“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” — Oscar Wilde.

Back in my First Comics days, I made the observation that the major difference between World War II and the Vietnam War was the Andrew Sisters. I was serious, and a surprisingly large number of people understood my reference. It’s much more easy to be culturally obscure these days.

For you young’uns out there, the Andrew Sisters were a trio of sisters — get it? — who were very patriotic and who sang pop-music-to-win-a-world-war-by. Probably their biggest hit at that time was “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” and, in my opinion, it remains quite good — catchy, amusing, patriotic, and life affirming. World War II was extremely popular as wars go, even among many of those drafted to fight in it. Capitalism being a thing, the song sold millions. The Sisters made eighteen movies; their first, Buck Privates, teamed them up with the great Shemp Howard as well as some other notable comedic performers.

Amusingly, their first big hit was 1937’s “Bei Mir Bist Du Schön”. According to iMDB, that song was a favorite of the Nazis until it was discovered that the song’s composers were Jewish. Art for art’s sake, as Oscar Wilde noted.

The Andrew Sisters lasted until 1967 and were still big when the Korean War started. However, times change. After World War II we were kinda sick of war, and we didn’t want our fathers and uncles and brothers to go back into bloody combat. The Andrews were still on the radio and were big in the new medium of television, but their public did not ask them to provide the same type of patriotic war support they had the previous decade… USO shows not withstanding.

These attitudes were mirrored in American comic books. During WWII, you couldn’t pick up a 10 cent fifty-two pager without all sorts of stories about how each Nazi and each Japanese soldier was a Doctor Doom-level threat. Of course you recall the cover of Captain America Comics #1, where the star-spangled-shield-slinger punched Adolf Hitler in the face.

Five years later, only a faint hint of star-spangled-saber-rattling was to be heard. Marvel (called Timely that week) tried to revive their still-slightly warm superheroes using Korea as a theme. This caused them very little financial gain. I’m still wondering how the hell super-Nazi Red Skull converted from fascism to Soviet communism, but I gather it had something to do with his first name.

Quality Comics kept most of their anti-red stuff to their crime and spy comics, but it was hard to avoid in their Blackhawk title. The Blackhawks were (and maybe still are) a bunch of international freedom fighters with their own air force, uniforms, weird weaponry and fight song — most left over from World War II — and thus the communist menace was rearing its ugly head. Except, we learned, in real comic book life commies are not ugly. The female leaders of the various shithole countries the Blackhawks defended certainly were not ugly. Quite the opposite, really. Do we still use the word “buxom” these days?

We were given the idea communist leaders did not look like Joe Stalin. We were shown the type of aggressive beauty that horny little thirteen year-old boys wanted to see at that time. I suspect this was not part of President Truman’s efforts with wartime propaganda. Some of those stories are fun, but most were extremely well drawn by the likes of the great Reed Crandall, by Blackhawks’ co-creator Chuck Cuidera, and even by a ridiculously young Wally Wood.

But somewhere along the line the purpose of wartime comic books changed. I do not believe that was because of any shifting attitudes or a lack of desire to do that type of storytelling in contemporary times. Comics, as some guy used to say, are not for kids anymore and few comics-reading kids have fathers, uncles, brothers, and now mothers, aunts, and sisters, facing lethal artillery. A few, to be sure.

Things change, but we can and should add war to that list that starts off with “death” and “taxes.”