I’VE DONE A LOT of weird comic book covers in my day. Some dealt with bondage, many with monsters, and plenty of blood-and-guts horror. But I think the weirdest one of all was the wartime cover that was enthusiastically approved by the United States Department of Defense, the Admiral of the U.S. Coast Guard, and the publisher of DC comics.
I’m talking odd-weird here, as in strange.
Unlike the rest of the comic book field, DC covers were designed to be “posterized.” They were mostly devoid of dialogue, concentrating more on characters and design. And my oddball cover graced a 1945 issue of Boy Commandos, the best-selling comic book series in the time of mankind’s greatest war.
A great many of the industry’s artists were serving in the armed forces. Publishers did their best to turn out comic books with the guys left on the home front, but the shortage of talent proved to be a great obstacle. In the Coast Guard’s Combat Art Corps, I was the comic book guy. My work was distributed free to publishers, who would turn around and distribute it internationally, then keep all the proceeds. Occasionally we artists could make a few dollars by submitting the odd cover or feature to the comic book companies, written and drawn on our own time.
In this case, the work I did during my personal time would prove to be good PR for my employer, the U.S. Coast Guard. On this cover, the Boy Commandos are on the beach pointing an oversized machine gun more or less in the direction of the reader. All are in battle uniform, all wearing helmets except for Brooklyn, the comic-relief kid who wears his trademark derby. They are accompanied by a Coast Guard corpsman, wearing his dress whites as if he is going out to a dance or dinner. He is holding an ominous-looking dog similar to the ones I used to encounter when safeguarding the shores of New Jersey.
Strangely enough, both man and dog are open targets.
Offshore we have a Coast Guard vessel. In the foreground is a sign pointing to the left, in the direction the gun is aimed. It proclaims “TOKIO 5 Mi.,” misspelling Tokyo.
I probably drew that cover in the spring of 1945. Boy Commandos #12 most likely hit the newsstands in mid-to-late summer. The Japanese surrender came on August 15, 1945.
Now that’s propaganda.
