A few days ago, a package arrived at my door: it was my ebay-purchased, beat-up-but-readable copy of Dell Comics’ 1957 “Paul Revere’s Ride,” with art by Alex Toth (which is why I bought it). Today I read it. Good stuff: Toth took a lot more care with this than with the 1960 Four Color adaptation of “The Real McCoys,” which I acquired in the same fashion. So anyway, there I was happily reading away — not paying too much attention to the writing, but it didn’t require much — and Paul was happily riding away, when this happens:

Do you see what he just did, in that last panel?? He warned the British. During the Ride. Warned them that they’re not going to be able to make it to Concord to seize the rebels’ cache of weapons — take our guns away!! (I paid enough attention to the story to understand that much!)

Then, a couple of pages later…

…in the last two panels: he does it again!

Now, it’s not that I’m a fan of Sarah Palin, but let’s be fair: she didn’t mess up on Paul Revere… she just learned her history from a comic book drawn by Alex Toth! So regardless of political ideology, we in the comic book world should come to her defense, right?

Okay, well I didn’t give the full title of the comic, which is “Walt Disney’s Paul Revere’s Ride with Johnny Tremain.” So perhaps the fact that this is Disney’s version of history, and includes the fictional character of Johnny Tremain, has to be taken into account here. Probably Sarah actually got her history lesson from watching Uncle Walt’s Wonderful World of Himself, in which case I’m not sure we need to rise to her defense. Never mind.