Even the most cursory glance at contemporary comics scholarship will reveal a simple fact long known and only recently given credence: comics are a legitimate narrative and artistic form that can do complex and fascinating things. I am delighted to be able to state this with a heavy undertone of “but you already knew that.” Comics scholars have spent a long time braying for legitimacy for our art and, now that it is upon us, the task falls to go back and show how older texts (the ones still being called “pulp” or “trash”) are just as worthy. This is exactly the aim of The 10 Cent War: Comic Books, Propaganda, and World War II, which collects together essays on a broad range of theoretical approaches to Golden Age comics (those published between 1938 and 1950), with a common focus on propaganda. What is novel about this collection is precisely the focus. While much of the primary material has been the subject of a large amount of comics scholarship already, the chapters in this collection aim to show how these comics had a specific function both within the home front war effort and for serving troops in theatre: the dissemination of propaganda and the boosting of morale in demographic groups that other forms of media did not effectively reach.

Of the twelve chapters of this book, several focus on two specific groups: children and women. In their essays on children and comics, Jon Judy and Brad Palmer and John R. Katsion discuss how the use of children as sidekicks and active combatants helped to encourage pro-military feeling in the younger generations and to give these readers a role within the wider conflict. As Judy and Palmer write, “children were told that instead of wishing to fly, they should be wishing to fight” (67). Katsion concurs, adding that these comics “served as a vehicle through which to model behaviour and attitudes” (91). Although it is always with some measure of trepidation that we should approach any belief that we can tell how something was received or what impact it may have had on the social feeling of the time, these chapters clearly show how and why these comics laid the groundwork for a generation of readers. It was not just children who existed on the margins of the war, but women too. Christina Knopf's chapter on women soldiers and comics breaks with the long-held view that women do not feature in comics of war and that their service exists on the fringes of “true” war work. In her analysis of comics depicting WACs (Women's Army Auxiliary Corps), WAVEs (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service) and other female-only divisions, Knopf shows how these comics capture much of the public opinion of women's war service and the opinion of those who served. Characters like War Nurse, Winnie the WAC and Ripple served to bolster women's morale and represent the tremendous importance of the work of women to the war effort. These three chapters together are representative of the book's premise regarding both propaganda and the “reach” of these comics. These demographic groups are often marginalized in any discussion of the war and its associated media; they are likewise often ignored in discussions of comics as “serious” narrative art. This is a clear oversight and one that this collection ably corrects.

As Goodnow writes at the conclusion of her chapter on Superman and allegory, comics “are pulses for the national political culture” (127). The entire collection testifies to this and the essays contained within clearly show that comics – even those published cheaply and quickly and aimed at children – should not be dismissed as tools of government and ideological indoctrination. In our current age of post-truth politics, we see propagandist statements and popular-culture artefacts at almost every turn. It is comforting to know that this is by no means a new invention, though the enemy is far less clearly defined, and the aim lacks the easy reach depicted in these comics. Perhaps this is the true success of this collection: not so much what it says about the past, but that it gives a framework for similar analyses of our current state. It is a book not only of “then” but of “now.”