Birth of Columbia Part 4: Animation and Heroism.

Production

Preliminary work ​

Part of the success of the Commander Columbia animations in meeting the imposing deadlines put upon them was that much of the design work had already been done long before the work was approved. Certainly far more demanding than Hyperion’s slate of just one film every year in the same timeframe. Animated shorts and graphics were also demanded, as well as assistance with the production of propaganda. And if it weren’t for the massive amount of manpower thrown at the task, and money being no object, it probably would have been impossible.

Buoyed by foreign animation talent from the Soviet Union, China, and Latin America coming to America to gain experience and providing added manpower, the production process was to hit the ground running. To keep in accordance with labour laws regarding work hours, work on the films were done in rotating shifts and split amongst multiple teams working on different films. Overall creative direction would be left to Samantha, Spartak, and Samawal, and the three quickly sought to cultivate a lasting structure of coordination to effectively manage the resources given. Individual talent would come and go, but the underlying structure was to a rock and anchor for the whole of production.

With the animation race fully underway, America looked to Samantha’s work to solidify America’s position as the unquestionable leader within the field. With Fascist Italy’s “Adventures of Pinocchio” having been the first animated feature film to be released in 1936 and other countries racing to produce more content in the media with ever-expanding breadths of techniques and technologies behind them, it was felt that the work that the Ruby Orchestra was doing would be necessary to provide America with a cultural tour de force to show that America’s cultural industries not only had not faltered from the disruption of the revolution but had arisen stronger than ever.

Samantha and her team kept pace with the developments of animation work outside of the country, always poring over any details of the projects of other nations that they could find. The chief rivals identified were, of course, the lavishly funded programs of Germany, Italy, and Japan as well as the sponsored companies within the British and French Empires. Perhaps their fiercest rivalries though were with the Anglo-Canadian production of “Arthur the Second”, the Japanese production of “the Saga of Susanoo”, and the German film “The Knight of the West.”

Even the scripts of the films were subject to acts of industrial espionage in an attempt to get a better idea of what each studio was up against. There was an unmistakable air of competitive fervour, and while the shift system and the rotating pool of animators from around the world would keep things moving, there was an undeniable degree of pressure on the staff assembled for the projects. But fortunately, as was mentioned before much was already done.

The first four films; Commander Columbia , Commander Columbia: Mission to China , Zeras the Hammer , and Blood and Iron already had a great deal of the script work done, and would generally require only modest editing to fit political realities and incorrect predictions about the course of geopolitics. Samantha had already expected that war would be coming to the Soviet Union, as did most of those working in the Ruby Orchestra.

Most had also figured that the enemy would be barbarous and brutal, based on their own experiences with the White Army, and Germany’s past record when it came to dealing with dissent. Furthermore, the propaganda department saw value in portraying its expected enemies across the ocean as dangerous and terrible foes who would have to be confronted by all means available. The war to come was meant to be the final conflict

This in hindsight, made the decision to focus on figures who evoked death, darkness, and past Axis savagery such as Siegfried’s clear evoking of the Teutonic Knight and Koschei’s skeletal frame and skull face visage a wise one. The enemy was not simply of any conventional grade of evil, but something that was terror and death incarnate. The culmination of more than a thousand years of brutal colonialism and the destruction of native peoples to build empire, and the darkest, cruellest flower of human philosophy yet seen.

Despite what is commonly claimed however, it was not the invasion of Abyssinia that convinced the “Ruby Orchestra” to focus most of their ire on the fascist bloc over the Liberal powers under Britain’s umbrella but instead a recommendation by the Proletkult Federation to put “Fascist Autocracy” at the forefront. It was felt that it would be best to ease audiences, especially still Anglo and Francophilic sections of the population into the conception with villains that everyone could agree on despising with even the True Democrats accepting the anti-fascist policies of D.C.

Countries such as Britain, the Netherlands, Belgium and France were widely regarded as preferable to the threat of the autocracies and oligarchies that dominated Germany, Italy, Brazil, and Japan. Thus it would be preferable to focus on the easy enemy at first, and as tensions surely ratcheted up towards confrontations; reveal the underlying menace of the British Empire and its allies.

Of course, reality has an odd way of not meeting expectations, and the great war with Britain would never come.

Animation Revolution ​

However, another obstacle facing the team was one solidly in the technical realm. Animation was generally thought of as rather “slow”, with nearly all action in animation being firmly in the realm of slapstick. In order to create the clash of the gods that she desired, the Ruby group would have to create multiple innovations in the field of animation that would still be important today, all meant to convey the speed and power of its combatants.

The new technology of multiplane cameras was pushed to its limits to depict frenzied, high speed, and high-intensity melees between the series’ gods and devils, but perhaps most important were a number of “cheats” developed in order to properly convey the violent velocity of each struggle between deities.

Drawing characters as long and quickly animated motion blurs to depict enormous speed without having to show it, or even moving so quickly that the only thing truly visible would be vague movement lines and points of impact or single still shots of collisions and clashes. Judicious usage of “slow-motion” made by devoting many additional frames to a movement to briefly slow down the action to let it be absorbed by the audience as it unfolded and emphasize certain shots, or having the characters move “normally” while everything else moved at a snail’s pace around them.

The illusion of rotation would also be utilised to create the impression of added motion and disorientation after consulting with practitioners of various forms of combat who felt that authentically breakneck combat should leave observers as breathless as the combatants themselves. Paired with sufficiently powerful sounds such as samples of explosions, gunshots, and whipcracks, the assault on the senses would leave an impression of godlike power and an appreciation for raw, high-speed violence. Something that would appeal to a nation that had just emerged from a civil war and had born witness to an explosion of revolutionary action around the world.

But beyond animation techniques, making her action sequences also required making each movement and frame in a fight look good. Extensive studies of historical combat manuals and interviews with those historians who specialised in recreating the martial technique of bygone ages were mixed with studies of typical stage and live-action fighting techniques as well as fencing and combat training courses and perhaps most unusually, dance choreography. Realism would be used or discarded as per what looked better to the eyes of the “troika” of Samantha, Samuel, and Spartak.

Perhaps ironically, the animation revolution they created also sparked inspiration in European futurists; particularly within the depths of Fascist Italy. The emphasis on speed and violence drew some interest from the artistic and political movement despite Samantha’s personal abhorrence for them. In their brief time in the sun at the fringes of Fascist Italy, the Futurists would compile a number of homages that drew from the artistic work of the trio; moulded to their personal vision. Such would, in turn, inspire Samantha to write a scathing attack against futurism as a belief system.

The Characters

Amanda Ariel Aaron ​

(All art done for me by F4ARTz)

Also important to their work, of course, was the characters. A mythology without its gods and heroes or its devils and monsters is essentially nothing. In spite of superficial similarities, Columbia of the Ruby Orchestra was the inverse of Siegel and Shuster’s Superman, and while developed contemporaneously neither significantly influenced the other’s inception.

Superman was the “New Soviet Man”; an alien who was all humanity could be in the future through science and reason. Born of science fiction, Superman was an adult to embody humanity perfected. Columbia was the “myth of god”; a deity who walked the earth like the pantheons of old and embodied something precious to humanity. She was a youth to embody humanity’s potential and the hopes of a young nation. Amanda Ariel Aaron and the other American champions would be a new, proletarian American pantheon, with her Columbia alter ego serving as Jupiter Optimus Maximus for a new country, holding the hand of her comrades in virtual wedlock as they battled rival gods, heroes, and monsters.

Her armour; the Crimson Clad; was designed off of Graeco-Roman patterns due to America’s fondness for the visual motif. In essence, a new age hoplite clad from head to toe in armour, decorated simply but obviously to bear the emblems of the new America. At the centre of her musculata chest plate would be the winged red star, upon her circular shield known as Eolon was the hammer and compass of America, upon her spaulders would be her own personal symbol; an esoteric horned circle created for her by Samantha herself to embody both unity and ferocity.

Her spear; Keyt Tsoymen and her sword Yichud both would be emblems of striking back at the repressor for people who would no longer be content to turn the other cheek against those who had pressed the boot down on their fellow man for too long. But while her armour was fully covering she notably had no secret identity, Amanda and Columbia were one and the same and she attached no separate persona to her war-clad self.

Out of her armour, she was a tall and strong but still feminine figure. Her long scarlet hair was largely unstyled, her fierce green eyes were brilliant and intense. Hers was an effortless sort of beauty, she looked good and clearly took care of herself but didn’t care to doll herself up beyond the basics. Her black vest and oft dirty white shirt were strictly utilitarian while she preferred the comfort of a working man’s trousers and boots to skirts and heels.

She was toned like a soldier, but rarely showed it off. Her face was girlish, but often dirtied or bloodied and her grins were often those of someone looking forward to a brawl just as often as they were from someone who was happy to be in the company of a friend. Her every impression would be of that of a fighter and a warrior, not a princess nor an academic. While clearly bright and alert, she carried a pugnacious and physical air to her and often seemed coy or smug.

Her personality was crafted from five factors; her thematic associations with the Element of Air, the Skyfather figure, long-lasting American idealizations of defiance, the new American dynamic ideal, and association with the Seraphic aspect of Gevurah. She was energetic, bouncing around from one idea to the next, constantly full of ideas, difficult to fully satisfy, and like the weather could whip up from gentle and pleasant to terrifying stormy rage in a heartbeat. She was a socialite, inquisitive, endlessly experimental, playful, and could talk about just about any topic that held her interest for hours but would groan and moan if put through something dull that demanded her to sit down and rest a bit.

But she was also something of a brawler who enjoyed the spectacle and challenge of a good fight for a good cause, and very often preferred to just cut to the chase and hit the foe in the face when possible; something born of America’s embracing of the necessity of revolutionary war with Liberal and Reactionary powers. She was also deeply and staunchly confident, often to the point of arrogance. She actively does her best to banish self-doubts and defeatist attitudes for fear that so many other people look to her for her sunny optimism and pugnacious self-assurance that wavering would invite despair.

She was made to be sexually open and forward with her romantic interests. She would not be content to be simply courted by someone who caught her eye but would go as far as to actively pursue them if she fancied them. That was not to say that she was a complete inversion of typical tropes regarding romance, but that she was very much not a passive object of desire.

And while Samantha herself perhaps didn’t quite intend for it, Amanda would be latched onto by the bisexual community for her often flirtatious interactions with women as well as men; something that writers who would make their mark on the character after Samantha stepped back from the helm would take farther. But one thing that was clear from the beginning was a general rejection of the idea that women should never display her sexual or romantic desires, rather Amanda Aaron wore her heart on her sleeve and was almost devastatingly blunt with her interests in other people once she was set on having them close to her heart.

With regards to the science of Marxism, she was written to be someone who had internalised the lessons of the revolution. Marxism was simply the lens she saw society through, much like how an astronomer would consult Einstein’s theorems. She had charisma and force of personality, but she did not preach revolution like an academic but instead as someone who had made direct changes and improvements to the lives of others.

Helping people who could not help themselves, and offering them assistance in binding together so that they could stand stronger together. She would not only offer fish and teach people to fish, but would help the fishermen set up a union and build ties with their fellows and take their dues back from the parasitic owners who drove them to hunger in the first place. Her approach was eminently pragmatic, focused on praxis and in essence, an engineer of Marxism rather than a theoretician. She was not one to very often do something as unsubtle as directly quote leftist thinkers, but she would put theory to practice to make for a better world.

Amanda’s religious background would be kept somewhat low key during Samantha Waver’s run of predominance with the Ruby Orchestra. While she was outright stated to be Catholic Irish on her father’s side and Ashkenazim Jewish on her mother’s side she was not seen outright attending either Church or Synagogue. She would not be stated to be outright Atheist, and never really made her opinion clear regarding her fellow supernatural entities and whether it was appropriate to worship them. There were implicit details such as how she didn’t really see a significant distinction between the supernatural and the normal; treating it as little more than an extension of conventional reality and while of course careful around the less powerful; never once considered herself separate from them.

But of course, her very power was meant to be deliberately awe-inspiring. She was both the Storm Goddess of the Revolution, and an internationalist Serifot that embodied Kabbalistic virtues (principally Gevurah) inspired by Samantha Waver’s own Kabbalism and as such was someone of incredible power. In what crossovers she did with Superman and Captain America and other such characters, it was always noted that she was by far the most powerful of those modern mythic characters created to embody a new revolutionary America.

Whereas Superman began unable to fly and lacking later iconic powers such as heat vision and freeze breath, Columbia’s spear was “more powerful than all the artillery in the world”, her armour patterned off of primarily Graeco-Roman heritage “more resilient than all the battleships and tanks on earth”, and her flight “swifter than light itself.” So powerful was she, that when she sought to do battle without holding back, she would always bring it to the exaggerated realm of the Otherworld to spare the people from the destruction she could unleash by accident. No number of ordinary fascist warriors, no matter what tanks, warships, planes and guns they brought, could challenge her. But one does not send mortals to challenge Jupiter and Zeus, they send the Giants, the Titans, Typhon and Echidna. If she were Ra, she needed her Apophis.

Enemies ​

** CW: Swastika

**
Siegfried was chosen as her longest-running and fiercest rival precisely because his legend spoke of his invincibility. With the blood of Fafnir, only a small spot on his back could be harmed by any means. She could smite him with all her thunderbolts and fury enough to shatter the Himalayas, but he would not be budged. So to defeat him would require burying him beneath the proverbial Mt.Etna, outsmarting the fallen Teutonic equivalent of Hercules.

Through his resurrection by Dark Magic wielded by the SS with the powers of those who had exhibited the ten qualities of the Serifot and inverted those virtues in a ritual of human sacrifice to produce a Qliphoth in the flesh, embodying Golachab most of all. Now an invulnerable husk of malice and evil in slavish devotion to nazism with a twisted mockery of Jewish Kabbalah; he had become a being of pure darkness and utterly monstrous power that he would ruthlessly augment by any means possible. Far more powerful than he was in the past, he could go fully toe to toe with Amanda, and it would take all she had to throw back his unrelenting evil.

Styling him not after the handsome figure of Wagnerian opera but encasing him in armour like the wildest fantasies of the Teutonic Knights, heavily influenced by Sergei Eisenstein’s corroborations with Spartak; he had a menacing aspect to him. Light seemed to be deadened in his Qliphothic presence as if his evil made even light itself grow a bit dimmer. The fanned horns of his helmet cast a distinctive shadow, the cross of the Teutonic knights was replaced by the Swastika and their holy white garbs were now Prussian feldgrau. His helm was designed based on a mixture of later medieval gothic helmets, Teutonic great helmets, Prussian Pickelhaubes, and German Stahlhelms, and his maroon and brown sword glowed with evil intent while dripping blood constantly, and to him the eagles would always flock, a sign of his presence even when he had yet to arrive. And from the blackest void of his visor would burn terrible flames like those of a funeral pyre, endlessly producing smoke-like factories.

Siegfried was a figure of tragedy in that he had once been perhaps noble, but as it is pointed out; even in his past life he had helped his allies commit the heinous crime of rape and descended into tremendous cruelty once he had taken his fill of Fafnir’s treasure and power. As a Qliphothic abomination born of cruel sacrifice and filled with the mindset of hatred and autocracy, he had grown into a being of almost incomparable evil and malice. His new God was Hitler and his Germany, and he would see his fuhrer’s will be done Perhaps he was not the traditional visage of the ubermensch, but he was the industrial, inhuman face of Fascism made bare, a metal man with a metal heart and a metal mind. His partnership with his former nemesis Fafnir; no longer seeing anything wrong with the Dragon’s Greed; would be the proof positive of the sheer depth of Siegfried’s fall.

Siegfried indeed, almost wholly overshadowed Columbia’s most clear cut opposite in Fraulein Germania as part of a conscious decision to avoid portraying the national personifications of other cultures as inherently evil. Further driving this decision was the belief that most would not quite buy the idea of the highly patriarchal Third Reich allowing a woman to hold a status as exalted as Amanda would to America. Siegfried was also a figure that the Nazis had adulated through their patronage of Wagner’s take on the Volsunga Saga, and showing the greatest hero of Germanic tradition in such a twisted and cruel light was felt to be ironically fitting.

Allies ​

Of course, one cannot simply discuss Amanda’s enemies without bringing up her most important allies. Chief among them is her lover, constant companion, embodiment of the Soviet Union and perennial heart throb would be Vladimir Valentinovich Volkov who would take on the moniker of Tovarishch Slava. Designed not to be the hulking bear or hyper-masculine new soviet man wall of muscle beneath his rather utilitarian and heavily industrial looking armoursuit one would expect from most foreign depictions of a young Russian man, he was instead a lean figured, soft spoken, bespectacled, gentle hearted and baby faced intellectual who whole heartedly embraced many feminine pursuits such as knitting (making his own scarfs), carving out nesting dolls, and less active pursuits such as writing, singing, dancing, botany, and playing chess. He was a gifted musician as well, and often spent large portions of his time composing music for his companions.

Nevertheless, Vladimir had a strong sense of justice and an ironbound moral compass. Though he’d prefer a quiet day sipping tea, cuddling with another person’s warm body and hashing out issues of the heart, and tending to plants; he would take to his Hammer of the Earth in a heartbeat if something he cared for was under threat. Embodying the virtue of Chesed most of all, he was in essence, an earthmother to Amanda’s skyfather, ironic given their respective genders. But such was always intentional, Samantha was interested in feminist literature attacking many gender norms for years by this point; and she saw much potential in representing the Russian people not through their brutish might; but for the gentle society of poets and chess players. To both break stereotypes surrounding the slavic peoples and the ideas of when men should be and show the world that the Russian was also a sophisticated and gentle soul as well as a good comrade.

Vladimir’s somewhat lengthy golden hair with its distinctive “spread eagle” at his neck, his soft and boyish but agile and dextrous features, his humble but confident demeanor, his compassionate and supportive nature, and his slightly awkward but always earnest approach to socialisation were based on Samantha’s own hopes for men. She had resisted many suggestions trying to make him more traditionally masculine in either design or personality, and hoped that in a time where women were more willing to question gender roles that he would be able to catch on. There was a certain truth to the claim that Vladimir was the product of what was at the time; the rare concept of making a male character primarily for female appeal; but he was always more than just a simple heart throb. His character was made to be strongly complementary to Amanda’s, so that the two could have the sort of strong chemistry that would be necessary to embody the United Republics’ newfound eternal friendship with the Soviet Union.

Her other two companions, Yang Yanyu and Miguel Mateo Morales; known as Koshih (革士) and El Valiente respectively in their divine aspects would embody Da’at and Netzach respectively. Whereas Amanda was Sky and Vladimir was Earth, Yanyu would be Water and Miguel would be Fire. One a nurturer, a teacher, a provider, and a diplomat; the other a firebrand, a rabble rouser, a fighter, and an energizer. While the whole of the group was creative and fond of building things in their own way, Yanyu was always looking for things to help others and herself; while Miguel loved the tools of destruction.

Yanyu would be a modern Chinese youth born and raised years after the fall of the Qing Emperor. Rather than backwards, mystical, and meek; Yanyu was someone who kept her fingers on the pulse of the fields of knowledge. She respected her nation’s heritage but was not wholly uncritical of it and its culture, but has little patience for the ignorance of outside commentators. Always passionate about helping others, she always hungered for something new to learn that could put to use, and very rarely saw something that she didn’t feel like needed some degree of fixing. That wasn’t to say she wasn’t wholly creative; often trying to think of entirely novel ideas and concepts that she could put to use. Though she put her all into the renaissance of the long declining Chinese nation, she often strode directly into outright overcompensation.

She was often gentle, always erudite, and generally soft-spoken, usually the most diplomatic of the quartet, but when whipped into motion she could show that water roiled into a storm had a wrath as terrible as any thunderbolt. Rather talkative and inquisitive, Yanyu liked to tinker with whatever was lying around and she pushed her perfectionist attitudes towards a passion towards always pushing peoples and societies to be better than they were., Though sometimes pushy, she tried her best to not be hurtful with her critiques, and made efforts to try to listen when others wanted to say their piece. In defiance of many dragon lady stereotypes however, she was honest, kept her expression readable and plainly obvious. She was cunning and guileful, but never deceitful regarding honesty as a chief virtue. She disliked keeping other people in the dark, even if it sometimes came at the expense of people knowing things they shouldn’t. Many of her worst gaffes would even stem from her difficulty with keeping secrets or voicing the wrong things at the wrong time that the listeners didn’t need to hear.

Yanyu was a more streamlined sort of beauty than the more physical and amazonian Amanda, with the figure of a champion swimmer with gracefully styled black hair in accordance to modern chinese tastes with unusual and brilliant purple eyes. She, like many young Chinese women in the 30s; dressed in manners that reconciled Chinese fascination with western culture with prevailing aesthetics. Ultimately with a bit more flair than the more plainly dressed Amanda, but nothing she wouldn’t be afraid to get a bit dirty. For battle though, she would bring forth the Red Fortress armour. Combining both the aesthetics of old Chinese Cataphract armour as well as the hydrodynamic sleekness of warship hulls (particularly submarines), Whereas Amanda made use of a spear and Vladimir used a hammer though, she brought something that was both futuristic yet a reference to China’s past glories at the same time; a rocket launcher based on the experimental launchers from the first world war; the so called fire-lance.

Miguel was spirited, fiery and energetic. A troublemaker and a firebrand, Miguel had a smouldering energy to him and a fiery passion. He often brought chaos and trouble where he went, though he did his best to try and direct it to good causes. Though like the fire he embodied, he could cause destruction without meaning to; he never meant ill. Though there were definitely times where his tendency towards mischief would lead to more trouble than he bargained for, and his devil-may-care attitude sat in a valley between being troubling and charming. He was someone like a trained circus snake, he might never bite you, he probably won’t ever bite you, but you always want to keep your eyes on him because he’s probably going to do something you don’t want to miss. Pugalicious and often belligerent in his passion for destroying evil, he also liked to start fights even more than Amanda. To the point that often he needed to be reminded that the proper place of someone who wishes to be a hero is to help the needy more than to destroy the wicked.

Miguel rarely liked to not be in motion, and loved the attention placed upon him by others, and always tried to get the eyes of others upon him. He reveled in being the object of adoration or envy, and always tried to get the others to get the proverbial show on the road, disdaining plans that required too much in the way of inaction and patience when there were those in trouble who needed help. He hated sitting still and his character model was nearly always making little motions such as swinging his legs even when sitting still. He was restless, antsy and hated feeling useless. With a chip on his shoulder and something to prove; Miguel could never stand people doubting him. He also couldn’t stand bullies and people picking on those who couldn’t stand against them on an even footing. But most of all, he hated people who tried to cheat justice by hiding behind the letter of the law. A lover of chaos and an unstated anarchist; he preferred to flout regulations when they got in the way of what was right (and sometimes just out of principle) and would struggle with knowing when and where to bring his fire.

Miguel was an almost ethereal looking, lithely handsome and boyishly charming young man who had a roguish and impish countenance to him. His rather long messy, tousled and windswept ruddy brown hair frequently covered one of his blazing orange eyes. His olive skin made his mestizo heritage obvious, and his agile figure was shown off by his practical but still nice looking outfits. He usually had a bit more of his chest shown than the scarf wearing Vladimir, and tended to roll up his sleeves more often than not. He gave an air of knowing damn well that he was handsome, and making sure everyone else knew it too. When fighting, he’d take the appearance of an “armoured huasos”, fiery patterned armour of relatively more slight construction than Vladimir’s. Trains were often used as reference for Miguel’s suit, particularly sleeker art deco vehicles to give an overall futuristic, ornamental, and fast feel to the “Jaguar Skin” armour. In his hands was his beloved rifle, the Judicator; a supernatural long arm that he was supernaturally gifted with, easily one of the finest marksmen humanity has ever produced.

Cast ​

Judith Garland as Amanda Ariel Aaron
Andrei Abrikosov as Vladimir Valentinovich Volkov
Anna May Wong as Yang Yanyu
Ramon Navarro as Miguel Mateo Morales
Greta Gustafsson As Valentyna Zynoviyivna Taran (Soviet & scientist)
Lena Horne As Delanna Carter (One of Amanda Aaron’s best friends, becomes the “American Diana” when Pandora’s box is opened)
Keye Luke As Yan Hai (Another of Aaron’s best friends, becomes the “American Apollo” when the box is opened)
Leonid Utyosov As Oleg Volkov (Soviet military commander)
Paul Robeson As Division Commander Hannibal Jameson (Black, Military Commander)
Alice Lightfoot* As Sinopa (Native American, Folklorist, Scientist, Female)
Mel Blanc As Henry Strauss (American Bourgeois exile working with Nazi Germany)
Peter Lorre As Werner von Koehlberg (Nazi Sorcerer)
Marlene Dietrich As Gesine Oswalt (Nazi Scientist, sole voice of reason)
Cary Grant As John Stewart (English business mogul)
Edward G Robinson As Mario Cesare, Italian Fascist Commander
Anton Walbrook As Lord White
Stan Laurel As Arnold Ford
Fritz Lang As Siegfried
Kurt Gerron As Fafnir

Real persons portrayed by Voice Actors:

Mel Blanc As Adolf Hitler
Mel Blanc As Heinrich Himmler
Mel Blanc As Iosif Stalin
Mel Blanc As William Z Foster

Commander Columbia

The Shorts ​

To build excitement for the release of the first film, a trio of shorts was released to introduce people to the characters and the concepts of the setting as well as share the origin story of the protagonists with an eager public.

Commander Columbia: American Warrior ​

The first shows Amanda’s youth and her orphaning in the civil war as well as her first contact with the supernatural, the world that once was but has been restricted by the flow of divinity; but when; as a youngster she decides to poke around a site with some friends and is forced to duck aside from some Fascisti goons from Italy whose Zeppelin is used as a secretive headquarters flying high above where most can reach; trying to find Pandora’s box for Il Duce before the Americans can get it. Fleeing from the Zeppelin and trying to get her fellow orphans to safety, she tumbles into a cave and finds Pandora’s box with her friends and decides to open it. This turns her into Columbia, letting her trounce the fascist agents and even toss the tank they had snuck into America clean over the Horizon and then pull the Submarine they had used to escape out of the water and smashing it upon the ground; shrugging off the impacts from both the cannon and the sub’s deck gun before downing the Zeppelin.

Her initial friends will come to find their own paths in life though, as she’s called to go overseas for further adventures that will take her far beyond the shores of America.

Commander Columbia: The Four Companions ​

The second covers her first meeting with her squad overseas; delving a bit into their own origins. Vladimir was a quiet and shy young pioneer who nevertheless rushed to save his comrades from a collapsing cliff face only to find himself able to stop the entire rockslide. Miguel rushed to save people from a burning building from an arson attack started by Synarchist terrorists. Yanyu dove into the water to rescue people from a ferry struck at a river by warlord bandits in China. This leads them to conclude they were chosen for some particular reason by Pandora’s box because they were ordinary people who decided to put their lives in harm’s way to save their fellow ordinary people in accordance to the principles of their nation. They were not born special, but were rewarded for the actions they took for their fellow people.

They are met with a British plot by the first British supervillain; Lord White and his assistants; the Blue Knight, the Scarlet Dragon, and the Golden Archer who seeks to make use of his newfound abilities to aid in an effort to advance the goals of the British state and bring about an uprising in America that he can use to pilfer artefacts from the UASR in the chaos. His plans are thwarted and the Baron of Steam’s automatons are forced to retreat for the time being.

Commander Columbia: The Machinations of the Reich ​

The third introduces us to some Nazi secret societies under the order of Adolf Hitler with the blessing of Heinrich Himmler undergo efforts to ensure that the Fatherland is not left behind in this era of gods; hoping to go beyond merely accumulating new gods but to revive those of old. While Nazi blood obsessed purists have already been kidnapping people they believe could have descent from Siegfried for years, Himmler informs his agent Arnold Ford that they require more. Arnold, wanting to elevate his position in the Nazi Hierarchy also wishes to spark a pogrom in America by using a drugged gas that will cause those who inhale it to go mad, turning the Jews of Brooklyn into the beasts that he believes them to be. Arnold has many assets, and has made himself into a vampiric supersoldier with the powers made available to him, but his plot is uncovered and is foiled as his submarine intended to deliver the gas is sunk and he himself is slain. Himmler’s agents, however, manage to acquire some subjects with which to deliver to the Reichsfuhrer for his primary goal, and while Himmler is disappointed at Arnold’s failure, believes the distraction he provided was worth it.

Commander Columbia: The Knight and the Ark ​

The first true feature-length film after establishing the characters quickly for those not already in the know as they seek to penetrate into the Fatherland itself; starts with the resurrection of Siegfried already underway. Siegfried and his once nemesis Fafnir are reconstituted from the blood of those who; however very distantly and feebly; have some relation to him to rebuild him. It is not a perfect process and is indeed, intentionally flawed as the Germans seek to indoctrinate him into a pure agent of nazism, turning him into a Qliphoth, a husk of darkness to augment his already tremendous abilities.

The resurrection is interrupted, but Siegfried is already among the living once more and he and Fafnir hold off the quartet as the black knight proves to be virtually invulnerable. Though the castle that he is resurrected in is collapsed, they do catch wind of Siegfried’s hastily formed follow up plan to locate the ark of the covenant to undo the Jewish people and thus, in Hitler’s eyes, communism itself out of his belief that communism the ultimate expression of Jewishness. This takes them on an adventure to the sands of the near east where we are treated to how lackadaisical British authorities take the threat of the rising third Reich; greeting even the overtly intimidating Siegfried like an honoured guest while haranguing Amanda and even talking down to her for being a woman and a “damned red one at that”.

One is also shown how the Germans treat with the British authorities almost amicably while sharing some manner of disdain for the Arabs there while Amanda is further pained by the sight of how the Jews are being used as cats paws in a game of empire and how thin the British philosemitism goes as they see the corpse of a Jewish historian who had knowledge Siegfried wanted. Leaving behind only a horrible drained husk that creakily reanimates before a spooked Volkov destroys the husk.

A cut to the antagonists also sees Siegfried making nice with Lord White while clearly thinking White is at best, a useful idiot; culminating in a fight with him and the gang when Siegfried wants to get a move on; being informed by an SS agent that they have found a site that they can begin digging at and deciding that the unpowered members of the third reich would take much too long without his assistance. White offers a distraction before he is forced to flee again; with Yanyu cautioning Miguel and Amanda to not give chase and focus on more important matters, telling them that White’s egotism will surely lead him to show up again.

Siegfried and Fafnir casually smash their way through the guardians of the Ark of the covenant whom even the most stalwart of British and German superagents dare not approach, the Dark Knight casually beheading a Seraph who reduces many who approach to pillars of salt to get access to the Ark before he’s interrupted by Amanda striking him in the back and then smashing him straight through the cave and into the Otherworld. Siegfried is calm and patient and Lord White does indeed, make his return to add to the confusion that allows Fafnir to take the ark in its claws and fly it to a place where it can be put away for safe containment to be brought to the Reich.

Volkov has a frank discussion with Amanda about her impatience and how he’s concerned for her, a conversation where the two’s growing bond is increasingly cemented while Yanyu gives Miguel concerned admonishment for not only his recklessness but encouraging of Amanda to indulge in her own. A moment is shared, but they have to get going.

A Palestinian they helped earlier tells them that she’s seen where the Germans are taking the ark and that Lord White has seemed to have some sort of disagreement with the servants of the Reich which has delayed their transport. Something over the Germans wanting to do blood sacrifice to ensure its safe opening that the British in their genteel sophistry find a bit too beyond the pale to accept.

Amanda asks if the ritual has started and prepares to head out headfirst once more before she’s stopped by Volkov who tells her that they need to work on this together; all of them. And thus the four decide to make use of help from anti-British resistance fighters who provide a distraction and a crucial splitting of attention. The British, fearful of looking too bad; break away from the engagement and thus leave the Germans to themselves. Amanda and Siegfried fight, but instead of trying to take him on all by herself, she pushes him towards the others to let them mob up on him, Amanda and Vladimir bouncing him between them to prevent him from covering his weak point which lets them incapacitate him and then focus on the Dragon Fafnir who is made to recoil when Miguel scorches him with his own flames and Yanyu figures out a way to use her mystic waters to snuff out his all burning fire. With the ark secured, it’s soon brought to the Caucasus where it will be kept by the Soviet Union safe from prying hands.

The Nazi duo are forced to withdraw with only secondary relics in their hands as a furious Hitler chews them out and remarks his disappointment to Himmler who assuages his master’s fury that there are yet other plans for them to try while we later cut to the four at a beachside in the Crimea where they’ve gone to cool down.

Amanda, who has clearly been into and flirting with Vladimir throughout the film, pulls him over for a kiss at the party while Miguel shows Yanyu some Mexican partner dances with clear sexual energy behind them and the four are congratulated for their work, ending on a high note as the four cement their fire-forged friendship.

Reception ​

Commander Columbia: The Knight and the Ark was a cultural phenomenon but not a smash hit. Audiences who watched it generally reported interest in it as well as an appreciation for taking animation in more serious directions, but the film would only scrape past its break-even point due to its large budget and the propaganda department’s large number of free showings. However, making money was never the point. The new America needed new national symbols and a cultural tour de force to show the world that the might of America’s cultural industries had returned stronger than ever. The propaganda department felt in particular, that it would take some time for their new icon to fully take root in any case, and hardly minded the audience needing some more time to get used to the concepts.

Critically; while it can be hard to remember in the present day after more than seventy years of seeing Amanda Aaron; the film was divisive along more than just political lines. Many thought that the film was overly heavy with characters and ideas and relied substantially on people having already consumed prior media rather than standing entirely on its own. Others believed that the film, in essence, was a pagan glorification of the all-powerful individual or national personificationism as well as an escapist fantasy rather than a proper work of socialist realism. And like most works of its time, it was about as subtle with its politics as a battleship bombardment to paraphrase the words of Samantha’s sister Edsel.

Many also criticised its sexually charged tone and frequent violence as well as espousing a particularly belligerent worldview of uncompromising revolutionary aggression. Amanda was an easily angered, fight-happy and argumentative protagonist who made little effort to spare many of her opponents and tended to fight in a rather savage, kinetic fashion meant to break her opponents as quickly as possible. This did not endear her to quite a few people who felt that she was a poor role model for the new Socialist woman. She got dirty, she fought dirty, she was frequently rude and flippant and less than lady-like. Such was felt, to be an overly rough and tumble attitude towards what should be the shining ideal of the revolution even to many socialists.

However, it resonated strongly in more than enough people it sought to reach to start to dig its roots. In an America that felt increasingly threatened by the ever-growing menace of the Third Reich, a hero who could take on the full menace of Hitler’s Germany and triumph was what many were looking for. Especially in the Jewish Community which had played a strong part in the popularisation of supernaturally powerful protagonists born of its long history of fist-fighting with anti-semites, Amanda’s cultural impact would be quite profound. In China and Mexico, where they were used to being largely ignored by American culture, the positive representation proved particularly appealing as well.

Many who felt that the threat of Fascism in Europe, South America, and Asia or western European Imperialism in Africa and Asia was going unnoticed emphasised with Amanda’s aggressive, take the fight straight-on attitude towards Fascism and Imperialism. Among female movie-goers in particular, many latched onto her as an icon of feminist strength and power while still retaining a great deal of kindness and empathy towards her friends even through her character flaws. A whole generation of young women would hold her up as an image of female empowerment, and a number of fighting women in the second world war would make use of her iconography or symbology.

A Symphonic History of the Ruby Orchestra ​

Julius Monroe was a man whose passion for music began at an early age when his mother brought home a phonograph in 1911 when he was just four years old and his family had recently moved to Harlem to look for work. He tried his best to learn music by himself and would pester other musicians he could access in Harlem for advice and tips for where to go as he spent much of his free time on his hobby. With the war came rationing and a steep decline in the availability of many of the materials used in musical instruments, but it also prompted his father, who enrolled in West Point to be later shipped out against Bulgaria and Austria-Hungary in the Macedonian campaigns.

The letters from home he received oft spoke of things he did not fully understand, but he got the impression of a terrible, ugly war that made very little sense to Marius Monroe. “I cannot for the life of me, understand why I, an American Negro am fighting the Bulgarians in Epirus next to a Maori man from New Zealand because a Serbian shot an Austrian in Bosnia” to quote Marius’ own feelings on the subject. Ever curious, Julius at least once got into trouble with his teacher for questioning the purpose of the war. The Bienno Rosso of course rocked through Harlem as many demanded an end to the senseless war and an end to brutal rationing and the visible injustices of society, and Julius wrote a few basic compositions to try and capture his feelings about the event.

Eventually, his father would return home in early 1919 a changed man, having already had doubts about the justness of the American cause and returned absolutely convinced the whole thing was rotten to the core. Marius felt as though he had thrown his life away for no purpose or cause and struggled with the feelings of having accomplished nothing of value. He spoke fondly of his perceptions of the Soviet Revolution, believing that “that was a cause worth fighting for, not dying so that Tanzania, Cameroon and Namibia can trade hands to the next set of colonial masters”.

…..

Perhaps the most important event for Julius’ later career was the performance of Gustav Hoist’s “The Planets” in America as well as his exposure to Prokofiev’s music for some of his ballets. Impressed by the usage of music alone to tell a story without relying on lyrics as well as the usage of music to strengthen the visuals on display, Julius was determined to become a composer and devoured the works of his idols. He eventually got a job as a composer for a stage company while still studying in music school and managed to ride out the great depression by branching out into film; whose popularity was barely diminished by the depression.

By the time he finished his musical education in 1932 with an impressive degree from his six years of studying, he was also a committed socialist who was passionate about the liberation of the disempowered and a card-carrying member of the American ANC. He had written a few campaign songs for Norman Thomas’ electoral trailer and the WCPA’s wider electoral struggle in the leadup to the elections and cast his vote with a sense of optimism. He had his doubts that the system would just fall away peacefully on its own, but he was highly confident in electoral triumph.

…

During the revolutionary war he participated in some small scale fighting in the New York Metropolitan area before returning to his work as a composer, writing a number of songs of some note that would find use in the Revolutionary army, attempting to meld the influences of Russian revolutionary music with American traditions. With the brevity of the war, the number of compositions that he made were similarly limited, but retain a place of importance in the musical tradition that would lead to his work with Columbia. Though one particular task that always vexed him was “adapting the international to English with lyrics that sounded good to my ears.”

It would be his work at a concert that would draw Samawal Hamidi’s attention to him while he was talent scouting in the AFNCSR. Catching his attention after the show, Samawal invited Julius over to a cafe and having a productive discussion, Samawal offered Julius the position of the lead composer for the animated films he was making with Spartak and Samantha. Upon being made aware of the scale of the projects, Julius agreed almost immediately, eager to make his place in history.

He asked to see all the work the trio and their team had made so far and studied the notes on all the characters created and all the concepts drawn up.

For Columbia, he created a leitmotif clearly derived from the upbeat traditions of American wartime songs such as “Yankee Doodle” and “The Battle Cry of Freedom” and blended them with his own revolutionary army compositions. The intent was to create something martial sounding and strong, but upbeat, cheerful, triumphant, and distinctly American, fitting in with Amanda Aaron’s boisterous and fighty happy personality interwoven with her genuine kindness and sweetness when not roused for a fight. She was, however, strong and full to the brim of power and potential, and as such needed music to capture the immense energies she contained within as well as her fighting spirit.

Vladimir’s own theme was based upon elements of Russian folk songs such as Kalinka, Korobeiniki and the Cossack song mixed in with Soviet-era music about the life of the common people to create a distinctly more rustic than Columbia’s theme. His leitmotif was crafted to sound more gentle, intellectual, and contemplative, and some would compare its feeling to the Red Army song Katyusha in structure and feel, though Julius claims to have not yet heard the song when he was working on Volkov’s theme. Vladimir Volkov was a somewhat shy and more passive character than Amanda and inverted the traditional gender roles of a male and female lead (as well as expectations of a Soviet-American duo) by taking on a number of more feminine qualities. Rather than power or triumph, it was meant to invoke gentleness and innocence.

Perhaps more surprising are the choices to bring on the usage of Latin American folk instruments such as guitars for Valiente’s theme, an unusual addition to the classical orchestra’s repertoire. Heavy usage of percussion, flamenco-inspired instrumentation selection and arrangements, furious clapping, and a breakneck tempo were used to represent Miguel’s fiery powers, his daredevil attitude, red hot temper and ability to strike suddenly. “The intent was to give the feeling that a volcano was erupting and had a personal vendetta against you in particular” in Julius’ words. Miguel was a passionate and combative lad who doubled over laughing when amused, cheered out loud when happy, screamed in fiery rage when angry and sobbed when sad; and as such Julius was determined to give him something suitably intense.

For Yang Yan Yu; also known as Koshih, his composition sought to mix together modern instruments with traditional Chinese musical devices and the songs commemorating the Chinese revolution and its ongoing struggle to unify a shattered nation. Meant to provide a sense of hope and perseverance in the face of adversity, the assistance of a number of Chinese Americans working in music was used to provide a reference and a grounding for Julius in Chinese music to base his composition. The theme was perhaps slower than her companions’ as Yanyu was often the person who asked the team to slow down and think things through, but would stir into something that was an “anthem to hope itself” as she also often provided the courage to press on even in the worst of times. *[WPA]: Works Progress Administration *[NBI]: National Bureau of Investigation