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Eisner’s war: what the U.S. military’s WWII informational comics reveal about politics and audience engagement

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Eisner’s War: What The U.S. Military’s WWII Informational Comics Reveal About
Politics And Audience Engagement

By Graham Clark
2/20/14
Reviewed by Erna Smith (advisor), Henry Jenkins and William Feuer

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Table Of Contents
Abstract ______________________________________________________________ 3
Introduction ___________________________________________________________ 4
How Uncle Sam Got Into The Media Business _________________________________ 8
A Brief History Of Eisner ________________________________________________ 11
Cultural Hegemony And “PS Magazine” _____________________________________ 16
Sexual Politics And “PS Magazine” _________________________________________ 19
The Value Of Technology In “PS Magazine” _________________________________ 28
“PS Magazine” As A Responsive Platform, Not An Artifact ______________________ 33
Conclusion ___________________________________________________________ 39
Bibliography __________________________________________________________ 44

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Abstract
Immediately before earning his title as “Godfather Of The Graphic Novel” with A
Contract With God, Will Eisner spent three decades producing informational comics for the
U.S. Military. This era of his career has received only superficial analysis, and modern
theoretical approaches offer valuable new ways of understanding these comics. Problematic
as representations of gender, race and American nationalism, they nevertheless reflect
Eisner’s advanced abilities and interest in comics as a form of communication. But perhaps
most importantly, these comics illustrate a broad shift in political ideology, prompting
Eisner’s creative departure from mainstream American culture and leading him to tell more
personally-relevant stories through long-form graphic novels.

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Introduction
Drone warfare may be the United States’ most prominent foreign policy tool.
Harassment and discrimination based on sex and gender remain institutional issues for
America’s armed forces, despite substantial social and policy shifts. If you want to know
why, read a comic book from 1972.
There is a rich history of investigating comics’ relationship to politics, culture and
societal structure, nowhere more so than in America.
1
Some of the earliest scholarship on
comics addressed the media’s meaning in terms of social politics. In 1924, Gilbert Seldes
wrote about comics’ “genius … of a special sort,” praising serial newspaper strips
2
as “a
changing picture of the average American life-and by compensation it provides us with the
freest American fantasy.”
3

Seldes led a vast pack of critics interested in the political implications of comics.
Quantitative and qualitative scholarship on graphic narratives as a form of popular
communication became more common during the first decades of the 20
th
century.
4
Even
before the medium was ground zero for social hysteria and Senatorial regulation in 1954,
there existed a substantial tradition of discourse dedicated to understanding comics’ role in
American politics. More recently, even within the last year, this body of criticism and theory
has grown in complexity by leaps and bounds.
Despite the exponentially increased volume of analysis on the subject, reasons
remain to discuss comics and American politics. Some theoretical territory remains
untouched or underexplored, albeit on an increasingly rare basis. More broadly, a challenge

1
Japan could have a shot at the number one spot, but what with comics repeatedly
2
Then the vastly preferred platform for comics consumption.
3
Seldes, 213
4
Two such articles were written by Witty, 1941 and Mitchell, 1950.
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facing contemporary comics scholarship is applying and critiquing the field’s many newly
constructed critical frameworks. Such is one goal of this essay: to examine a collection of
texts that have been understood superficially, taking advantage of and stress-testing recent
contributions to comics and political theory.
The non-fiction comics made by Will Eisner during World War II, the Korean War
and American military involvement in Indochina intrinsically make sense as fodder for such
an investigation of comics and political power. During these decades the American
government most actively created original informational media in an attempt to shape public
opinion. Eisner drew visions of life during wartime officially sanctioned and distributed by
acting military and political powers. By intentional, carefully documented
5
design, this work
is loaded with private and public implications—politically charged comics with both a
lowercase and uppercase p.
What this strategy was intended to achieve and how the resulting work was actually
consumed allow for multiple understandings of Eisner’s wartime comics’ value. Revisiting
this era of his creative output to apply modern critical thought may complicate Eisner’s place
in history. New ways of reading these comics offer multitudes of conclusions, rarely
straightforward and often contradictory.
Eisner has been most consistently hailed for popularizing the graphic novel as an art
form, a means of communication and common knowledge terminology. He is also
recognized for his foundational contributions to newspaper comics, comic books and

5
Fitzgerald, 2008
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graphic narrative education. But, more than any other period of his career, his wartime
output has been oversimplified.
6

One way of reading these comics is to treat them as nationalist, misogynistic,
industrialist propaganda hidden behind a veneer of truth and disposability. Eisner’s wartime
comics share themes and symbolism with most US-sponsored informational media from the
same era. Stereotypically, media-makers who held military and governmental rank during
these decades of conflict produced material honoring enlisted young men and technology,
‘boys and toys.’ To paint in broad strokes, that’s what Eisner’s comics were about. Some
visual and narrative elements of these comics that support such a reading are detailed below,
but the geopolitical landscape in which this media was made is as much at the heart of this
interpretation. Eisner worked in alignment, consciously or otherwise, with an established
ideological orthodoxy to advance American imperialism, including the nation’s cultural
mythology. Biased representations of life in mass media leads to skewed social policy and
diminished civic involvement among misrepresented groups.
7
Merely by virtue of how these
comics came into being, they may be the footprint of an internationally oppressive
regime/nation-state.
But there is a moral imperative to question any narrative that assumes intolerance.
8

In a collection of academic essays on Cold-War comic books published in 2012,
9
nearly
every author vouches for revisiting the historical period’s media to correct the
misconception that comics from this time form an entirely derivative, uniform ideological
bloc. There are ways of understanding Eisner’s wartime work beyond blindly admiring his

6
This includes the most recent hardcover collection of “PS Magazine,” though it does
feature insightful words from Eisner’s wife.
7
Rodríguez, 2011
8
Hern, 2011
9
York & York, 2012
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historical import as an artisan, or blithely pigeonholing these documents as evidence of
hegemonic American interests.
Information comics theory proposed by Heike Elisabeth Jüngst suggests
deconstructing work such as Eisner’s not in terms of the information offered to readers, but
how information transfer functions relative to the comic’s readership. Jüngst’s system for
describing and classifying informational comics is only one of many new tools for
deconstructing comics Eisner made for the US Military. As per Jüngst’s interpretation of
audience-media relations, these politically problematic comics may best be understood as
attempts to solve a basic problem facing all creators of informational comics: effectively
conveying complicated subject matter to a mass audience.
There are various ways to understand these politically charged comics. Suggesting
which is best clearly falls beyond the scope of this essay. My goal is to revisit this
superficially understood media in light of modern theoretical advancements. Beyond merely
precluding his canonical graphic novels, Eisner’s wartime work says something about the
form of informational comics and speaks to the United States’ existence as a political entity.
So it matters because it led him to do his most significant work, it matters because it can
teach us something about informational comics, and it matters as a part of a still-evolving
political landscape.
In terms of methodology, this text begins by establishing a historical context for
Eisner’s comics, then progresses to posit multiple, often contradictory ways of unpacking
these comics for political meaning. Issues of nation-state influence dominate the first section
of this analysis, followed by research on how informational comics uniquely connect to
readers. It concludes with reflection on the importance of this era in Eisner’s professional
trajectory.
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How Uncle Sam Got Into The Media Business
Eisner was far from the first American to make state-sponsored visions of life.
Political institutions created and maintained by the American government to shape public
opinion with original, state-sponsored news media had been in place since World War I.
10

Then, the Committee On Public Information (commonly known as the Creel Committee)
led efforts to influence Americans through federally funded print media, news broadcasts
and filmstrips.
11

The Second World War saw political efforts to influence public opinion with state-
sponsored informational media gain traction on a vastly more prominent scale. New
communications technology was explored as a means for proactively shaping public
perceptions of life during wartime, including informational comics and documentary motion
pictures. Rudimentary radio broadcasts had been funded by the Creel Committee during
WWI, but by the time of America’s entry into WWII consumer grade radios had invaded
American homes.
12
The newly ubiquitous technology spurred nationwide policies for self-
censorship, institutionalized review of all foreign language programming and a structure for
punitive action in light of transgressions.
13
Similarly, during The Great War movie theater
audiences were shown filmstrips in an attempt to boost war bond sales. By 1942, that logic
had political institutions producing full-length documentary features for public consumption,
with production values, distribution, access and acclaim rivaling if not surpassing anything

10
Though documentation of war for journalistic and governmental uses had been one in the
United States as early as the civil war, it was World War I when the processes were first
systemically united.
11
Stone, 2004
12
Schiffer, 1991
13
Sweeney, 2001
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available to civilian filmmakers. During WWII the United States government had more
apparatuses officially dedicated to mass media production than ever before or since.
14

Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Office of Special Services and the Office
of War Information were the two main arms of the American government’s formal strategy
to control and produce media. Both were established as per orders by Franklin Delano
Roosevelt.
15
The president maintained involvement in their operations, stepping in to clarify
the jurisdiction of each entity at junctures such as a bureaucratic “muddle” that mixed up the
two organizations in 1944.
16

The drive for political powers to control and make news media during World War
Two was influenced by higher-than-ever interest in the effects of media. Though “Seduction
Of The Innocent”
17
is often flagged as a powerful example of popular interest in comic’s
ideological impact, that work was published on the tail end of wide swell of discourse. An
earlier, more broadly recognized representation of media effects theory’s significance in
American society is Walter Lippman’s iconic text “Public Opinion” (1922).
The ideas in “Public Opinion” were integral to the design and implementation of the
United States’ media management strategy during WWII. Lippman stressed the importance
of how war was recognized in the average citizen’s consciousness, crediting positive public
perceptions as a factor that contributed to the United States’ victory in World War I.
18

14
Startt & Sloan, 1994
15
Executive Order 9182 and “Military Order Establishing The Office Of Special Services.”
16
FDR became personally involved in America’s wartime news management a second time
in 1944, squashing coverage of his extramarital liaison with Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd. Along
with regular fireside chats and negotiations with disgruntled newspaper publishers, such was
the Executive’s involvement in affairs of mass communication. (Sweeney, 2001)
17
Wertham, 1954
18
“Even in war when it is deadlocked, a sufficiently greater range of feelings is aroused to
establish conflict, choice, hesitation, and compromise. The symbolism of public opinion
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Though the process as described by Lippman is antiquated, the fact remains that media may
influence society. Irrelevant of the stock one places in media effects as a sociological theory,
it reached a new height of acceptance in the 1940s, finding favor among political agenda-
setters and laypeople. Government and military budgets were staked on the belief that mass
media swayed conflicts over geo-political control.
19

It was in this environment that Eisner began his work.

usually bears, as we shall see, [Footnote: Part V.] the marks of this balancing of interest.”
(Lippman, 1922)
19
Fitzgerald, 2008
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A Brief History Of Eisner
Will Eisner came into this world in 1917, in New York City. Brooklyn, to be precise.
Though this essay is primarily concerned with activities after 1944, it deserves mention as the
city defined his efforts and style as a graphic storyteller for most of his existence. Illustration
was established as an exclusive career interest before Eisner left high school. It was then he
first earned professional payment for drawings and advertising art in regional publications.
20

Continuing with his practice of cartooning, as a young man Eisner fought for
recognition in New York’s high-pressure advertising industry. His work as a conceptualizer
of graphic communication and theorist on engaging an audience with words and pictures
grew at this time. Outpacing his understanding of graphic communication was his technical
ability to craft imagery with pen and ink. In terms of purely representative illustration, Eisner
quickly advanced to roughly the level of mastery he would maintain for the duration of his
career.
Without discontinuing his availability as an advertising illustrator, Eisner decided to
pursue comics production as a full-time commitment shortly thereafter. His earliest
consistent comics titles were made in conjunction with Jerry Iger. For the first time, Eisner’s
work was distributed internationally, and by 1939 the production house of Eisner & Iger
proved popular and commercially successful to a degree the partners were compelled to
break off their arrangement and work independently.
21

At age 22, Eisner created “The Spirit,” a comic strip that would go on to receive a
contemporaneous circulation in the millions and accolades rivaling or surpassing previous

20
Schumacher, 2010
21
Schumacher
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acclaim for fine-art funnies.
22
The title has been applauded for attempting to serve an adult
audience, and includes early examples of Eisner exploring non-traditional paneling and meta-
panel composition.
Eisner was known as a career-oriented workhorse who did commercial graphics and
comic strips.
23
“The Spirit,” which continued to be syndicated in full-color Sunday funnies,
became a hit in the form of comic book reprints. “The Spirit” achieved momentum and
established an industry foothold stable enough for Eisner to hand off his production
responsibilities to a staff of assistants.
24
Having groups of artists make comics under the pen
name of an original creator is was not uncommon in the fledgling comics industry of the
day, akin to workshops of artisans employed by classical painters. Such thankless exertion is
the stuff of myth for early comics industry figures out of New York, and nothing short of a
critical formal tradition in Japanese comics. But Eisner’s managerial technique was
exceptional in terms of who was involved and how he used protégées as a means of building
his legacy on and off the printed page. This commitment to building creative legacies has
contributed hugely to Eisner’s legend.
In 1944, he discontinued editorial involvement with “The Spirit” entirely and was
drafted into the US Army. Immediately upon beginning military training, Eisner spoke up
about his professional background and was pulled from the pool of standard personnel by
superiors who believed his skill set best put to use beyond the typical functions of a new
recruit.
25
Wooing Army administration one bureaucratic step at a time, Eisner finagled a

22
Cooke, 2010
23
Andelman, 2010
24
Led by a young Jules Feiffer
25
Fitzgerald
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place for himself as an illustrator in a military-run newspaper production house.
26
The
earliest of his wartime comics were straightforward promotions published in regional
newspapers alongside political cartoons and traditional print reporting, he went on to
produce work consistently for “Army Motors,” a stylistic and thematic predecessor of the
informational comics he would make in decades to come.
27

Eisner advanced into a greater leadership roles, eventually creating and managing a
military-sponsored collection of comics about machinery upkeep and repair: “PS Magazine.”
Also known by its sub header, “Preventative Maintenance Monthly,” it contained factual
information presented in highly stylized short narratives, placing it alongside other, more
traditionally journalistic magazines in terms of content. Eisner produced the magazine even
after retiring from active military service, leaving the publication completely in 1977. It’s
noteworthy as the longest time he spent working explicitly with non-fiction subject matter.
With few exceptions,
28
aside from “PS Magazine” Eisner’s work was thoroughly planted in
fictional territory.
The work he did immediately after leaving “PS” was the most significant of his
career. Then began his foray into longform graphic literature. He was was inspired by many
things, some close to home and others more abstract. He said his experience making comics
for the military directly fueled the change, as did groundbreaking material being created by
America’s burgeoning underground comix scene.
29
The death of his adolescent daughter can

26
Schumacher
27
Fitzgerald
28
His instructional comics involving employment opportunities, “The Protocols Of The
Elders Of Zion,” “Life In Pictures” and “Last Day In Vietnam” being notable exceptions.
“Last Day In Vietnam” is discussed in greater detail at the conclusion of this essay.
29
Cooke, 2010
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also be pinpointed as a factor that helped shift his values as a storyteller.
30
How one defines
the cause notwithstanding, the result was one of the most mature, widely and obviously
culturally respectable works of comics ever produced.
The first installment of his “Dropsie Avenue” trilogy was published in 1978: “A
Contract With God and Other Tenement Stories”. It was advertised and critiqued as a
graphic novel, distinguished from mainstream visual narrative in both style and content. The
text is intrinsically one complete document, not a group of serial installments repackaged and
bound hardcover.
31
The subject matter hearkens to traditional high-culture literature,
addressing issues of Jewish spirituality and social problems of urban life. Grittily realistic
sexual acts are included. The intricacies of living in a multicultural, ideologically diverse
America are brought to light.
32
Though the term was not unknown before this time and
earlier artists have been recognized for making exemplary contributions to the form,
33
these
elements of “A Contract With God” fueled its ascribed reputation as the first graphic novel.
“A Contract With God,” compounded by the follow-ups “A Life Force” (1988) and
“Dropsie Avenue” (1995) cemented Eisner’s position as one of the most substantial figures
in the comics industry. He continued to explore deep human issues in his work, attempting
to capture the struggles and complexity of life with a knack for rendering dramatic gestures
and urban settings.
34

Eisner simultaneously dedicated himself to understanding how comics worked and
sharing his conclusions. After teaching some of the first courses on making comics in higher

30
Fitzgerald
31
E.g. retroactive comic book series composites such as, “The Watchmen” and “Blackhole.”
32
Characters portraying Jewishness, Communism, Socialism and Capitalism are among those
involved.
33
Walker, 2007
34
Smith, 2010
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education, he fashioned his lessons into guidebooks and commoditized his insights. Three
instructional texts on comics were written by Eisner, stemming in part from his time as a
professor as New York’s School of Visual Arts.
This instructional output sealed his fate as one of the biggest names in comics
history at least as much as his fiction. These guides have survived as canonical introductions
to comics as an academic pursuit. The first installment of this series, “Comics and Sequential
Art” (1980) has received recognitions from generations of artists, theorists and everyday
comics consumers. Scott McCloud credits these books of thoughtful analysis with ushering
in an entirely new era of sequential art.
35
Other champions of Eisner’s work include Frank
Miller and Jules Feiffer, the latter of which began as a protégé of Eisner before becoming an
important figure in the history of comics in his own right. For his contributions to the
consumption and understanding of comics, an award given annually to America’s best
comics creators bears his namesake.
The man has been thoroughly lionized, and discussed to such a degree that revisiting
his work runs the risk of redundancy. But a great deal of comics scholarship has come out
since Eisner’s heyday—in fact, a great deal has come out in the last year. It’s possible, despite
decades of acclaim and discussion, the full meaning of Eisner’s comics remains to be seen.

35
McCloud, 1993
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Cultural Hegemony And “PS Magazine”
“Do all Americans lie?”
“Only the important ones.”
-David Axe, “War Is Boring” (2010)
The Chilean revolutionaries who first printed “How To Read Donald Duck”
36
(1972)
didn’t necessarily set out to chart a seminal advance in the history of cultural studies. In fact,
the text’s preface notes how unlikely it was such a book could even survive rounds of
censorship-by-incineration routinely conducted by the country’s institutionalized, American-
supported leadership.
The authors, Ariel Dorfman and Armand Mattelart, present the work as a
straightforward means for assessing the impact and implications of the mainstream comic
book series named in its title. This treatise primarily concerns comic books of the “Funny
Animals”
37
genre published by The Walt Disney Company, specifically the adventures of
Donald and Daisy Duck, their three duckling nephews, and the miserly Scrooge McDuck.
But the power of “How To Read Donald Duck” is rooted in fundamental concerns about
how all mass media shapes and reflects societal politics. It has enduring relevance most
immediately on the subjects of American nationalism and comics criticism, but speaks to any
cultural material loaded with political ties to powerful nation-states, including the popular
fiction of Babar, Tarzan and Rudyard Kipling.
Dorfman and Mattelart argue for interpreting these supposedly innocuous, “low-
culture” comics as a representation of and mechanism for the propagation of an oppressive

36
Originally “Para Leer al Pato Donald,” Ediciones Universitarías de Valparíso, 1971.
37
Duncan & Smith, 2009
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imperialist ideology. They claim such material predominantly serves political and economic
interests centralized in the United States.
“HOW COME THE NATIVES AND SAVAGES ALWAYS GIVE UP THEIR
RICHES TO THE DUCK INVADERS,” the book asks. “IS WALT DISNEY THAT
INNOCENT? … WHY ARE THERE NO PARENTS IN HIS COMIC BOOKS?”
Dorfman and Mattelart describe the absence of parent-child relationships in Disney’s
funny animal comics as an illustration of America’s skewed and hegemonic social values.
Here the argument is made that exposing youth and unsuspecting readers to such a torrent
of abnormal sexuality was one of many dehumanizing and disenfranchising drains on the
country’s native population.
38

The Chilean text speaks to issues of representation that have existed so long as
figures with political, social and material capital have held influence over media production.
Extreme in style and commitment to its analytical approach, “How To Read Donald Duck”
is nevertheless widely applicable as a logic for uncovering hegemonic processes embedded
into material that may be overlooked.
For, applying the anti-imperialist mode of analysis exemplified by “How To Read
Donald Duck,” may reveal a latent meaning behind the technical instruction narratives on

38
“There is one basic product which is never stocked in the Disney store: parents. Disney’s
is a universe of uncles and grand-uncles, nephews and cousins; the male–female relationship
is that of eternal fiancés. Scrooge McDuck is Donald’s uncle, Grandma Duck is Donald’s
aunt (but not Scrooge’s wife), and Donald is the uncle.” This genealogical charting of
fictional relations is continued at great length before concluding, “It is predictable that any
future demographic increase will have to be the result of extra-sexual factors […] In this
bleak world of family clans and solitary pairs, subject to the archaic prohibition of marriage
within the tribe, and where each and every one has his own mortgaged house but never a
home, the last vestige of parenthood, male or female, has been eliminated.” (Dorfman &
Mattelart, 34)
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the surface of “PS Magazine.” If American comics are propaganda
39
, it may be viable and
fruitful to investigate what agenda Eisner’s comics advance with stories superficially
dedicated the virtues of clean spark plugs and well inventoried rubber tubes.
The following sections of this essay contain examples of “PS Magazine” with
suggested means for interpreting their political implication. Reviewing this publication in the
context established by this essay thus far has led me to conclude that the underlying meaning
of Eisner’s wartime comics is a system of sexual and technological values. Media made with
state approval between World War Two and Vietnam idolized unrealistic gender
expectations and military equipment.

39
And all art is propaganda, as W.E.B. Du Bois’ claimed with such crystalline curtness in
1928. “Criteria Of Negro Art,” The Crisis, Vol. 32, October 1926: p. 290
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Sexual Politics And “PS Magazine”
Women and young men in state-sponsored media at this time were nearly exclusively
defined by their gender, sexualized objects with an ideological significance deeply rooted in
American nationalist identity. Where Donald Duck’s lack of parents symbolized a certain
socio-sexual ideological implication to Dorfman and Mattelart, “PS Magazine” has Connie
Rodd. This character was the most prominent member of the “PS” stable during Eisner’s
tenure as editor. Knowledgeable yet objectified, Rodd is the most blatant example of how
Eisner’s work reflected and promoted a social order based on gender and sexuality.
Connie Rodd originated as “Corporal Connie Rodd,” a clean-cut brunette drawn
only from the shoulders up. Rodd was invented by “Army Motors” magazine, a precursor to
“PS,” as a way to enliven the section dedicated to letters sent in by personnel.
Eisner took it upon himself to redesign the character.
40
Rodd quickly became a
stereotypically inaccurate representation of the female body. Examples of graphic portrayals
of sexual dynamics in “PS” abound, but many of the most obvious instances may be when
Rodd’s clothing is removed without consent and she becomes the subject unsolicited,
sometimes implicitly undesired sexual attention.

From “PS Magazine,” published 1954.

40
Fitzgerald
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Public financing for avowed informational material featuring a fictional woman in
states of undress, often actively denying consent, is one example of how American social
values can be tied to dominant state politics. Displays of Rodd’s federally-funded exposure
body run the gamut from cheeky to anatomically incomprehensible. Despite Eisner’s
complaints that military officials who held editorial sway over the publication forced him to
tone down his drawing’s sexual evocativeness, her outfits grew increasingly outlandish and
revealing as the decades progressed.

From “PS Magazine,” published 1954 and 1971.
Voyeuristic objectification is Rodd’s primary mode of existence. In various states of
undress and awareness, she often becomes the focal point for the gaze of entire units of
excited men. The male gaze has been identified and discussed as consistently problematic
element of comics, bringing to mind the discriminatory employment practices of much of
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the comics industry and the under-recognition of contributions to comics made by female
authors. Other contributions to comics and gender theory advocate visual representations of
female bodies as means of exploring trauma, self-representation, and the subjective process
of recognition and identification. There is a growing population who denounce women
drawn in comics for the sake of objectification or sexually charged observation.
41

41
Chute, 2010
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From “PS Magazine,” published 1955, 1965, 1963 and 1965.
Rodd occasionally appears in the stereotypical female role of the “sexy nurse.” The
implications of this particular visual stereotype in comics of this era have been noted—
though nursing was one avenue for employment consider socially acceptable for women,
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nurses in comics were used as sexual entities by male superiors first and foremost, rarely if
ever engaging in anything like medical practice.
42

From “PS Magazine,” published 1954.
One sequence from 1955 is particularly telling, concerning Rodd being subject to
heteronormative, male body image standards. The story begins with Rodd drawn in an outfit
actually resembling clothing worn by women performing military service at this time. For
wearing a skirt past her knees and less suggestive torso coverings, she is the subject of much
distain from her male counterparts. The series, otherwise dedicated to proper tarp handling
procedure, concludes with the male military personnel having successfully returned Rodd to
her standard, bodily revealing fashions.

42
Hayton & Hayton, 2012
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From “PS Magazine,” published 1955.
“Vive la difference,” is an ironic cliché for the cartoon private to employ. Comics
have been celebrated as a means of representing social and sexual diversity within a
perceived monolithic, uniform population. Even mainstream comics published during the
Cold War can be mined for non-traditional representations of sexuality
43
and social
interaction between people of different genders. While some comics offered innovative
forays into the United States’ system of sexual norms, revealing that established standards
could be contested, Eisner rehashes stereotypes. Characters such as the faceless, appearance-
obsessed young woman or her active, Jeep-driving young male date in this single panel

43
York & York
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storyline symbolically shout, “Vive la status quo!”

From “PS Magazine,” published 1954.
Importantly, it is not only women’s position defined in a gender-based power
structure. The symbolic function of military men as youthful, sexually virile and driven to
take action passionately in accordance with stereotypical binary gender roles is affirmed in
“PS Magazine.”
This symbolic reinforcement may be in effect without male bodies being pictured,
via entendre and implication. Or armed young men may be pictured in uniform, actively
embodying the United States’ geopolitical interests while simultaneously performing in a
stereotypical heterosexual gender role.
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From “PS Magazine,” published (clockwise from top) 1952, 1954, 1968 and 1969.
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The symbolic synthesis of young, sexually motivated men and technology is another
consistent feature of “PS” imagery. While the socio-sexual meaning of “PS Magazine” is
vibrant to a flagrant degree, these comics are dedicated to showcasing, detailing and
documenting American technology
44
more than anything else by a degree of magnitude. As
Connie Rodd’s impossibly proportioned frame embodies women’s symbolic value in
America as a nation-state, the ceaseless depiction of men with technology also indicates
something about the country’s installed ideology.

44
The often reiterated slogan of “PS Magazine” is: “We have the world’s best equipment…
take care of it!”
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The Value Of Technology In “PS Magazine”
That these comics were made to support an industrially advanced military effort was
not without impact. Representing non-human components of military conflict is
incomparably at the core of “PS Magazine.” It may smack of redundancy to note that these
comics were dedicated to enumerating and dissecting advanced war machinery, given the
publication’s charter as a destination for maintenance information. But the importance of
technology in state-sanctioned informational media can hardly be overstated, as it’s a
longstanding and persistent theme in how American political institutions shape public
perceptions of war. That “PS” focuses on technology reflects and feeds America’s material
culture, a product of the country’s industrial forces in many ways.

From “PS Magazine,” published 1966 (above) and 1959 (below).
In “War Is Boring,” (2010) author
David Axe describes his own experience
with the economics of documenting military
combat, including technology’s place at the
foreground in American visions of war. The
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book of comics journalism details his effort to make a living reporting on complicated,
desperate warzones. For much of the narrative, Axe has an arrangement worked out with his
publisher: in exchange for the freedom to pursue some stories of his choosing, he must first
thoroughly cover war technology, reporting on new weapons from military industry trade
shows.
When asked to explain the importance placed on technology in war coverage, he had
this to say:
“I like tech. I like explosions and things that fly fast. I like toys. Modern war usually
comes with a fair amount of cool hardware. I like to blend the tech and the human
stories, as they affect each other.
But by the same token, I'm aware that many wars are decidedly low-tech. The most
important weapons of the past few decades have been the bomb vest, the machete
and the AK-47--the cheap, easy weapons of civil war, insurgency, terrorism and
liberation. We sometimes forget that as Americans, because we are a myopic people
and because we place enormous faith in high tech, even when high tech is useless.”
45

During the first and second Gulf Wars this trend towards tech-heavy war coverage
was epitomized by releases from Pentagon officials. Examples include footage shot from the
vantage point of smart bombs. Step-by-step graphic representations of “Bunker Buster”
warheads detonation were distributed to news outlets during the Second Gulf War, and the
sequential graphics ran in newspapers and on television shows worldwide.
46
These high-tech
takes on war technology reached a greater audience than any of Eisner’s wartime work, yet
they transfer analogous information in the same language of graphic narrative.
Such coverage affords audiences the chance to consume material portraying a
generally uncomfortable topic, involving hardship, possible innocent bloodshed and
complex human aftermath, in a removed, minimally problematic way. One clinical researcher

45
Axe interview, 2/19/14
46
Taylor, 1992
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has suggested that the immediacy and graphicness with which news of violence is
communicated consistently alters humans’ emotional response—though the study caveats
that subjects’ physical distance from site of conflict determines their reactions vastly more
reliably any other factor.
47

Ted Rall is a working political cartoonist who has dedicated years to firsthand
reporting from the frontlines of America’s military conflicts. He has argued at length that
war reporting centered on tech and weaponry is evidence of the military-industrial complex’s
traumatically overgrown influence. Never traipsing far into the realm of conspiracy theorists,
Rall pairs anecdotal storytelling with structural analysis of financial entities who have vested
interests in American foreign relations, then frames the entire process of contemporaneous
wars’ creation, facilitation and coverage as an immoral and dangerously shortsighted
syndrome.
48

As with Lippman’s understanding of media’s effects, one doesn’t have to put faith in
the logic wholesale to appreciate the underlying assumption: how Americans picture war
makes a difference. What and who get documented, and how, can influence power
structures in many ways, and looking back on almost a century of reporting a few trends are
identifiable.
Eisner, like those before him and those after, portrayed something of a skewed social
agenda with his wartime work. They may be read as artifacts of America’s tradition of
neoimperialism, representing economic and cultural oppression.

47
Wyeker, 2002
48
Rall, 2003
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One reason mass media is ripe for historical analysis is the largely public nature of its
finance, production and consumption. How the resources to make mass media are provided
determines much about its function, but it doesn’t reveal everything.
Rhetoric decrying political manipulation of war reporting has a tendency to be one-
sided. Let’s question some of the assumptions here: does portraying weaponry and other
military technology automatically make this pro-industry stuff? Since it tells stories about
grunt mechanics trying to get their stuff running under adverse conditions, perhaps “PS
Magazine” actually complicates the monolithic narrative that has military industrial complex
injecting information into audience’s heads?
Perhaps. Dorfman and Mattelart made a great leap forward when they wrote about
Donald Duck in 1971. Since then there have been detailed and highly focused studies
published, many of which speak to the relationship between comics and America as a
nation-state. In the following section, more recent arguments specifically pertaining to
comics are employed to suggest a way of reading Eisner’s wartime comics as more than
exclusively egregious examples of ideological hegemony.
One reason to question reading “PS Magazine” as pure propaganda for traditional
social and nationalistic values is that America was undergoing massive political turmoil in the
years Eisner published it. These are standards in flux, especially in the minds of Americans
between 1945 and the early 70s. Even generally stereotypical comics from this era have been
mined for some examples of contested social politics. Arguably exceptions that prove the
rule, comics critiquing or otherwise subverting dominant ideologies during World War Two,
the Korean War and US Military activity in Indochina did exist. Underground and alternative
commix stylistically pioneered in the 1960s are archetypical in this respect, but subversive
elements can be found in mainstream titles as well.
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Comics featuring Wonder Woman have been discussed by multiple authors as a
radically significant representation of gender and identity in America during the years of
Eisner’s involvement with the US Military. Particular attention has been paid to how her
origin story was reinvented: originally said to have come from a benevolent all-female society
that reproduced asexually,
49
Wonder Woman’s creation myth was re-imagined in the late 40s
and 50s to incorporate more traditional heterosexual tropes.
50

Recognizing Wonder Woman’s value as a dynamic image of sexual politics is not
entirely unlike appreciating how Eisner’s instructional comics were appreciated by their own
historically distinct audience. A decade into production, social roles advanced by the
Amazonian Princess’ adventures differed markedly from what had been proposed by the
series’ founder.
51
Despite the problematic political implications of “PS” it too can still be
read abstractly as comics serving a particular ideologically defined group.
What if one could describe this media agnostic of social or political values—that is,
purely in terms of communicative function?
Eisner dealt with the same issues as any other producer of informational comics. In
terms of function, “PS” has much in common with any graphic narrative that connects to an
ideological camp, be they “Riot Grrrl” zines, Shōjo Manga or Harvey Kurtzman’s comics
about dark truths of the Korean War.

49
Wonder Woman first appeared in comics in 1941, the product of inventor William
Moulton Marston’s dream of an empowered female superhero.
50
Robinson, 2004
51
Earning the title of Justice League secretary hardly seems like the kind of paradigm-
walloping hopes Marston had had for Wonder Woman.
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“PS Magazine” As A Responsive Platform, Not An Artifact
Eisner figured out a lot about how comics communication works.
He has already called into question the problematic implications of “PS Magazine.”
In a 2006 interview, he rhetorically asked: “How can you do work for the military? … You’re
a merchant of death.”
52
On one level, he recognized these comics as material representations
of an advancing ideological orthodoxy,
53
literally illustrating worldviews on behalf of men in
political, social and militaristic power. Yet these comics are valuable precisely for how they
connected to their audience.
They contain problematic subject matter, rendered in a disturbing visual vocabulary.
Such is par for the course given Eisner’s intentionally clunky, vaudeville-inspired style of
storytelling.
The ethics behind how Eisner connected to his audience nonwithstanding, the
results of this effort were real. “PS Magazine” earned a devout fan base under Eisner’s
leadership. Consumption on a top-down basis was initially funded by military institutions,
then fostered via engagement tactics including the publication of reader-generated content
and an iconographic palate tailored to in-group recognition. “PS” hooked many readers
within a single issue. Stories and documentation of soldiers sharing Eisner’s comics in the
field and with their families are not rare, including instances in which fathers and sons came
to build lifelong bonds over the comic books.
This is something comics are suited to do uniquely well: actively engage an
audience.
54
Putting political concerns aside for the sake of understanding the form, it can be

52
“Will Eisner: Profession: Cartoonist,” “Master Class” segment.
53
How textual deconstruction can be said to yield evidence of such a neoimperialist, socially
normative agenda is defined in the previous section of this essay.
54
McCloud, 1993
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said that Eisner used his time at “PS Magazine” to exercise his knack for connecting with
readers.
Heike Jünst conducted an exhaustive evaluation of informational comics between
2005 and 2008, concluding that reader identification is the most critically important
component of conducting factual communication through comics. Jünst’s theory concerns
all media intended to convey information of real-world relevance through sequential, non-
text graphic communication. She attempted to leave no stone unturned when she published
her family tree of informational comics. It covers a diverse bloc of texts, all categorized
within her original, Linnean taxonomy of the form. Examples include promotional
pamphlets on tire-pressure safety from Michelin, Japanese guides to history and biology
stylistically just shy of medical diagrams, hand-printed environmental propaganda and
Eisner’s own “technical” and “attitudinal instruction comics.” Building off a framework
outlined in Eisner’s “Comics And Sequential Art,” Jünst proposes that all comics with a
non-fiction function can be characterized and categorized empirically. Information comics
theory places this disparate work within common parameters, relying on value-agnostic
methods of dissecting fact-based comics and a universal vocabulary to facilitate comparison.
Jünst uses the term Focaliser to describe any character serving as a conduit or
catalyst for informational transfer in a comic. Focalisers are designed to represent the
audience’s interests and provoke opportunities for readers to become more informed on a
given story’s subject matter. The effectiveness of any Focaliser depends on how immediately
readers relate to the character. The result is a tradeoff, as Focalisers with mass appeal are
intrinsically less likely to spur identification among individual readers. Superficial changes,
including modified skin tones and hairstyles, can make all the difference in an audience’s
response to informational graphic narrative.
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Low-ranking military personnel are the Focalisers of “PS Magazine.” Knowledge
transfer takes place in a very traditional didactic way, with Connie Rodd as the expert,
sharing factual information as prompted by
the curiosity or cluelessness of her male
counterparts.
Right: Typical didactic transfer of information in
“PS Magazine,” published 1954.
Though always drawn as resilient
young men, Eisner repeatedly places images
of US Military personnel in positions of
intense duress. This is a worm’s-eye-view of
war in the sense that Eisner’s army suffers a
great deal of hardship when not fully
occupied by ogling Connie Rodd. By
identifying these characters as Focalisers, an argument can be put forth in favor of reading
“PS Magazine” as representing the interests of a grassroots community of troops rather than
overarching political institutions.
55

55

The prominence of audience-generated content in “PS” is another reason to suspect it
serves a discrete, dynamic readership—‘bulletin boards’ and ‘letters to the editor’ sections
have long served as sites of self-identification and discussion for American social groups.
(York & York)

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From “PS Magazine,” published 1951 (above, left) and 1970 (above, right).

From “PS Magazine,” published 1959. This image of a collapsed American soldier hearkens to comics by
Harvey Kurtzman made in the same decade, noted for complicating the ethics of the Koren War.

These comics speak to the nature of how media interacts with nationalistic identity.
One big symbolic example is “Captain America” comics, which played a part in spreading
American nationalism starting during World War II. Captain America is the obvious
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embodiment of a historical trend, and set the standard for a great deal of politically-charged
media consumption. But no one would make the argument that Captain America was the
force responsible for the United States’ cultural presence abroad, even though the comics
shaped this geo-political narrative to a substantial degree. So too did comics such as Eisner’s
define an agenda at the same time they represented existing interests.
By the time Eisner quit “PS,” the established ideological justification for portraying
the military effort as ideologically valuable had publicly faltered. “Vietnam Syndrome” was a
phrase coined in hindsight to describe the increasingly popular perception that combat in
Indochina was ill-advised and morally wrong. This cultural phenomenon was evident in a
spectrum of media, including state-sponsored informational content.
56

In his final year with “PS Magazine,” Eisner’s comics have a tendency to portray the
war effort negatively. He shows problems befalling the US Military all throughout “PS,” but
there’s a difference between celebrating the contributions of tough young men and
portraying groundless suffering. Consider the difference in the following images, both of
which show personnel stranded due to a faulty Jeep.

56
Filmmaker John Ford’s state-sponsored documentary “Vietnam! Vietnam!” (1971) echoed
this sentiment—that enlisted young men were sacrificing their lives without meaning—to
such a degree the film was barred from pubic distribution until 2008.
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From “PS Magazine,” published 1958 and 1971.
One, done in peacetime after the Korean War, includes Connie Rodd as a element of
entertainment, suggesting to readers that US Military service is not without its perks. In the
second, drawn at a time of peak combat in Vietnam, no visual elements are included to
lighten the comic’s tone. The focus is squarely on resentment between fellow American
troops, then a major issue causing infighting and deaths among troops.
57
This is only one
example of Eisner’s shifting perspective as an author of factual war comics, picked for the
striking visual similarity between these two illustrations.

57
Hammond, 1998
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Conclusion
There are a number of reasons to be aware of these comics and their historical
context.
Using the argument from “How To Read Donald Duck” as a tool for decoding the
social meaning of Eisner’s cartoons leads to the conclusion that “PS Magazine” was state-
sponsored technology worship, serving industrial interests and propagating oppressive sexual
power dynamics. Approaching these comics with the framework devised by Jünst allows one
seeing his editorial choices in a different way.
Eisner employs Connie Rodd’s female body as a bastion of knowledge, but also as
the subject of intense sexual objectification, prey to acts of voyeurism. On one level, this is
evidence of an oppressive social structure. But it also may be a means of connecting to a
particular, ideologically defined readership. Dealing in commonly understood iconography
worked for Eisner for decades, including gender binary stereotypes and technological
wizardry. Those cultural constructs began to falter, externally and perhaps internally. “PS”
commentary had to be addressing some pretty serious stuff by that point, given US
involvement in Vietnam. Eisner wasn’t going to be able to do the dumb boob-heavy stuff
that earned him a spot in a surprising number of soldier’s lives.
Beyond implications of national identity, politics and informational comics as a form,
this era transformed Eisner’s goals as a graphic storyteller. “PS Magazine” matters because it
changed the cartoonist’s career, and documents his internal evolution during the period
when he led comics from being almost exclusively treated as irrelevant and disposable to
holding a new level of cultural esteem.
Eisner because he redefined comics a means of communication. He’s not called
“The Godfather of the Graphic Novel,” for nothing. His life story has been retold like
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Batman’s origin myth. What he made has been consumed, translated and discussed to a
degree in Art Speigelman’s ballpark. He worked with what had been established about
comics starting when he was just a child, then broke through the limitations of the form. He
explained why he did what he did in some of the best analyses of graphic narrative ever
written, and is beloved the world over for doing that.
This wartime period of his fundamentally influenced modern comics, if only by
virtue of coming out immediately before “A Contract With God.” Whatever creative
trajectory Eisner traced between enlisting in the US Military during World War II and
resigning from his post at PS Magazine, it was followed by the publication of a text that
redefined mainstream understandings of comics as an entire media. On the basis of that
alone, this historical period deserves greater critical attention. Though illuminations of
Eisner’s life and work have been numerous, authors and documentarians have treated his
wartime output as a quirky footnote or patriotic endeavor beyond reproach.
These comics are an early, small innovative step for the form of comics journalism.
Now that the practice of comics journalism has been explored an a spectrum of captivating
ways, with varied niche success stories from across the media industry landscape, it’s
tempting to gloss over the news form’s rag-tag coming-of-age. Eisner’s wartime
informational comics were designed for mass consumption on an international scale, serving
up a contemporaneous vision of life during wartime in a different way than traditional
newsprint political cartoons, comic books or strips. Such forays into non-traditional media
set the stage for more advanced, accurate or nuanced comics journalism to come.
For informational comics, the means by which readers are introduced to facts and
concrete instructional points matters a great deal. That’s what Jüngst tells us. So
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understanding “PS Magazine” can help modern information comics analysts decipher how
comics are or are not working.
Eisner used dumb guys as his focalisers and a busty civilian woman as his expert. If
you believe Scott McCloud and his other legions of fans, he was a genius of visual metaphor.
If you believe “How To Read Donald Duck,” he’s a hegemonic supporter of
heteronormativity. If you believe Jüngst, as I’m suggesting is most fruitful as a means of
analyzing these comics, he was dedicated to relating to his audience and his choice to bail
suggests his creative output was cripplingly limited during his employ in the US Military, and
the tension between how he saw war and what he was drawing was so severe he quit to
found a new literary form dedicated to the incomprehensible complexity, depth and
dynamicity of human existence.
The technological focus lives on. “PS Magazine” sure isn’t about hacking Jeeps
anymore, though. It’s not that drones are being used for everything because it’s just what the
government wants and they’re shoving it on citizens. But there are drones everywhere
because that’s turned out to be the kind of warstuff that’s less problematic.
When the military attempted to address gender and sexuality in comics in 2002 the
results were disastrous. That’s too bad, particularly since comics can be such a fruitful way to
discuss gender and sexuality, including the politics of representation.
Eisner said he made “The Last Day In Vietnam” (2000) particularly because the
shortcomings of his nonfiction war comics resonated so deeply within him. To the end, he
thought portraying American wars in comics was a good idea. He was proud to have visited
frontlines in Vietnam to better represent the experiences of soldiers, despite the mental and
physical stress of the voyage.
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“The Last Day In Vietnam” is entirely different from his previous fact-based comics
on war. Previously employed tropes and stereotypes are conspicuously absent. Gone are the
young men groping at imaginary pin-up girls. “The world’s best equipment” has disappeared
from the battlefield; technology is never at the foreground of the narrative, nor do female
bodies like Connie Rodd’s make an appearance. By the end of his career, Eisner chose to
depict sexuality during US Military involvement in Vietnam with an unnerving, gritty,
wordless story of a young man being mutilated by a Vietcong prostitute.
Eisner is an obvious cartoonist. His appreciation for immediately recognizable
symbolism extended to the degree that he vehemently advanced theories tying people’s
physical appearance to their internal character,
58
despite such theories’ role in the Third
Reich’s eugenics agenda.
But Eisner’s infamous unflappability may be overstated. With American ideological
unity seriously under pressure, compounded by his own personal issues, Eisner experienced
a crisis in 1971. After quitting “PS,” no longer did Eisner work to serve what he understood
as a homogenous, mass American readership. Beginning with “A Contract With God,” there
is a much brighter strand of social complexity in his work.
One amazingly clear example of how Eisner re-evaluated what he was trying to do by
appealing to his audience the way he did during his “PS” days is the appearance of the Judaic
tradition in his comics. Before “A Contract With God” Eisner had cartoon annual Christmas
material for three decades. After 1971, his annual paeans to Christmas were discontinued.
Instead Jewishness became central to his work.
Rather than seeing this as a reaction to Christianity, it’s more the perceived
‘Americanness’ of Christmas that initially attracted Eisner. There is never an appearance of

58
Largely outgrowths of phrenology.
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Jesus Christ in his comics. By drawing Santa Claus, Eisner placed his work within America’s
traditional national identity. As he frames his experience of heading to war in his
autobiographical “To The Heart Of The Storm,” Eisner felt confronted with a crisis of
identity within the military, when his right to claim Americaness conflicted with his religious
and genealogical background.
Eisner really was involved in this big national change, in his own way. Dude was in a
crisis state when he quit “PS.” He stopped making comics as he imagined they could be
understood by an audience of shoulders. He returned to the urban settings and started
talking about Jewishness.
It’s important that Eisner and the military made this stuff because how life is
portrayed in comics matters. Deconstructing the meaning of this media helps us understand
the politics of representation and the process of creative communication.
One thing this thesis doesn’t deal with fully is what it means that Connie Rodd is the
subject of the male gaze to such a degree. The subject of the male gaze as a social and
psychological presence in comics has been written about to a degree that this essay does not
do justice to. Also, the geopolitical and cultural significance of Eisner’s military work being
translated into multiple languages and distributed overseas deserves a great deal more
attention. There are a number of authors who have written with relevance to the matter.
Their names are included among other pertinent contributors to the fields of comics and
political theory in the bibliography of this essay.

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Bibliography
Alleyne, Mark D. News Revolution: Political And Economic Decisions About Global Information.
USA: St. Martin’s Press, 1997.

Andelman, Bob. Will Eisner: A Spirited Life. USA: M Press Books, 2005.

Barker, Martin. Comics: Ideology, Power And The Critics. Great Britain: Manchester University
Press, 1989.

Campbell, Eddie (ed.) PS Magazine: The Best Of Preventative Maintenance Monthly. USA: Abrams
Comicarts, 2008.

Chute, Hillary L. Graphic Women: Life Narrative & Contemporary Comics. USA: Columbia
University Press, 2010.

De Bruin, Marjan & Ross, Karen (eds.). Gender And Newsroom Cultures: Identities At Work.
USA: Hampton Press Inc., 2004.

Dorfman, Ariel & Mattelart, Armand. How To Read Donald Duck. Chile: Siglo XXI Editores,
1972.

Dierick, Charles & Lefêvre, Pascal (eds.) Forging A New Medium: The Comic Strip In The
Nineteenth Century. Belgium: VUB University Press, 1998.

Dittmer, Jason. Captain America And The Nationalist Superhero: Metaphors, Narratives, And
Geopolitics. USA: Temple University Press. 2013.

Eisner, Will. The Spirit: Femmes Fatales. USA: DC Comics, 2008.

Fitzgerald, Paul E. Will Eisner And P.S. Magazine. USA: Self-Published By Fitzgerald, 2005.

Franklin, Bob (ed.). Social Policy, The Media And Misrepresentation. Great Britain: Routledge,
1999.

Graham, Richard L. Government Issue: Comics For The People, 1940s-2000s. USA: Abrams
Comicarts, 2011.

Inge, M. Thomas (ed.). Will Eisner: Conversations. USA: University Press Of Mississippi, 2011.

Inglis, Fred. People’s Witness: The Journalist In Modern Politics. USA: Yale University Press, 2002.

Jüngst, Heike Elisabeth. Information Comics: Knowledge Transfer In A Popular Format. Germany:
Peter Lang, 2010.

Madison, Nathan Vernon. Anti-Foreign Imagery In American Pulps And Comic Books, 1920 to
1960. USA: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2013.

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McAllister, Matthew P., Sewell, Jr., Edward H. & Gordon, Ian (eds.). Comics & Ideology. USA:
Peter Lang Publishing, 2001.

Nicholson, Michael. A State Of War Exists: Reporters In The Line Of Fire. Great Britain:
Biteback Publishing, 2012.

Pedelty, Mark. War Stories: The Culture Of Foreign Correspondents. Great Britain: Routledge,
1995.

Pustz, Matthew. Comic Book Culture: Fanboys And True Believers. USA: University Press Of
Mississippi, 1999.

Piepmeier, Alison. Girl Zines: Making Media, Doing Feminism. USA: New York University
Press, 2009.

Rodríguez, Clemencia. Citizens’ Media Against Armed Conflict: Disrupting Violence In Colombia.
USA: University Of Minnesota Press. 2011.

Schumacher, Michael. Will Eisner: A Dreamer’s Life In Comics. USA: Bloomsbury, 2010.

Tabachnick, Stephen E. (ed). Teaching The Graphic Novel. USA: Modern Language Association
Of America, 2009.

Versaci, Rocco. This Book Contains Graphic Language: Comics As Literature. Great Britain:
Continuum, 2007.

York, Chris & Rafiel (eds.). Comic Books And The Cold War 1946-1962: Essays On Graphic
Treatment Of Communism, The Code And Social Concerns. USA: McFarland & Company, Inc.,
2012.

Abstract (if available)

Abstract Immediately before earning his title as “Godfather Of The Graphic Novel” with A Contract With God, Will Eisner spent three decades producing informational comics for the U.S. Military. This era of his career has received only superficial analysis, and modern theoretical approaches offer valuable new ways of understanding these comics. Problematic as representations of gender, race and American nationalism, they nevertheless reflect Eisner’s advanced abilities and interest in comics as a form of communication. But perhaps most importantly, these comics illustrate a broad shift in political ideology, prompting Eisner’s creative departure from mainstream American culture and leading him to tell more personally‐relevant stories through long‐form graphic novels.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Stecklein, Graham Clark (author)

Core Title Eisner’s war: what the U.S. military’s WWII informational comics reveal about politics and audience engagement

School Annenberg School for Communication

Degree Master of Arts

Degree Program Journalism

Publication Date 07/16/2015

Defense Date 05/16/2014

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag American politics,comics,gender,graphic novels,ideology,OAI-PMH Harvest,war reporting,Will Eisner

Format application/pdf (imt)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Smith, Erna R. (committee chair), Feuer, William (committee member), Jenkins, Henry (committee member)

Creator Email gcsteck@gmail.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c3-442642

Unique identifier UC11287681

Identifier etd-SteckleinG-2705.pdf (filename),usctheses-c3-442642 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-SteckleinG-2705.pdf

Dmrecord 442642

Document Type Thesis

Format application/pdf (imt)

Rights Stecklein, Graham Clark

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA