Comic Strip of the Day

CSotD: Guest bloggers: The Greatest Generation of Artists

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Mike Peterson Published: July 19, 2013 1 minute 2 comments

While I'm busy running workshops for young writers, here is a selection of cartoons and artwork from "The Best of Yank, The Army Weekly," a 1945 collection of features from the WWII magazine written by and intended for enlisted personnel.

(This one was not credited. Too bad — it's a keeper!)

Some of these amateur cartoonists were pretty good.

One or two.

Sgt. George Baker's "The Sad Sack" echoed many of Willie & Joe's frustrations, though in a more gentle mood.

Incidentally, as a kid reading my dad's books — this or his Sad Sack collection — it never occurred to me that his name was not "Sad Sack," much less to wonder what he was a Sad Sack of.

But even for that sad sack, there was a war out there to be dealt with, and he did.

But it wasn't all laughs, even dark laughs, and not all Yank artists were cartoonists. Here are some examples of Sgt. Howard J. Brodie's sketches from Guadalcanal. Like Ernie Pyle, Yank artists traveled with the soldiers and pretty much took their chances alongside them.