The 10 Cent War: Comic Books, Propaganda, and World War II
2019; Oxford University Press; Volume: 106; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1093/jahist/jaz287
ISSN1945-2314
Autores Tópico(s)Comics and Graphic Narratives
ResumoIt is of great interest when seemingly innocuous bits of ephemera become a way to show the thinking of people in the past. The 10 Cent War, edited by Trischa Goodnow and James J. Kimble, utilizes comic books in just this way. This volume's twelve essays discuss concepts of propaganda in comic books and how they exerted influence in a variety of ways. One of the most striking points in the book is laid out, quite simply in the introduction. While many readers might assume that these comics were sanctioned by the government (and there was some involvement), the majority of the concepts, images, and perceptions of the comics were driven by private industry. For a medium still perceived by some to be intended for children or simplistic readers, the concepts developed from this analysis prove to be quite deep. In Christina M. Knopf's article on women in the military, the comic book stories she looks at fit the gender perceptions of the time, featuring women often outside of combat—and danger. But this view is countered to an extent by Elliott Sawyer and Derek T. Buescher's discussion of Wonder Woman pushing gender expectations. While women were not often shown with firearms, they could still prove themselves dangerous and skilled. One such story, on the Russian sniper Liudmila Pavilchenko comes to mind, from “Russia's Sharpshooting Heroine ‘Saves Lives’ by Killing 309 Nazis,” in War Heroes (no. 3, Jan.–March 1943 Dell Comics, pp. 10–11).
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