.

Of course, this so-called pros and cons are only definitions given by Colin's subjective consciousness, and their purpose is simply to facilitate his own memory.

The dull pain coming from his chest brought Colin's thoughts back to reality.

He looked down and saw that the gunshot that was originally fatal had turned into a slight bleeding wound on his chest. If it weren't for the pain that occasionally occurred when he moved, who would have thought that Colin had just experienced a shooting incident just a few minutes ago.

"I just don't know what will happen when I go back."

He took out the straps from the room with ease and simply treated the injured area.

Colin stood in front of the cabinet and put on his tie skillfully, then picked out a dark gray coat and put it on. He moved his arms in front of himself in the mirror to ensure that the bandage covering the wound would not affect his normal actions.

, then he picked up the bowler hat on the desk beside him and put it on.

Rubbing his cold palms and coming to the door, Colin stopped, hesitated for a moment, then returned to the desk and opened the drawer, took out an old-looking revolver and stuffed it into his jacket pocket.

inside.

Considering that he had just experienced a dangerous shooting incident not long ago, Colin felt that it was necessary to prepare some safety protection before going out.

Even though the place where this incident happened is not the world in front of us.

However, no one can guarantee that it is not, after all...

Suppressing the thoughts that came to his mind, Colin stood in front of the door and took a deep breath, stretched out his hand to press the top hat on his head, opened the door, and stepped out.

What comes into view is the familiar yet unfamiliar metropolis - New York.

Or New York in 1931.

…

In New York in November, the wind is howling.

The haze of the Great Depression has not dissipated. Walking on the road in the cold wind, you can see hurried pedestrians and homeless people with numb expressions everywhere. It is hard to imagine that just a few years ago, some of these homeless people were

The vast majority of people still live a glorious life, and many of them are farmers, engineers, school principals and even bank presidents.

However, under the impact of the Great Depression, everything came to nothing.

Thousands of Americans watched as their life savings evaporated in a matter of days.

According to the latest Fortune magazine estimate in September, more than 34 million adults, men, and children were unemployed throughout the United States during the Great Recession (child labor was legal in this era), accounting for about 28% of the total population.

And it is still a conservative estimate because it does not include 11 million rural households.

The unemployment of workers also affects the unemployment of farmers. In the end, neither party can afford the products of the other party.

It's like being trapped in some kind of vicious cycle.

Farmers' hard work has resulted in seriously unequal rewards. A cartload of oats cannot buy a pair of low-quality shoes; growing wheat costs $1.50 per acre; using corn as fuel is more cost-effective than selling corn to buy coal; farmers feed

If you can't make money from the livestock, you'd rather throw them away than sell them; pour the milk into the Mississippi River.

Tens of thousands of people were evicted from their houses and lost the shelter they depended on for survival. In the same year, a large number of people died of famine and malnutrition during the Great Depression.

And all of this was just the most common sight during the Great Depression.

…

In the past, Colin’s understanding of the Great Depression.

Most of them only come from various books and photos. Through a few black and white photos or simple words, it is difficult to resonate much with this.

Now that he has experienced all this in person, he truly understands the hardships faced by people in this era, especially during the Great Depression. Under the huge wave of unemployment, a stable job has become a luxury, and many people are exhausted.

The wages earned in one day's work are not even enough to buy a loaf of bread.

And even such a job often requires enough luck to find, and it is not available every day.

Walking down the street, Colin had seen begging figures more than once.

At the same time, there were also ragged children, who looked extremely thin due to long-term malnutrition. These children huddled next to their mothers, relying on their mother's equally skinny body to shield them from the biting cold wind coming from all directions.

The mother herself raised one hand to her mouth and looked into the distance. There was sadness in her eyes, a kind of lifelessness and numbness with no hope in sight.

Seeing this scene, Colin couldn't help but slow down his steps.

He wanted to do something, but felt powerless.

Because women's experiences like this were common throughout the Great Depression.

This is not a single issue, but a social event sweeping the entire United States and even the entire West.

It was even later considered to be the most protracted, profound, and severe cyclical economic crisis in the history of capitalist economics.

Taking a deep breath, he looked away from the woman in tattered clothes.

Colin turned around and quickly left the block, walking through a deserted street of shops, and finally stopped in front of an old house on the corner.

"The Courier Press"

Looking up at the sign in front of the house, Colin straightened the top hat on his head, opened his mouth and coughed.

Then he reached out and pushed open the door of the newspaper office.