Abstract
By attending to the graphic artistry that brought to life the medical history narratives in American comic books of the 1940s, this study adds a new dimension to the scholarly understanding of these books and of the Spanish-language medical and scientific biography comics published in Mexico from the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s. Prior studies have established the substantial presence of medical stories in comic book publications and argued that the history of medicine was present in popular culture of the era to an unprecedented and unnoticed extent. This chapter illustrates the exceptionally strong artwork used in some of the early examples in the genre. The essay examines style, esthetics, and the engagement of readers. Such an approach can highlight just what made specific drawing styles successful in conveying a story’s content. Furthermore, certain features of this graphic work are shown to be indebted to innovations in contemporary photojournalism. Additionally, one can observe a decline in the quality of the art over time when the genre replaced the unique strengths of comic book graphics and shifted to a traditional mode of illustration.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Adler, B.N. 2012. Illustrative lives in Spanish: Mexican comic books about scientists as inspiration for science education. International Journal of Comic Art 14 (2): 214–224.
Bair, N. 2015. Never alone: Photo editing and collaboration. In Getting the picture: The visual culture of the news, ed. J.E. Hill and V.R. Schwartz, 228–236. London: Bloomsbury.
Basalla, G. 1976. Pop science: The depiction of science in popular culture. In Science and its public: The changing relationship, Boston studies in the philosophy of science 33, ed. G. Holton and W.A. Blanpied, 260–278. Dordrecht: Reidel.
Carlebach, M.L. 1997. American photojournalism comes of age. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Carrier, D. 2000. The aesthetics of comics. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.
Eisner, W. 1985. Comics and sequential art. Tamarac: Poorhouse Press.
Fulton, M. 1988. Eyes of time: Photojournalism in America. Boston: Little, Brown.
Gifford, D. 1984. The international book of comics. New York: Crescent Books.
Goulart, R. 1986. Ron Goulart’s great history of comic books. Chicago: Contemporary Books.
———. 2000. Comic book culture: An illustrated history. Portland: Collectors Press.
Hansen, B. 2004a. Medical history for the masses: How American comic books celebrated heroes of medicine in the 1940s. Bulletin of the History of Medicine 78 (1): 148–191.
———. 2004b. True-adventure comic books and American popular culture in the 1940s: An annotated research bibliography of the medical heroes. International Journal of Comic Art 6 (1): 117–147.
———. 2009. Picturing medical progress from Pasteur to Polio: A history of mass media images and popular attitudes in America. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
Hansen, B., and B.N. Adler. 2012. Stories of the great chemists! ¡En Español! Chemical Heritage 30 (1): 20–25.
Harvey, R.C. 1979. The aesthetics of the comic strip. Journal of Popular Culture 12 (4): 640–652.
Lacayo, R., and G. Russell. 1995. Eyewitness: 150 years of photojournalism. New York: Time, Inc.
McCloud, S. 1994. Understanding comics: The invisible art. New York: Harper Perennial.
Nyberg, A.K. 1998. Seal of approval: The history of the comics code. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.
Reitberger, R., and W. Fuchs. 1972. Comics: Anatomy of a Mass Medium. Trans. Nadia Fowler. Boston: Little, Brown.
Weisberg, R.E., and B. Hansen. 2015. Collaboration of art and science in Albert Edelfelt’s portrait of Louis Pasteur: The making of an enduring medical icon. Bulletin of the History of Medicine 89 (1): 59–91.
Witek, J. 1989. Comic books as history: The narrative art of Jack Jackson, art Spiegelman, and Harvey Pekar. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.
Wright, B.W. 2001. Comic book nation: The transformation of youth culture in America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Zervigón, A.M. 2015. Rotogravure and the modern aesthetic of news reporting. In Getting the picture: The visual culture of the news, ed. J.E. Hill and V.R. Schwartz, 197–205. London: Bloomsbury.
Acknowledgements
The author extends sincere thanks to the organizers and the participants of the conference ‘Medical Images and Medical Narratives in Late Modern Popular Culture’ at the University of Ulm (11 and 12 September 2014) for their gracious responses to the version of this paper delivered there. Additional appreciation is extended to Dr. Jeffrey M. Peck, formerly Dean of the Weissman School of Arts and Sciences at Baruch College (currently Director Europe for AKA / Strategy), for sustained funding of my historical research. All the comic books illustrated or discussed in this chapter were in the author’s collection and are now publicly accessible to researchers as part of the Bert Hansen Collection of Medicine and Public Health in Popular Graphic Art at the Historical Library of the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library of Yale University.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Hansen, B. (2019). Medical History’s Graphic Power in American True-Adventure Comic Books of the 1940s. In: Görgen, A., Nunez, G.A., Fangerau, H. (eds) Handbook of Popular Culture and Biomedicine. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90677-5_14
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90677-5_14
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-90676-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-90677-5
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)