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Posted on 01/08/2005 10:54:27 PM PST by snippy_about_it
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 are acknowledged, affirmed and commemorated.
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 Comic Book Characters Go To War When World War II erupted in Europe in 1939, a wary America watched from the sidelines. But after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in late 1941, the United States went to war. So did the comics. Many comic strip characters joined the armed forces. Others waged war on the home front by battling saboteurs and war profiteers, conducting paper and scrap metal drives, and touting the purchase of war bonds. Some cartoonists preferred a more direct contribution to the war effort and enlisted. The military services, aware that comic strips were important for morale, sometimes put cartoonists into positions that allowed them to continue producing their strips. In other cases, strips were taken over by assistants or discontinued until after the war.  "Terry and the Pirates" was one of the first comics to enter the war. "Terry, the kid who was now 19 or 20, had never been in the United States," says Robert C. Harvey, author of "Children of the Yellow Kid" (University of Washington Press, $29.95) and other books and articles on comics history. "He had lived in the backwoods of China, wandering around with vagabond writer Pat Ryan, getting into one scrape after another and encountering characters like the Dragon Lady and Burma," Harvey says. "After Japan invaded China in 1937, [cartoonist] Milton Caniff had had his characters encountering military units in China referred to as 'the invaders' -- readers knew it was the Japanese."  Dragon Lady and Burma After America entered the war, Caniff had Ryan go into naval intelligence as a lieutenant, and Terry Lee flew with the Army Air Forces. "It became an adventure strip about American servicemen in the Air Corps in the China-Burma-India theater," Harvey says. Joe Palooka didn't wait for Pearl Harbor. Ham Fisher had his prizefighting champ enlist in the Army in November 1940. Palooka refused a commission and remained a buck private until he left the Army in 1946.  "Barney Baxter in the Air," a strip about a free-lance pilot, even managed to echo the news. In one strip, produced eight weeks before it was printed, Baxter made a bombing run over Tokyo. The strip ran in papers on the same day in April 1942 that Jimmy Doolittle made his famous raid on the Japanese capital, Harvey says. ("Barney Baxter" did not run in Atlanta newspapers.) Here's how some other comics characters joined the war effort: Skeezix, the orphan in "Gasoline Alley," turned 21 in 1942 and enlisted in the Army, seeing combat in Libya. His fiancée, Nina, took a wartime job working on a farm. Captain Easy of "Wash Tubbs" became a captain in Army intelligence, was captured in China by the Japanese, escaped with the help of an exotic dancer and served in the Philippines and Europe.  "Buz Sawyer," a strip started by Roy Crane in 1943, was a Navy fighter pilot on an aircraft carrier who saw action in the Pacific. Tillie Jones of "Tillie the Toiler" enlisted in the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps, as did "Mopsy." The husband of the title character in "Winnie Winkle" joined the Army and disappeared, leaving Winnie as the comics' first war widow. Snuffy Smith joined the Army as a private, and Barney Google went into the Navy. Both saw action in the Pacific. (When the comic was focusing on Snuffy's boot camp experiences, creator Billy DeBeck took to calling him a "yardbird," and the word caught on as a description of a raw recruit assigned to menial chores. It also was the source of jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker's nickname.)  Even Mickey Mouse got in on the action. He caught a saboteur, captured the crew of a Nazi submarine, was kidnapped and taken to Berlin and became the guardian of war orphans. In his own daily humor strip, Donald Duck contended with gasoline rationing while his girlfriend, Daisy, did volunteer work.  Fighting at home In "Little Orphan Annie," Daddy Warbucks gave his factories and wealth to the U.S. war effort and joined the Army. Annie organized the Junior Commandos, a children's group dedicated to gathering scrap metal and paper for the war effort. Also joining scrap drives were Felix the Cat and Nancy and Sluggo. Dick Tracy "was too valuable on the home front to enlist," Harvey says. Instead, the police detective kept busy combating saboteurs and fifth columnists. So did "Superman" and "Batman and Robin."  Harvey says Al Capp felt that "Li'l Abner" wouldn't fit into the military mold, and so Abner remained in Dogpatch, but pushed sales of war bonds and stamps. Capp also produced "Small Change," a Sunday comic that also promoted war bonds. Some artists found new careers in military newspapers, and their work appeared stateside as well: Bill Mauldin's "Up Front," with soldiers Willie and Joe; Dave Breger's "Private Breger" (which appeared in Yank magazine as "G.I. Joe," thus coining one of the war's most famous terms); and George Baker's "Sad Sack," a pathetic Army private. After the war ended in 1945, the comics returned to their regular adventures, but forces had been put in motion that would soon change everything. However, there was still an opportunity in 1947 to launch one last, great adventure comic: "Steve Canyon" by Milton Caniff. Caniff's reputation from "Terry and the Pirates" was such that more than 160 newspapers signed up for his new strip before even seeing samples.  "Steve Canyon" was deliberately contrived to appeal to a postwar audience of ex-GIs, Harvey says. Canyon was a former Army Transport Command pilot who, like thousands of other veterans, started his own business after the war. He operated a private cargo airline, Horizons Unlimited. But when the Korean War broke out in 1950, Canyon re-enlisted in the Air Force, where he remained until the strip ended in 1988. Shrinking space World War II exerted a toll on comics that was to have long-lasting consequences. Because of wartime paper shortages, newspapers got smaller, and they shrank the space devoted to comics. Syndicates and artists cooperated by making their strips smaller.  Before the war, daily strips ran across five or six of the eight columns that then constituted a newspaper page. During the war, the strips ran only four columns wide, or half the width of a page. (Today, most daily comics still run half the width of a page -- and the page itself is narrower than in the 1940s.) After the war, newspaper editors balked at expanding the comic strips back to their previous sizes. Newsprint was no longer cheap, and they wanted to devote more of it to news. The era of the full-page Sunday comic strip was over. And although no one knew it at the time, the era of adventure strips was ending, too. Today's Educational Sources and suggestions for further reading: Story by FRANK C. RIZZO syndicated to several magazines in 2003      |
Good Night Snippy.
I remember Steve Canyon from the Chicago Sun-Times when I was a kid.
Adolf Galland, Germany's fighter general, had Mickey Mouse on the side of his ME109.
email Weegee to get on/off this list (or grab it yourself to PING the rest)
I love the old comics of the WWII era. I remember them well.
Legend has it that the Jeep was named for "Eugene the Jeep" a popular character from Popeye Comics of the era.We also had "The Sad Sack" and "Smilin' Jack" just to mention a couple of other comics.
(I still have a couple of the old Ration Stamp books that were issued to my family during WWII. They are safely "tucked away".)
G'Nite all.
God Bless
Comic Book Pioneer Will Eisner Dies in Florida at 87
Actually, originally the 3/4 ton command car was called the jeep with the 1/4 to being called the peep. But that changed with the 3/4 to command car being called the command car and the 1/4 top being called the jeep.
I grew up with these. :-)
Ahhhh The memories.
Morning Fiddlstix.
Back when comic books were about the good guys.
Thanks for the links, weegee.
Good morning, snippy and everyone at the Foxhole.
Folks, be sure to click on my username and then "In Forum to read my commentary about an out of control judicial activist.
Sunday Morning Fozhole Bump.
I am off to St. Louis today to check up on my Dad will see y'all tomorrow. Have a great Sunday
Regards
alfa6 ;>}
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