Comic Book Questions Answered: How Was World War II Depicted In Comics DURING World War II?

CBR

By Brian Cronin

Published Sep 9, 2008

Comic Book Questions Answered - where I answer whatever questions you folks might have about comic books (feel free to e-mail questions to me at bcronin@comicbookresources.com). Here is a link to an archive of all the past questions that have been answered so far.

Today's question is about how comics depicted World War II DURING World War II.

Reader Jeremy Block wanted to know about comic books during World War II that dealt with World War II.

An interesting time in comic books was directly before World War II, where Europe was at war and America was still divided with whether to get involved.

Comic books, however, were much willing to take stances on the war abroad (perhaps having something to do with the fact that most of the publishers still had familial ties to Europe, not to mention the fact that a good deal of the folks working in comics were Jewish), which led directly to the proliferation of the "patriotic hero."

The Shield, in the pages of MLJ's Pep Comics, was the first.

Lev Gleason's Daredevil #1 was one of the most straightforward...

Timely Comics' Captain America, though, was the most popular.

The famous shots of Captain America hitting Hitler, however, were put out BEFORE the United States went to war.

In true Golden Age fashion, the covers bore little connection to the interiors of the comic.

So the first year or so of Captain America Comics had Captain America fighting on the homefront against saboteurs. The first issue did introduce the Nazi supervillain, Red Skull.

Superman was doing a series of propaganda covers in the months leading up to Pearl Harbor...

and soon followed that with a direct response to the events of Pearl Harbor on the covers of Superman and Action Comics...

DC, as the most popular comic book company, steered clear of specifically dealing with the war in their comics, for the most part.

They mostly spent their efforts stressing the importance of purchasing War Bonds to finance the war and they did quite a nice job at that, with some dynamic covers...

Here's one, a little later on, with a different request for aid...

And, of course, while not asking for help with bonds, they also did standard war propaganda covers...

Eventually, though, while Batman would stay at home, DC decided to have Clark Kent become assigned to a Navy ship towards the end of the war (after they came up with a story why he could not go to war, as covered in a Comic Book Urban Legends Revealed installment a ways back).

Timely, meanwhile, quickly moved from fighting saboteurs to fighting fictional Nazis and Japanese villains...

Besides their fervent patriotism and striking cover work, these covers are also marked by some over-the-top racism towards America's enemies, in particular, the Japanese.

Fawcett Comics, probably the second-most popular comic book company during World War II, also mostly stayed out of the war (besides propaganda), but they got more involved than Superman...