GUEST POST BY THE MIGHTY BARRY PEARL - POLITICS AND HISTORY IN COMICS...

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This is a post about American politics, but it is not POLITICAL.  Of course, we can no longer discuss politics anywhere without it becoming nasty.

I received several “comic” books in the last two months that are political and now history.  People, even cartoonists, write about what affects them and what they care about.  Sometimes that is politics.  So when does politics become history and something we can discuss?

The Dick Tracy books feature a character that is strictly “law and order”.  Those are his words, not mine.  Chester Gould (Tracy's creator) was openly against many of the court reforms given to suspects and those show up in his stories.  (The Dick Tracy strip above is from 1971.)

Walt Kelly, in Pogo, takes a “liberal’s” look at the 1960 presidential race.  Pogo was incredibly innovative and well-drawn… and well-lettered.  Both Gould and Kelly showed their political interests throughout the run of their strips.

George Takai, best known as Sulu from Star Trek, has written a graphic novel entitled “They Called US Enemy” (2019).  It is about his life in the American Internment Camps for the Japanese during WW II.  The story does not shy away from the prejudicial laws and attitudes of the U.S. government, and citizens, during World War II.  Gosh, this is full of history and politics that even reflect what is going on today.

March (2015) is the three volume graphic novel set that won an Eisner Award.  It is about Congressman John Lewis, recounting his life in the civil rights movement of the 1960s.  He was the son of an Alabama shareholder who went to a segregated school.  As shown here, Mr. Lewis received beatings from state troopers during civil rights marches and became a congressman.

Finally, last month I got Captain America Truth (2003).  The Tuskegee Experiment (1931-1972) was a clinical study conducted between 1932 and 1972 by the U.S. Public Health Service.  The purpose of this study was to observe the destructive path of untreated syphilis.  The African-American men in the study were only told they were receiving free health care from the United States government, but were unknowingly infected with this horrible disease.  And they were denied the cure, penicillin, when it was released.  Captain America (by Robert Morales and Kyle Baker) adapts this real story to show the terrible effects of the super-soldier serum as it was experimented on using unsuspecting African-Americans.

I really got all these books within a few weeks.  Even the ones created recently are looking back at past events.  When we let them, comics can give us an interesting view of our own history.  And current events.

Posted in: Cartoons