My father grew up in Norway (b. 1933), but has relatives in the United States. These relatives were through his mother, my grandmother, who was American by birth but Norwegian by close extraction. Directly after WWII, my father and his older brother Ulrik, began receiving comic books from relatives in the States, and the two of them endeavoured to collect and bind these comics into master volumes, each his own. Although pretty ratty at this point, my father’s volume survives and my sisters and I recall pouring through it in wonder and giggling at the out-dated turns of phrase and over-serious advertisements.
I thought it might be interesting to post scans of selected panels from time to time over the next while.
The ratty tome.
A note of caution: the cartoons in the volume are, of course, reflective of their time in history, and as such reflect many of the out-moded, out-dated and often downright insulting views then thought appropriate for youngsters to absorb. There are racial slurs, sexist remarks, slanted views and being directly post-war there is a lot about guns, bombs and protection of the self and nation. You’ve been warned. Additionally, I’ve decided to include some of the advertising pages as they supply some amusing projections into the post-war period: what kids found leading edge then, marketed toys and even how little those multi-gadget pages have changed from over sixty years ago.
Here, then, in random order begins the series of scans. Enjoy!
Kids with guns: OK in the 40s, OK today!
