Comic Art Propaganda: A Graphic History
As comics gain widespread acceptance, we are finding new ways to look at them. This book focuses on comics as both negative and positive propaganda vehicles. Lavishly illustrated, the discussion is served up in bite-size sections on racial stereotypes and images of war, communism, crime, religion, sexuality, and politics. Although Stromberg tries to present both sides of many propaganda-laden issues in comics, and for the most part succeeds, some topics (such as the negative aspects of war, the positives of communism, or the dangers of the Patriot Act) have few examples. He isn’t afraid to include some big-time comics in his discussion, dissecting the racism in Hergés Tintin stories and noting the simplicity of the mouse and cat images in Maus (1986). Mostly, though, the observations are simplistic and rely on the accompanying images to drive the message home, perhaps making the book’s most critical point: because of the immediacy of the visuals, the comics format is more handily used for propaganda than prose is, and it can be bent to serve any ideology. --Stephen Weiner