This post is part of the Kluge Center’s 25 for 25, in honor of the Kluge Center’s 25th anniversary, celebrating 25 books that were written thanks to the Kluge Center’s support. Read the introductory post to the series here.
The 24th edition of All-Star Comics hit global newsstands, drug stores, and military bases in 1945. Titled “This Is Our Enemy,” the comic featured the Justice Society of America, including the Flash, Wonder Woman, and Green Lantern. On the cover image, these superheroes watch in distress as the four horsemen of the apocalypse destroy a city while flying the Nazi flag. Beyond the cover, the text of the comic spends a full forty pages condemning Nazism and German culture.
This comic was more than an organic reflection of its historical context. It developed from the strategic collaboration between the Writers’ War Board (WWB), a quasi-governmental organization, and the comic book publisher. As historian Paul Hirsch explores in his book Pulp Empire: The Secret History of Comic Book Imperialism (University of Chicago, 2021), this was part of a broader, secret initiative by the United States government to use comic books as propaganda during World War II and later during the Cold War.
Why comics? Hirsch identifies four main reasons. First, they were immensely popular. By 1955, comic book publishers collectively sold hundreds of millions of comic books each year globally across races, genders, and socio-economic classes. Secondly, a large portion of this readership was adults, including members of the armed forces. The War Advertising Council (WAC) hoped that comic books could both educate and entertain servicemen, half of whom regularly read comic books. Third, the simple visuals and text gave comic books the appearance of being accessible to everyone. Finally, the poor reputation of comic books worked in the government’s favor.
Often maligned as “trash” or “lowbrow,” comic books were written and illustrated by marginalized groups like women, African Americans, Asian Americans, and Jewish Americans who were barred from other jobs. With virtually no censorship or regulation, comics contained explicit language, references to drug use, nudity, racism, and graphic violence that were not typically seen in other media at that time. This perceived low status provided the perfect disguise for propaganda. The government, argues Hirsch, could promote aggressive storylines while hiding its influence from an American public that viewed government propaganda as a symptom of totalitarianism.
In the United States, comic book publishers willingly worked with the WWB to shape storylines and characters with the goal of hardening public opinion toward “America’s enemies.” The WWB pushed publishers to equate Nazis and Germans, encouraging racial and ethnic hatred abroad to justify total war. Paradoxically, at home, they commissioned comics promoting racial tolerance in an effort to encourage unity behind the war effort.
The government also produced its own comic books. The army and navy partnered with publishers starting in 1943, with the goal of boosting enrollment. The Office of Inter-American Affairs (OIAA), which was first part of the Executive Office of the President and later transferred to the US Department of State, shipped millions of comic books throughout Latin America to rally opposition to fascism and totalitarianism. In this case, the government produced its own comics and did not attempt to hide the propaganda. They condescendingly assumed that Latin American readers would be uneducated and not shrewd enough to be wary of American propaganda, says Hirsch.
After WWII, comics filled with sexual themes, violence, racism, and crime flooded the market, explains Hirsch. This imagery clashed with Cold War diplomacy. Policymakers feared that the representations of white Americans as greedy, violent, and racist would harm the economic and diplomatic aims of the United States. How could the United States argue moral superiority relative to the Soviet Union when popular depictions of the country in comics like Shock SuspenStories, Crimes by Women, and Web of Evil were so vulgar? On the other hand, anti-racist comics also raised concerns because government officials feared they could disillusion US servicemen asked to defend a racist society.
A psychiatrist, Fredric Wertham, was among those who questioned the content and role of comic books in the US. The anti-comic book campaign he started resulted in a public investigation by the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency in 1954. In response, the comic book industry voluntarily funded the Comics Magazine Association of America (CMAA), an organization that reviewed and approved comic books of major distributors. The CMAA Comics Code Authority took effect that same year. The code banned dark humor, violence, nudity, mentions of drug use, horror, and monsters. Hirsch highlights that many modern superheroes like Marvel’s Iron Man, the Fantastic Four, and Thor were created in this more constrained environment. While they remained patriotic in tone, these later comic book characters were not directly influenced by government authorities.
Through carefully curated evidence, Hirsch shows how the United States government used media embedded in popular culture to support its public diplomacy efforts during WWII and the Cold War. The ghosts of this major effort still reverberate today in the midst of the massively successful superhero franchise.
According to Hirsch, this comic book imperialism never fully ended. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), he notes, was still commissioning comic books as late as the 1980s.
Hirsch spent time in residence at the Library of Congress as a Caroline and Erwin Swann Foundation for Caricature and Cartoon Fellow in 2015. During this time, he drew from thousands of original comic books not available anywhere else, as well as from the papers of Fredric Wertham and the papers of the Writers’ War Board. The Library holds the largest publicly available comic book collection in the world.
Hirsch’s book received the 2022 Ray and Pat Browne Award from the Popular Culture Association.
You can read more about Hirsch’s work here and learn more about the Library’s comic book collection here:
How the Government Connects through Pop Culture: From Comics to Memes
Let’s Talk Comics: War and Military
Celebrating Comics’ Champion Stan Lee
Related Links:
The Senate Comic Book Hearings of 1954
This post, and others in this series, does not constitute the Library’s endorsement of the views of the individual scholar or an endorsement of the publisher.