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The Comic Art of War Sample file This page intentionally left blank Sample file The Comic Art of War A Critical Study of Military Cartoons, 1805–2014, with a Guide to Artists Christina M. Knopf Sample file McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Jefferson, North Carolina LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGUING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Knopf, Christina M., 1980– The comic art of war : a critical study of military cartoons, 1805–2014, with a guide to artists / Christina M. Knopf. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-7864-9835-2 (softcover : acid free paper) ISBN 978-1-4766-2081-7 (ebook) ♾ 1. War—Caricatures and cartoons. 2. Soldiers—Caricatures and cartoons. 3. MilitarySample life—Caricatures file and cartoons. I. Title. U20.K58 2015 355.0022'2—dc23 2015024596 BRITISH LIBRARY CATALOGUING DATA ARE AVAILABLE © 2015 Christina M. Knopf. All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. On the cover: COMPANY DIS-MISSED! by Abian A. “Wally” Wallgren which appeared in the final World War I issue of Stars and Stripes (vol. 2 no. 19: p. 7) on June 18, 1919. It features the artist dismissing his models, or characters, from duty at the end of the war. Printed in the United States of America McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640 www.mcfarlandpub.com Acknowledgments It is said that writing is a solitary activity. This is true, but it fails to take into account the researching, planning, and revising stages, which are not solitary and indeed depend on the kindness and brilliance of others. Therefore, this book would not have been possible without the support of numerous people. My gratitude to all the professionals in their respective fields whose expertise and kindness was invaluable: Kent Bolke, curator of the 10th Mountain Division and Fort Drum Museum, whose parallel exhibits of Bill Mauldin’s Pine Camp cartoons and Steve Opet’s Camp Victory cartoons sparked the idea for this research; Walter Biggins, for seeing my conference paper title in the National Communication Association 2012 program and suggesting that it would make a good topic for a book; Jeffrey Boshart, at Eastern Illinois University, for helping a stranger find “Molly Marine,” and Nancy Wilt and Sara Phoenix of the Women of the Corps Collection, for introducing me to her; the staff of the Special Col- lections department at the E.S. Bird Library of Syracuse University, who granted me access to the Vic Herman papers;Sample the librarians file of the Veterans History Proj- ect at the Library of Congress, especially Megan Harris, for fulfilling my last- minute request to see the physical copies of Robert Bindig’s work; and the audi- ences and fellow panelists at the Eastern Sociological Society 2014, who showed tremendous interest in chapter 6 and offered their own thoughts and experiences to make the work better, and at the Rhetoric Society of America 2014, who asked probing questions of chapters 4 and 5. My eternal thanks to loved ones whose support is central to my success in all things: my mother, Sandra Knopf, who proofread the manuscript not once but twice with attentiveness and good humor and was my personal cheering section and any- time-of-day sounding board for every new comic discovered and every new idea conceived; my father, Donald Knopf, who long ago shared with me the secret of camouflage- by-clipboard, thus enhancing my appreciation for military humor; and Pixie, for the much- needed hugs while working—even if it did mean a lot of one- handed typing. v vi Acknowledgments I would be remiss if I did not also thank the comic artists, amateur and professional, who served their countries. I learned much through your work, and this book is an effort to bring your insights, your experiences, and your humor to others. I have tried to represent your work fairly and accurately, and if I have not always succeeded, no disrespect was intended. Special thanks to Doctrine Man and Steve Opet for allowing me to include their artwork in these pages. Sample file Table of Contents Acknowledgments v Preface: Recon 1 Introduction: Vocabularies of the Visual-Verbal 5 1. GI Joking: Military Humor and Graphic Narratives 21 2. Service Before Self: Military Life 41 3. Kiss My Brass: Military Hierarchy 60 4. Frenemies: Friends and Foes 73 5. Drawn Behind the Lines: Military Geography 91 6. Sex(es) in Battle: Gender and Sexuality 106 7. Drawing Fire: Combat andSample Casualties file 126 8. Sillyvillians: Civil- Military Interactions 138 Conclusion: SITREP—The Military’s Rhetorical Vision 153 Appendix: Comicography 163 Notes 179 Bibliography 221 Index 241 vii This page intentionally left blank Sample file Preface Recon The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laugh- ter.—Mark Twain “Recon” is the shortened term for military reconnaissance, which is the gathering of information about unknown or outside areas for analysis and use. In essence, it is gathering information about what to expect, just as this preface will let you know what to expect of this book. There is an aphorism that claims generals are always fighting the last war; as such, it seems only fitting that this book on military comics begins with its backstory—a kind of tale of my own reconnaissance on warriors’ graphic narratives. It all started, though I did not know it then, on a winter’s day in late 2010. I was perusing the military history stacks at a local used bookstore when I discovered Barsis’s They’re All Yours, Uncle Sam!, a 1943 story of “babesSample in arms who file become women at arms.”1 I was at once enchanted and bemused by the gentle, gendered humor about WAACs and WAVES and wondered if there were other books of its kind. My search dis- covered two Winnie the WACs: the first created by Cpl. Vic Herman during World War II2 and the second created by Owen Fitzgerald in the 1950s as part of the Here’s Howie comics published by DC.3 I soon discovered other military and paramilitary heroines of the Second World War: Wonder Woman, of course, and War Nurse, Pat Parker and her Girl Commandos, Flyin’ Jenny,4 and then Molly Marine by real- life lady leatherneck Barbara Bristol5 and an autobio- graphical “ripple” by WAVE Dorothea Byerly.6 Before long, I happened upon other comics by and for military personnel. In November 2011, I visited the 10th Mountain Division and Fort Drum Museum, on the Fort Drum base just sixty- five miles south of my university, SUNY Potsdam. On one wall, there was a small display of World War II–era cartoons by Bill Mauldin, who had trained there (when it was Pine Camp) with the 45th Division. On the opposite wall 1 2 Preface was a monitor scrolling through cartoons by 10th Mountain reservist Steve Opet drawn while he was deployed to Iraq in 2008. The following summer, I perused a small assortment of boot camp comic books while visiting the Samp- son Museum at the old Sampson Naval and Air Force Base in upstate New York. And in November of 2013, while in Washington, D.C., for the National Com- munication Association conference, I was delighted by an exhibit at the Smith- sonian’s National Museum of American History highlighting the role of the entertainment industry in World War II, with particular attention to animated cartoons and comic books with messages supporting the civilian and military war efforts. When I took on the mission of writing a book about military comics, I had no idea that during the next two years I would discover hundreds of military cartoonists spanning centuries and continents—the standards for which are Britain’s Bruce Bairnsfather of the Great War and America’s Bill Mauldin of the Second World War. Bairnsfather is sometimes credited as “the Man Who Won the War”7 because of his morale- boosting, if brutally honest, cartoons. His work was developed into a 1926 film, The Better ’Ole, starring Syd Chaplin. Mauldin was considered the Bairnsfather of World War II.8 Decades later, Steve Opet was called the Bill Mauldin of Iraq,9 and W.C. Pope was dubbed “the Bill Mauldin of the Air Force,”10 while Chris Grant’s Iraq cartoons prompted Stars and Stripes to proclaim: “Bill Mauldin, meet the ‘Bohica Blues.’ Like the famed creator of World War II’s Willie and Joe comic strip, Staff Sgt. Chris Grant is putting pen and ink on paper to humorously capture the feelings, desires and daily routine of soldiers deployed to Iraq.”11 Mauldin’s work not only has been repeatedly emulated, but alsoSample was given numerous file acknowledgments in popular culture by fan and fellow cartoonist Charles Schulz. Despite the centrality of Mauldin’s influence in military cartooning, the styles of art vary widely from the heavy and dark drawings of Bairnsfather and Mauldin, who both relied mostly on single-frame cartoons with captions placed below the usually black- and-white image, though Mauldin’s work was slightly less exaggerated, or “cartoonish,” than Bairnsfather’s. Opet’s cartoons were also single- frame images, but with combined speech/thought bubbles and captions. They appeared in either black and white or color, and the bold strokes and bright tints call to mind boardwalk caricatures. Pope’s cartoons, also color or black and white in single- frame, use either speech/thought bubbles or captions to give voice to simplistic drawings that emphasize characters.