The Comic Art of War
by Christina M. Knopf
McFarland and Company, 2015
$39.95; 252 pages
ISBN 9780786498352

I received this book for free as part of the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program.

Another textbook from my to-read pile, this one a detailed academic study of military cartoons, both official propaganda and the kind guys doodle to relieve stress or boredom.

I enjoyed flipping through and looking at the pictures, but this isn't a book I am interested in reading.

Christina M. Knopf, the author of The Comic Art of War, is an associate professor at SUNY-Potsdam (according to this book's back copy). I have a feeling that taking a class on this topic by her would be absolutely fascinating and that she would be able to use many more visual examples in that class. This book, probably intended as an accompanying textbook for that class, unfortunately has few such visual examples. In order to read the text-heavy text, one has to have an intense interest in the military and the military life across the last couple hundred years. Descriptions of these are very adequate but does not do much to pull in the non-military background reader such as myself -- more visual examples probably would have.

I have to say the most interesting chapter to me was Sex(es) in Battle (Chapter 6), where the issue of women in service is discussed along with openly gay service members. And lots of comics had addressed the problem of sexually transmitted diseases in service people.

This book is best for those with an academic interest in comics and/or the military. For those people, The Comic Art of War is useful to have, but for laypersons such as myself and my teenaged son, both of us interested in comics and graphic novels, it can be a very long (and at times a bit dry) exposure to the topic if the reader stays through it to the end. ( )

Well presented academic study of the role of cartoons in shaping both civilian and military perceptions of warfare. Suffers, as do most studies of the cartoon genre, from a deficit of examples. Since a cartoon is an entirety, except in the case of comic strips, publishers are traditionally reluctant to grant permission for reprinting, even for academic purposes. The same problem afflicts the study of song lyrics. Payment of copyright for each example would make a book of this length prohibitively expensive. This book will probably find it's main home in academic libraries or as a textbook. I can't really recommend this for a non-specialist since it is not light reading.

Primarily written for an academic audience, The Comic Art of War will be of use to historians, scholars, and cartoonists, but a typical reader will be disappointed by the lack of actual cartoons and strips included in the book and the overly academic writing style. Knopf focuses the chapters on themes such as combat, sexuality, civilians, and culture.

Even my general knowledge of comics felt that the author missed some opportunities to talk about Eisner's teaching comics for the military, the role the military had on artists, such as the King, Jack Kirby, Dr. Seuss's military comics, and Larry Hama's Marvel comic, The Nam. ( )

This is an academic survey of military cartooning from 1805-2014, though I'd say the biggest emphasis are in the WWI and II eras. The author has done a good job, and I think the book a good acquisition for academic libraries. Your taste as a reader for this type of book may vary. I felt the lack of reproduced examples of the cartoons discussed (and sure the lack of doing so is due to cost, especially where acquiring rights would be at issue.) Someone doing her own research would have access to examples elsewhere, but for the general reader that usefulness of the book is diminished because you can't see for yourself what is being discussed. The analysis does seem perceptive.