Politics in the Gutters

American Politicians and Elections in Comic Book Media

Christina M. Knopf

• Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781496834249
• Topic: Littérature
• Subtopic: Critique littéraire de bandes dessinées et de romans graphiques

From the moment Captain America punched Hitler in the jaw, comic books have always been political, and whether it is Marvel's chairman Ike Perlmutter making a campaign contribution to Donald Trump in 2016 or Marvel's character Howard the Duck running for president during America's bicentennial in 1976, the politics of comics have overlapped with the politics of campaigns and governance. Pop culture opens avenues for people to declare their participation in a collective project and helps them to shape their understandings of civic responsibility, leadership, communal history, and present concerns. Politics in the Gutters: American Politicians and Elections in Comic Book Media opens with an examination of campaign comic books used by the likes of Herbert Hoover and Harry S. Truman, follows the rise of political counterculture comix of the 1960s, and continues on to the graphic novel version of the 9/11 Report and the cottage industry of Sarah Palin comics. It ends with a consideration of comparisons to Donald Trump as a supervillain and a look at comics connections to the pandemic and protests that marked the 2020 election year. More than just escapist entertainment, comics offer a popular yet complicated vision of the American political tableau. Politics in the Gutters considers the political myths, moments, and mimeses, in comic books—from nonfiction to science fiction, superhero to supernatural, serious to satirical, golden age to present day—to consider how they represent, re-present, underpin, and/or undermine ideas and ideals about American electoral politics.

HEY, VOTERS! COMICS! CAMPAIGN COMICS, ELECTION SPECIALS, AND GRAPHIC BIOGRAPHIES

During the 1948 presidential campaign, the polls, the pundits, and the news outlets all agreed that the Republican nominee, New York Governor Thomas Dewey, would defeat incumbent President Harry S. Truman. Even Bess Truman believed her husband would lose the election. Nevertheless, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) worked to build support for their candidate through branding and storytelling. As part of their strategy, they issued a sixteen-page graphic biography of Truman’s life, The Story of Harry S. Truman. The DNC released more than three million copies in October, just weeks before the election, targeting farmers, African Americans, labor unions, and veterans—the groups most likely to swing their vote to Truman. The comic, written by Malcolm Ater, summarized Truman’s life from his birth in 1884 to his role as president towards the end of World War II and after. Although there is no way to know the extent of influence the comic book had, Truman’s win by a margin of 1,188,054 votes is conceivably covered by the three million recipients of the graphic biography (Truman Library Institute 2016).

Truman was not the first political candidate, nor even the first president, to use a comic book as part of his campaign strategy. In 1928, Bob “Sat” Satterfield produced a prototype comic book for Herbert Hoover’s presidential bid. A series of eighteen pages, each containing a four-panel narrative about Hoover’s life, was published by Allied Printing in Washington, DC, as Picture Life of a Great American—though it was more likely read by many Americans serialized in their local newspapers (Scott and Parks 1992; Dinschel n.d.). Four years later, an anti-Hoover political comic book by cartoonist Frederick Opper promoted the election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, ’Erbie and ’Is Playmates, featuring Opper’s famous characters Happy Hooligan, Alfonse, and Gaston (BOOT 2016). Truman’s 1948 comic book message, however, was the first to truly recognize and tap into the potential of the medium. The comic book format was popularized in 1938 with the creation of Superman in Action Comics, and World War II helped contribute to a large and eager marketplace for the medium.¹ By 1948, more than sixty million comic books were being sold each month, and many of the readers were veterans who used comic books as entertainment in the war and were now key votes for politicians (Scott and Parks 1992; Truman Library Institute 2016). By 1950, one out of four adults read comics, and four out of every five urban adults read comics; comic audiences were spread throughout all levels of society, though a higher percentage of the college-educated read them than those with a grade-school education; and comic book readers were also more likely to spend more time listening to the radio, reading magazines, and attending movies than those who did not read comics (Dirksen Congressional Center Staff n.d.).

Recognizing comics’ reach, the Truman comic was used as a model for US Senator Scott Lucas’s (D-IL) 1950 campaign against Republican challenger Everett M. Dirksen. The Illinois Democratic State Central Committee produced a sixteen-page graphic biography that told a story of Lucas’s ancestors, his early life of hardship, his education and law practice, and his public service, from election to the House and then Senate to his role as US Senate Majority Leader and his stance on campaign issues. Scripted by Malcolm Ater and produced by Commercial Comics, just like Truman’s graphic biography, the comic had a press run of one million at a cost of $13,250—well beyond the means of the Dirksen campaign. In the ensuing years, at least twenty more politicians—in races ranging from lieutenant governor of Louisiana to president of the Philippines—had campaign comics created by Ater’s Commercial Comics. Alabama Governor John Patterson used comics twice, supposedly convincing his opponent George Wallace to eventually team with Ater to create “Alabama Needs the Little Judge, George Wallace for the Big Job” (Dirksen Congressional Center Staff n.d.; Christopher n.d.). This comic, with a strong pro-segregation message, is credited as a key factor in Wallace’s win and his rise to become one of the South’s most iconic opponents to civil rights (Persoff 2007). By one account, seven out of ten candidates who used Ater’s Commercial Comics as part of their campaign messages won their elections (BOOT 2016). The medium was so popular during the 1950s and into the early 1960s that Dwight Eisenhower used at least four comics in his two bids for president and, in Arkansas, even candidates for county-level seats had graphic biographies created and published by local newspapers (Scott and Parks 1992). Some of these comics, such as one for Richard Hughes in his bid for New Jersey governor, even had Spanish-language editions (Christopher n.d.).²

In the United States, comic books as campaign propaganda fell to the wayside as television gained in popularity. Sequential art, however, continued to be a powerful means of campaign communication. Political cartoons, recognized for their ability to offer new visions of campaigns or candidates, are part of the composite of political messages received by the public and have thus been embraced by politicians (Conners 2005; Morrison 1969). Not only did President Bill Clinton invite cartoonist Mike Luckovich aboard Air Force One during his 1996 re-election campaign, but President Donald Trump tweeted political cartoons as part of his communication with the public on multiple occasions (Conners 2005; Borchers 2018). In 2004, both the Republican and the Democratic National Committees issued political cartoons mocking their opponents (Conners 2005). Comic books, too, are still engaged in the electoral process, though they now more likely come from commercial entities separate from the candidates’ official messages. Though there are presently relatively few studies that focus on comic books explicitly used for political communication, those that do adeptly demonstrate the potential of the medium as a culturally significant means of presenting compelling political dramas with the ability to garner a broad audience (Brantner and Lobinger 2014; Scott and Parks 1992; Weiner and Barba 2012; Yanes 2012; Dawe 2013; Mahrt 2008/2009). Moreover, comics studies regularly prove the capacity of comics to both challenge and legitimize political identities and ideologies (e.g., Berlatsky 2015; Devarenne 2008; Diebler 2006; DiPaolo 2011; Dittmer 2013; Wanzo 2009).

Beginning in 2009, TidalWave Productions (formerly Bluewater Productions), an independent comic book/graphic novel press based in Portland, Oregon, led the market with political biography titles. Mostly unauthorized, TidalWave’s biographies attempted to leverage the power of celebrity in order to broaden their distribution reach. Their first foray into political biographies started in 2009 with the creation of Female Force, a series celebrating influential women in politics, media, and society, and Political Power, featuring past and present opinion leaders in politics, government, and media from the United States and around the world.

In 2015, TidalWave Productions started a special run of Political Power issues featuring the 2016 presidential candidates—from those that “also-ran” to those that voters wished had run, including Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Rand Paul, Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, and Elizabeth Warren (Capps 2015). TidalWave publisher Darren Davis explained, “As a reluctant reader, I found the comic book form easy to access, so I always believed comics could both entertain and teach,” thus he followed up on the 2016 Republican focus with attention to the Democrats in 2020 (in Marston 2020, para. 3). TidalWave both released new stories featuring candidates from the 2020 Democratic primary, including New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and South Bend Mayor Peter Buttigieg, and promoted its older comics for candidates Vice President Joe Biden, Senator Elizabeth Warren, and Senator Bernie Sanders.

IDW, Antarctic Press, and BOOM! Studios have also been active publishers of political comics. BOOM! Studios created a special limited series entitled Decision 2012. Issues were planned for biographies of incumbent Barack Obama and potential Republican challengers Michelle Bachmann, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Jon Huntsman, Sarah Palin, Ron Paul, Rick Perry, Mitt Romney, and Rick Santorum. The initiative was designed to engage voters in a comic book-driven straw poll whose winner was determined by preorders; those candidates earning fewer than 1,500 votes/orders were dropped from the race/publication (Khouri 2011). The poll resulted in the release of issues with nonpartisan biographies of Obama, Bachmann, Paul, and Palin. In 2008, IDW also created informative biography comics for the election: a two-volume set of comic biographies/graphic novellas in 2008 called Presidential Material. Written by Andrew Helfer from thorough research in public records, the books were released in October 2008, just a month before the election, to “provide a straight and unbiased look at the two presumptive party nominees”—Barack Obama and John McCain (IDW n.d.). Likewise, Antarctic Press, known more for political parody comic books such as President Evil, Tremendous Trump, and Steampunk Palin, Antarctic Press released McCain: The Comic Book and Obama: The Comic Book in 2008, with a special “inauguration edition” of Obama in 2009.

GOLDEN AGE CAMPAIGN COMICS

Campaign-produced graphic biographies frequently follow the same basic narrative formula: as observed by researchers Kim Allen Scott and Susan Parks, campaign comics of the 1950s and ’60s typically offered a revelation of a candidate’s humble origins, work ethic, athletic prowess, and military service. Humble origins were demonstrated through images of a rural life. A solid work ethic was established by showing the candidates doing both tough and menial labors, working as coal miners and lumberjacks or washing dishes to earn their way through school. Sports achievements and military service both provided campaign comics with action sequences (Scott and Parks 1992). Another common theme among many of the comics was an indication of the candidate’s religious faith. Beyond these shared characteristics, comics varied in their presentation, responding to contemporary issues, sociopolitical climates, and biographical distinctions of their moments and subjects. Typically, the campaign comics opened with a vignette that established the importance of the civic moment and/or the unique accomplishments or strengths of the candidate.

President Hoover’s 1928 campaign comic established his Quaker heritage, modest origins, athletic abilities, and responsible work ethic by the time he was ten—or, to put it another way, within just the first five of its eighteen pages. The first two pages, or eight panels, however, were not about Hoover but about his family and ancestry—Quakers from France and Holland who settled on farms in Maryland and eventually migrated to Iowa, founding the town of West Branch and making a “hard-earned living from the soil.” Such qualities were shown to be both part of his heritage as well as America’s. Such an opening was representative of Hoover’s social philosophy, political principles, and historical place. He had an acute perception of the difference between the Old World, which he equated with the imperialism and social hierarchies of Europe, and the New World, which he saw as a place of equality and opportunity in accordance with his own upward mobility from rural orphan to engineer, humanitarian, and statesman (Nash 2003). Moreover, as Kendrick A. Clements (2010) suggests, Hoover served as a bridge between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, shaped by a rural small-town life and working in the modern profession of engineering. All of this is reflected in the way Picture Life of a Great American establishes Hoover’s family as hard-working European immigrant farmers before introducing Hoover himself as an enterprising youth (see figure 1.1).

Figure 1.1. These scenes from the Hoover campaign comic Picture Life of a Great American (1928) help to establish Hoover as a bridge between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

By comparison, President Truman’s 1948 comic recognized the impact World War II had on comic book content and readership, opening not with Truman’s ancestry or even his youth but with battle scenes from 1945, reflecting the imagery of mainstream comics in the years during and immediately following the war (see figure 1.2). Against this action-packed setting, readers were taken to the announcement of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s death and Truman’s ascension from vice president to president. From there, the comic asked, “And what was the background of the new President?” and thusly introduced readers to Truman’s forefathers who settled in western Missouri, where Truman himself was born and raised on a farm, attended church on Sundays, and became a bank clerk before enlisting to fight in the Great War. Truman’s military experience provided two more action-packed pages of battle scenes highlighting Truman’s own heroic derring-do. Such dramatic presentations of warfare, and candidates’ participation in it, was a prominent feature of postwar campaign comics. This strategy responded to an electorate comprised of politically aware and engaged veterans who read comic books (Scott and Parks 1992; Duncan, Smith, and Levitz 2015).

Figure 1.2. Scenes from The Story of Harry S. Truman (left) echo those of popular war comics of the era, such as that seen on the cover of True Comics #18 (right).

George Wallace was elected governor of Alabama in 1962 (and made three unsuccessful bids for the presidency) and was known for supporting “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.” Like the Truman comic’s opening war sequence, Wallace’s campaign comic opened with a vignette focused on the pressing political concerns of the election, the sociopolitical worldview of the readers, and the defining characteristic of the candidate: Wallace’s comic began with a conversation between two citizens that offers a flashback to Wallace’s fight for state rights, in order to uphold segregation in Alabama, against the federal government’s civil rights commission in 1959. Following three and a half pages celebrating Wallace’s defense of Alabama and segregation, the comic then became more biographical, telling readers about Wallace growing up in a Christian family, working on his father’s farm, being a star student and multi-sport athlete in high school, and then flying combat missions in the Air Force when “Japan was being softened up for America’s great victory” (Friends of George C. Wallace n.d.).

The campaign comic for Robert Meyner’s 1953 New Jersey gubernatorial bid broke with the standard biographical formula. Rather than focusing solely on Meyner, it both named and attacked his opponents, going so far as to link them to organized crime (Christopher n.d.). Similarly, in Massachusetts, Governor Paul Dever’s campaign produced a comic biography to tell his own story but also had comics designed to undermine his opponents. In 1950, the Dever campaign used Man Against the People: The True Record of Arthur W. Coolidge, which offered a comparison of the lives and political records of Dever and his opponent, former Massachusetts lieutenant governor Arthur Coolidge. The comic was prepared by a coalition of labor groups supporting Dever’s reelection bid (Mount Holyoke n.d.). The cover described Arthur Coolidge as “a selfish politician who hides his true feelings behind a cloak of deception … who pretends to work for the people but who really works only for his own ‘state street’ gang.” The comic book then presented Coolidge voting against an investigation of unethical practices by electric companies, against regulating the rates of loan sharks, against simpler wording of questions on ballots, against absentee ballots for incapacitated voters, against increased unemployment benefits, against protection for pregnant workers, against increased worker disability payments, and against an array of veteran benefits—before losing the gubernatorial race to Paul Dever. Next, the comic contrasted Coolidge’s negative actions with Devers’s positive record in favor of working people. A similar campaign comic book was released on behalf of Dever in 1952: The Career of a Reactionary in Politics: A Life Story of Christian Archibald Herter. The comic, published by Massachusetts United Labor, criticized Herter’s political record, encouraging readers to vote for Dever instead (Conolly 2017).

The US government also occasionally used biographical comic books to introduce politicians to readers. During World War II, a comic book telling the life story of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was produced by the Office of War Information in at least six different languages for distribution to American allies (BOOT 2016; Kimble and Goodnow 2017). In 1961, the government distributed John F. Kennedy: New U.S. President to US embassies to introduce the newly elected president to the worldwide public (BOOT 2016). The comic revealed Kennedy’s childhood, upbringing, activities, education, military service during World War II, and entrance into politics.

CONTEMPORARY ELECTION COMICS

A modern twist on campaign comics occurred in a 2017 race for a seat in the New York State Assembly. Democratic candidate Keith Batman, from Cayuga County in Assembly District 126, capitalized on the spelling of his last name to promote himself as a crusader and a hero for the people. A series of campaign mailers were designed with comic book style elements: frames and gutters, speech balloons, explosive borders, and pointillistic backgrounds reminiscent of the four-color printing process originally us...