The Catalogue Raisonne of Will Eisner’s WWII Posters

by Warren Bernard 

It was clear to US Army leaders after the blitzkrieg of 1939-1940, where German tanks overran first Poland and then most of Western Europe in a matter of weeks, that World War II would be conducted with mechanized warfare to a far greater degree than previous wars. The numbers of vehicles (tanks, half-tracks, cargo trucks, troop transports, etc.) would dwarf those built during the World War I. Mobility of troops and supplies in the war would be paramount, and to that end by 1945 the United States alone produced over 2.3 million trucks, 640,000 jeeps and 88,000 tanks, plus tens of thousands of other vehicles.[i]

The Army also controlled the air force (known then as the Army Air Force), which would not become a separate branch of the armed services until 1947. Planes, of which the United States produced 297,000 by the war’s end[ii], added more stress to maintenance duties around the world in that their engines, landing gear, bombs, bomb bays, machine guns and other parts / systems would need regular servicing and a high degree of mechanical skill.

Working against the Army’s needs at this time was the education level of the typical draftee. In 1940 only 25% of males over the age of 25 had a high school degree, with high school graduation numbers just over 50%.[iii] There was an overall literacy issue in the armed forces because of these societal deficiencies. New methods needed to be implemented to train not only front-line soldiers how to care for their equipment, but also the mechanics and other support troops spread around the world to service planes and mechanized units.

            Into this educational void was thrust William Erwin Eisner (1917-2005). One of the pioneers of comics, his creation The Spirit, that ran as a comic book newspaper supplement from 1940-1952, is considered one of the great hero characters of The Golden Age of Comics (1938- ca.1956). Eisner's use of splash pages, innovative panel layouts and adult-aimed stories influenced many comic books artists in subsequent generations. He is also considered either a father or godfather to the form of the graphic novel, as both an advocate and creator in that genre, although historically he did not invent the graphic novel concept.

            Eisner received his draft notice in December 1941, soon after the United States declared war after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. At that time, he was running a comics production shop that published The Spirit, along with providing Quality Comics and other publishers with complete comic book stories.[iv] He was able to defer his enlistment to take care of setting up his business to run in his absence until he was inducted May 1942.[v] Eisner’s basic training was at Fort Dix, New Jersey, after which he was posted to the Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland. It was there that Eisner came up with the idea to use comics to help train army troops, creating the character of Joe Dope to exemplify what one should not do to their equipment. This idea was embraced by his commanding officer, who then transferred him to the Holabird Ordnance Center in Baltimore.

            On September 7, 1942, the Adjutant General of the Army, James Ulio sent out an order that effective that month, Joe Dope posters were being distributed to all “posts, camps and stations” around the world. The backs of some of the posters have the original order, along with instructions on where to hang the posters. Below the hanging instructions, Eisner drew a cartoon emphasizing the proper placement of the poster. 

 

 

Per Ulio’s orders, the first three posters were issued every two weeks starting in September 1942, and that posters were to be distributed weekly after that. It is clear from the research that this rate of poster publication was never fulfilled, as to date only 52 of these posters have been identified after research from the National Archives (NARA), Library of Congress (LoC), private collections, and auction sites. The posters covered a wide range of equipment, including machine guns, trucks, tanks, mortars, and planes, among others. They also gently prodded supply depots to fill out the correct forms and not over order or hoard spare parts. Fifteen of the posters were specifically made for the Army Air Force, with seven other posters made for the Pacific Theater. Though it is known that there were 20,000 of the first posters printed, additional research is needed to see if any documentation exists for the actual print run totals. It is not known at this point whether Eisner chose the poster topics or they were assigned to him.

While at Holabird, Eisner joined the staff of Army Motors magazine that was published there for distribution to all army bases around the world for mechanics, soldiers, and support staff. Army Motors began its publication history in May 1940 as an 8 ½” x 11” text-only, black and white mimeographed publication. By the time Eisner came on board in mid-1942, it was still the same size, but now it was staple-bound with a spot-colored cover. The interior used photographs and line drawings to communicate different aspects of maintaining equipment. A wide range of topics were covered in Army Motors, from maintenance issues with tanks, to how to prepare trucks for use in cold weather and how to lubricate a jeep, among thousands of topics covered during its 5-year run.

The November 1942 issue of Army Motors introduced Eisner’s Joe Dope to the Army: 

Joe Dope is the doggondest fool in the Army!!!! 

A new character with a desperate destiny designed to call attention to habitual failures in maintenance of all Army equipment. Humor without bitterness but stinging with its truthfulness. Joe Dope posters will drive home a point quickly…. And with little or no pain! 

            The posters of Joe Dope were successful enough to spawn a two-page comic strip by Eisner that began in the April 1944 issue of Army Motors, continuing until the magazine ceased publication in September 1945. Eisner would resurrect Joe Dope during the Korean War in 1951, when he left his creation, The Spirit, behind to become a government contractor. He used Joe Dope as the centerpiece in his new undertaking, PS: The Preventive Maintenance Monthly, for the U.S. Army.[vi] Covering the same topics of equipment maintenance, PS magazine was an updated and expanded version of Army Motors, down to the use of the digest format Eisner had introduced for Army Motors in the summer of 1944. Eisner remained with PS for twenty years until 1971, at which point he returned to the comics field as a teacher and the creator of new works that would renew his stature as one of the greats in the world of comics.

This attempt to create a catalogue raisonné listing all of Eisner’s Army posters was conducted over a period of years, and the following information was captured: Artificial title using 1st line of rhyme; year; Eisner's rank; Eisner's organization (as signed on poster); audience; LoC / NARA holdings; Government Printing Office # / other ID; LoC received date; notes. The information is presented in two ways - as a caption to an image of the poster, and as a table at the end of the article. 

                     

A rock to Joe Dope is a trifle  1942  Pvt.  Aberdeen Pvg. Gds.  Both (LoC and NARA)  478618

 
At maneuvers Joe Dope took a tank    1942    Pvt.            Both    481419     

   
In helping assemble a mortar    1942    Pvt.            Both    481418        

Joe Dope camouflaged his Garand    1942    Pvt.    Aberdeen Pvg. Gds.    Europe    Both    478615        
Joe Dope has a vague premonition    1942    Cpl.            Both    498371        

Joe Dope has a way that's unique    1942    Pvt.            Both    481417    2/15/1943    

Joe dope has the habit, we fear,    1942    W/O            LoC    None    1/13/1943    

Joe Dope is a guy you can't teach    1942    Pvt.    Ord. Tng. Division        Both    481420    2/26/1943    

No obstacle that he may meet    1942    Pvt.    Aberdeen Pvg. Gds.        Both    478619         
 

The book says to run a car right    1942    Cpl.        Europe    Both    498372    2/18/1943    

The Sheik thinks it terribly strange    1942    Cpl.    Ordnance Dept    North Africa    Both    498733    2/2/1943    

The tank crew is sore as a boil    1942    Pvt.            Both    478620        

 

When the Stukas begin to attack    1942    W/O    Ordnance         Both    553727       

 
A maxim Joe Dope just pooh poohs    1943    W/O            Both        10/11/1943    

Aloft in the thick of the fight    1943    W/O        AAF    Both    562295    1/19/1944   

 
At fixing things I'm a bear!    1943    W/O    Ordnance        Both    None    9/1/1943   

 
Behold Joe Dope hitting his stride    1943    W/O        AAF     Both    553727        

I'm tired of taking the rap    1943    W/O    Ordnance    AAF    Both        10/11/1943    

If the bomb that you aimed like a charm    1943    Cpl.    Ordnance    AAF, Pacific    LoC    518000        
Joe Dope is a regular ace    1943    W/O    Ordnance        Both    None    10/11/1943    

Joe Dope says "Should I get KP...    1943    W/O    Ordnance    AAF    LoC    PMU Holabird A-6    8/26/1943    

Joe Dope says, "Why bother to clean...    1943    CWO    Ordnance        NARA    565905       

 
Joe Dope should get thrown in the can    1943    W/O    Ordnance    AAF, Pacific    Both    518000       

Joe Dope thinks it funny to play    1943    W/O    Ordnance    AAF, Pacific    BotH    518000    4/24/1943    

Misled by publicity stuff    1943    W/O    Ordnance        NARA    553727    

    

No friends, this is not the location    1943    None    Ordnance        LoC        7/13/1943    

The poet says "What's in a name?"    1943    Warrant Officer            NARA    562294     Verso has letter from Adjutant General and illiustration by Eisner as to how to hang them

   

These pilots will "gently" explain    1943    W/O        AAF    Both    518000        

 

To prove he's game as the flyers    1943    Cpl.    Ordnance        Both    512339        

 

While draining the oil one day    1943    Unsigned            Both    512339    5/8/1943   

 
 

"Who's (sic) 'borrowed' the damn arming wire    1943    W/O    Ordnance    AAF    LoC    552727         

With an air of complete unconcern    1943    CWO    Ordnance        Both    565904     

   

Don't hoard spare parts  1944    CWO            Both    577520    (non-limerick)

 

Don't wash vehicles in...  1944    CWO        Pacific    Both    595006    8/25/1944  (non-limerick)

    
Joe Dope isn't bug-house or crazy    1944    [Ordnance]           Both    62235        Maybe not Eisner? No signature, does not look like his art

Joe Dope takes good care that his hide    1944    Unsigned        AAF, Pacific    Both    569901 

       
Joe Dope, friends, has done it again    1944    CWO        Pacific    Both    569902        
 

Shock absorbers left to get dry    1944    Unsigned    Ordnance Dept.        Both    622350    2/21/1945    

The Tower of Pisa would shy    1944    CWO    Ordnance        NARA    606762       War Department Safety Council

To Joe Dope ring-round-rosie is fun    1944    Unsigned    Ordnance        Both    62235    1/24/1945 

   
By fireball pilots like Joe    1945    CWO    Ordnance    AAF, Pacific    LoC     684706    8/6/1945  

  
No more good than the bag at the left   1945    Unsigned            LoC    631775    3/30/1945    

Oh, one cannot really decree    1945                Both    631775    3/30/1945    

The guns on this new '-38    1945    CWO        AAF    NARA    631774       

 
This rather acute situation    1945    Cpl    Aberdeen Pvg. Gds.        LoC    631775    3/30/1945   

 
The reason for Joe Dope's new entangle    1945    CWO    For Air Ordnance    AAF, Pacific    NARA    631774        
 

To the pilot that's giving him sass    1945        For Air Ordnance    AAF    NARA    631774   

     
Headspace to Joe Dope was a riddle,    None    W/O        Europe    Both    PMU Holabird   

      
Joe Dope cleaned his rifle, oh yes -   None    W/O    Ordnance        Both    P.M.V - H.O.D (Holabird Ordnance Depot)

Joe Dope takes a constant vacation    None    W/O    Ordnance    Pacific    Both    None  Co-signed with H.C. Minor. Possibly trimmed.

On high over enemy soil    None    Warrant Off.        AAF    NARA            

The caissons go rolling along    None    Unsigned    Preventive Maintenance Department         NARA            

The "T-Slot" you carelessly clean     None  NARA    514706   from https://picryl.com/media/the-t-slot-you-carelessly-clean-will-pit-and-soon-form-a-space-seam-ruptured-62ad2f

The "T-Slot" you carelessly clean 
Will pit and soon form a space-seam. 
Ruptured cartridge at best 
Will result, and the rest 
Joe Dope best describes what we mean.

To view the spreadsheet below, right click on it, and select "This Frame" and then "Open Frame in New Tab."

 

 Warren Bernard is an independent scholar and the director of the Small Press Expo (SPX).

A version of this will be published in IJOCA 27-1. Updated 6/17/2025 at 11 PM with the poster The T-Slot you carelessly clean, and modifying the title to Catalogue Raisonne, as Wikipedia says it's never Anglicized.

---

[1] Joe Ciccarelli, America Goes To War, Industrial Production Key To Victory, https://www.pacificwarmuseum.org/uploads/documents/America_Goes_To_War_Industrial_Production_1.pdf ; National WWII Museum,  “Research Starters: U.S. Military By The Numbers,” https://www.nationalww2museum.org/students-teachers/student-resources/research-starters/research-starters-us-military-numbers

[ii] The War: War Production. https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/the-war/war-production.

[iii] Digest of Education Statistics, Table 104.10-Rates Rates of high school completion and bachelor's degree attainment among persons age 25 and over, by race/ethnicity and sex: Selected years, 1910 through 2019, https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d19/tables/dt19_104.10.asp ; Claudia Goldin and Lawrence F. Katz, Why The United States Led In Education From Secondary School Expansion:1910-1940, https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w6144/w6144.pdf , p. 2.

[iv] In the early days of superhero comics, a comics “shop” was a separately-run company composed of comics artists and writers that would produce stories and create new superheroes for larger publishers. Some shops distributed their own works, as Eisner did with The Spirit, but the majority of their work was used and distributed by the large publishers. This outsourcing reduced the amount of staff, coordination and overhead required to produce a publisher’s stable of comic books.

[v] Michael Schumacher, Will Eisner - A Dreamer’s Life In Comics. New York: Bloomsbury, 2010. p. 82.

[vi] All print issues have been digitized by the Virginia Commonwealth University Library and are online at https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/psm/

Graphic Novel Review: They Shot the Piano Player: The Graphic Novel

reviewed by Elk Paauw, PhD Student and Lecturer, University of Western Ontario

Fernando Trueba and Javier Mariscal; translated by Edward Gauvin. They Shot the Piano Player: The Graphic Novel. London: Self-Made Hero Publications, 2024. ISBN: 9781914224249. $34.99. https://www.selfmadehero.com/books/they-shot-the-piano-player-a-graphic-novel

While They Shot the Piano Player has been touted by The Indiependent as “a graphic novel to rival Maus or Persepolis,” this comic adaptation of the 2023 animated film of the same name fails to deliver the same syncopated rush as the jazz-soaked movie. The story follows a journalist from New York whose obsession with the mysterious 1976 disappearance of the Brazilian pianist Tenório Júnior on the cusp of a military coup in Argentina, takes readers on a whirlwind tour of the rise and fall of bossa nova and democracy in South America. This is the second graphic outing for Fernando Trueba and Javier Mariscal, the writer-artist/co-director duo behind 2010’s Academy Award-nominated film and (subsequent comic book) Chico and Rita. Published by London-based imprint, Self-Made Hero, this book falls into a similar trap of being narratively invested in music only to be portrayed by a silent medium. Many of the visual choices in translating the film to the page are questionable, proving that ultimately this story worked better via moving images rather than sequential ones.

Jeff, an American journalist interested in Latin jazz, gets consumed by the story of an obscure Brazilian pianist who disappeared during the military coup of Argentina in 1976. The framing narrative consists of a book signing in New York City where the journalist launches into the saga of discovering the truth behind Tenorio's cold case through a series of talking head interviews, featuring a who's-who from the history of Brazilian popular music. The story follows Jeff flying to various South American locales in pursuit of anyone and everyone who might have information regarding Tenorio's disappearance, including the pianist's ex-lovers, musical collaborators, and surviving family members. So as to not spoil the mystery, suffice it to say the labyrinthine tale of Tenório’s disappearance is eventually revealed as being politically-motivated. It is unclear if the narrative arrives at the final truth of Tenório’s case, as the man who "confessed" was convicted later for fraud, but it also becomes clear that as a case of kidnapping and disappearance, there will never be any true relief for those who survived him as they never got to say goodbye. In the end, the book reads like a jazz documentary / travelogue meets a chilling whodunit, providing a history of the bossa nova movement and its downfall while also highlighting the material impact of the CIA-backed Operation Condor on the lives of everyday people.

                Some strengths do stand out in the adaptation, including the one I looked most forward to in the writing of this review. The sheer density of the scenic panoramic shots and the cozily-over-stuffed interiors made the film ooze with tiny background details. I craved being able to sink further into Mariscal’s visual world by poring over his drawings in book form. To get a widescreen shot of Rio de Janeiro, with mountains peppered with rooftops and beaches bursting with umbrellas, but only be able to glance at it for 20 seconds was downright cruel. For readers to be able to actually immerse themselves in the imagery and luxuriate in the tightly sketched locales was my justification for even considering reading the book version. Additionally, the color pallet of the film, particularly during the musical segments, was also ripe for adaptation, to let the saturated orangey reds and turquoises – and the iconic blue note blue of the cover – sing in print. The story itself is a fascinating history of the relatively brief zeitgeist of bossa nova music, while evergreen with its discussion of totalitarianism and the role of the state in the movements of culture. In the bonus essay in the back of the book, Trueba’s announces his goal for the film was to “resurrect” the vanished Tenório (233), arguing that animation was “the ideal form, the ideal language” for his story; this makes one wonder why he decided to make a comic book adaptation after all.

                The main critique of this work is that the comic does not have a cartoonist's touch; the “talking heads” style of documentary that the film pulls off in a novel way through the use of roto-scoped animation does not translate well into comics, except in parts where the interviews feel more like a dialogue (see the dinner scene with Suzana de Moraes, daughter of jazz musician Vinícius de Moraes, on pages 38-41). Every panel is taken directly from the film, without a shred of new material other than some sketches of Tenório in the back along with a handful of stills that were cut. The only change to the imagery was re-framing shots to fit into panels along with the addition of hand-drawn sound effects and emanata. In terms of framing, occasionally characters are zoomed in on to break up the monotony of the tripod interview segments. But, unlike zooming in with a real camera, these images are just blown up, showing the roto-scoped characters in even sparser detail. Compared to the intricate long shots of landscapes, these close-ups felt wildly out of place, making an uneven visual narrative. The shot-reverse-shot procedure for interviews makes for a tedious and formally bland comic as well, so transitions between scenes sometimes would make certain stills from the film into splash pages or two-page spreads to break up the rhythm of the text. However, the choice of spreads felt arbitrary, breaking up the narrative with images that did not scale up sufficiently, which looked cheap next to densely-packed panoramas jammed into tiny panels with no room to breathe. As a student of both comics and animation, I was surprised and disappointed with how jarring this visual mistranslation felt as a reader, but it did serve as a reminder that comics are not just film-lite.

                In terms of audience, ideal readers would be fans of the film or fans of bossa nova and Latin jazz generally. Those interested in a similar aesthetic experience but without the jazz might also enjoy the Aya series (Aya of Yop City, Aya: The Secrets Come Out, etc) written by French-Ivorian Marguerite Abouet and drawn by Clément Oubrerie, or Miss Don’t Touch Me by Hubert and Kerascoët. Oubrerie and Kerascoët both utilize a gorgeous color story, while Oubrerie portrays the bustling streets of Yopougon and Abidjan with loving detail. A more politically-charged work to read alongside Player would be Israeli cartoonist Rutu Modan’s Exit Wounds or The Property. While the Dramatis Personae in the back of Player is useful in keeping track of characters, and the special essay provides trivia and insight into the film’s production process from Trueba’s point of view, ultimately, I suggest just watching the film. Maybe next time, I should just buy a Mariscal print off his portfolio website instead to really sink my teeth into his drawings.

Comics Research Bibliography citations update, 5/27/2025

These are posted daily to the ComicsDC blog for those who are interested.

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This article was written for the

May-June '25 issue of Animation Magazine (No. 350).

 

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This article was written for the

May-June '25 issue of Animation Magazine (No. 350).

 

Mark Millar, John Romita Jr. Team for 'Psychic Sam' Comic, Movie (Exclusive)

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Declan Shalvey Draws: Nick Fury
Declan Shalvey
May 27, 2025 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBjNvrQlunM

A Tour Of The Super Museum With Morgan Siebert
word balloon May 27 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mol2I3HW5PI

Pop Culture SquadCast - Live: With Special Guest Ethan Sacks
Pop Culture Squad May 27 2925
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ir_7zHxtqQw

Peter Sanderson
Captain America vs. Neo-Fascism
Sanderson on Comics May 25, 2025 https://substack.com/inbox/post/164447986

DC and Marvel Are Smashing Together Batman and Deadpool
The Merc with the Mouth and World's Greatest Detective will appear in a brand new series of comics.
By Germain Lussier
Io9 May 27, 2025  https://gizmodo.com/dc-and-marvel-are-smashing-together-batman-and-deadpool-2000607750

Don't Expect 'Eyes of Wakanda' to Just Be a 'Black Panther' Show
The showrunner of the upcoming Marvel animated show talks about what's coming to Disney+ in August.
By Germain Lussier
Io9 May 27, 2025 |
https://gizmodo.com/dont-expect-eyes-of-wakanda-to-just-be-a-black-panther-show-2000607717

Comics Culture: A Collective Effort  - Kelly Froh [Executive Director/showrunner of Short Run Seattle]
Breena Nuñez and Lawrence Lindell.
Laneha House May 2025
https://www.lanehahouse.com/kelly-froh

Comics Culture: A Collective Effort - Katt Kelly [Comix Experience store staff]
Breena Nuñez and Lawrence Lindell.
Laneha House May 2025 https://www.lanehahouse.com/katt-kelly

Comics Culture: A Collective Effort - Neil Brideau [Radiator Comics].
Breena Nuñez and Lawrence Lindell.
Laneha House May 2025
 https://www.lanehahouse.com/neil-brideau

Comic Culture: A Collective Effort - Gladys Ochoa [Cartoon Art Museum staff]  
Breena Nuñez and Lawrence Lindell.
Laneha House May 2025
https://www.lanehahouse.com/gladys-ochoa

"I'm Not Sure It Could Have Existed At Any Other Time" – Big Mouth Creators On Series' Ending
The creators of Big Mouth break down the show's final season and reflect on eight seasons of hormonal humor.
 Daniel Kurland | May 23, 2025
https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/big-mouth-season-8-creators-interview/

STARRED REVIEW: Ginseng Roots By Craig Thompson
Review by Alice Cary
May 2025 https://www.bookpage.com/reviews/ginseng-roots-craig-thompson-book-review/

In Memoriam: Comics Writer Peter David
John Freeman on May 26, 2025
https://downthetubes.net/in-memoriam-comics-writer-peter-david/

Peter Morwood (1956-2025) [Fusion (Eclipse, 1987 series) writer]
May 9, 2025
https://locusmag.com/2025/05/peter-morwood-1956-2025/

["Just found out Ernie Patricio passed away. "][Filipino comics artist]
Randy Valiente
Randy Valiente's Post November 9 2024
https://www.facebook.com/randy.valiente/posts/pfbid0q7LnJSgcMze6aJgXi4YTj4rQXSpMCdxWbSfbZ9FD3TxMBzgiK4pA5EQhdC3W7YyAl?rdid=Gr4nWusXQ9fzbkS4

Book Review: Tell Me a Story Where The Bad Girl Wins: The Life and Art of Barbara Shermund by Caitlin McGurk.

reviewed by Alex Dueben

Caitlin McGurk. Tell Me a Story Where The Bad Girl Wins: The Life and Art of Barbara Shermund. Seattle:  Fantagraphics, 2024. ISBN-13: 9798875000041. $45. https://www.fantagraphics.com/products/tell-me-a-story-where-the-bad-girl-wins-the-life-and-art-of-barbara-shermund

Caitlin McGurk’s book about the late cartoonist Barbara Shermund makes plain its goal in the introduction: "we can’t claim that Barbara Shermund was the first to do anything, the last to do anything, or the best to do anything…But her work was good, and it was strong, and there was once a time when it was everywhere.” Throughout the book, the reader can see McGurk thinking aloud in the text, taking care to credit others while showing her work, but the introduction makes clear one of the impulses at the heart of a lot of comics studies: the work is interesting, and it compelled the author to learn more about the artist who made it.

Shermund worked in advertising and drew movie posters, but she was best known in her lifetime as a gag / panel magazine cartoonist and illustrator. One of the first three women inducted into the National Cartoonists Society, Shermund contributed to both The New Yorker and Esquire magazines for decades, in addition to her 1944-57 syndicated comic strip Shermund’s Sallies at King Features. The book is an oversized hardcover and McGurk and the book’s designers use the large size to present Shermund’s artwork in a variety of ways. From full page spreads, to pages showing four illustrations, to pages where the images are fitted in between the text, this might be considered the default option as far as presenting comic art in a book, but it seems an especially good choice considering that much of Shermund’s work originally appeared in magazines. Most of the images are presented in a larger size than they might have originally appeared, but it provides a sense of how people would have read them at the time, as well as how Shermund no doubt thought they would be seen.

What stands out most to me is how much McGurk was able to write about Shermund, given how little information there is about the cartoonist. An intensely private person, Shermund left little behind about the details of her life. This fact meant that McGurk had less to write about, but it also meant that she leaned into that gap and focused on Shermund’s artwork. Other times, like when detailing the generally shameful way that women were treated by the National Cartoonist Society, McGurk relies mostly on the writings and recollections of other people involved to give an accounting of what happened, the reader left to understand what being a professional female cartoonist meant at the time.

One reason that there is so few secondary sources about Shermund is that she was ignored or dismissed by decades of scholarship about these two prominent magazines, with her name misspelled and sometimes not even mentioned in surveys of the slick magazines’ cartoonists despite the hundreds of pieces she drew for Esquire with more than a thousand for The New Yorker. It is only in recent years that comics historians – primarily women – such as Liza Donnelly recognized and celebrated Shermund, and McGurk, who is the Curator of Comics and Cartoon Art at The Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum, and Associate Professor at Ohio State University, is careful to credit them.

This generosity towards previous scholarship makes clear McGurk’s perspective on comics, as one would hopefully expect from a comics librarian at one of the biggest collections in the United States. Just as she sees Shermund as an artist in conversation with others, McGurk sees her own scholarship in conversation with a network of people with shared and overlapping interests and tastes. That includes the responsibility scholars have in acknowledging these debts, both in our own works and those we write about.

The book’s title paraphrases the caption in one of Shermund’s most famous cartoons, but it also feels like a challenge and a description of what McGurk wanted to do in this book. To remind the world there once was a woman who became an artist, and though she was never rich, spent decades doing what she loved and helped to define an iconic American magazine. She lived a life of her choosing and spent years in a house on the shore where she fished and swam in the ocean. And decades later, upon her return to public awareness, people still read and love her comics.

The book is a great look at an artist. It is a comprehensive look at Shermund’s life as a commercial cartoonist and illustrator that is also an art book with scholarly integrity. More than that, it gestures at a way forward in comics studies, noting that there are still many cartoonists who have been ignored, forgotten and erased and that whatever canon exists should remain in flux for a reason and there is much work left to do. McGurk’s rediscovery of Shermund’s work and her life conveys a feeling of freedom and excitement about what is possible in comics studies, and the book celebrates that feeling and why Shermund’s work can remain relevant and visceral.

 Alex Dueben is a writer and historian who has written over 1,000 articles about comics and books, poetry and art for The Believer, Vulture, The Millions, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Brooklyn Rail, and many other publications. Formerly a writer at Comic Book Resources, he has been a regular contributor to The Comics Journal and other leading comics publications for years, and is the writer and editor of the artist monograph Hurricane Nancy.

 

Interview with Holler Author, and Climate Justice Activist, Denali Sai Nalamalapu

 Interviewed by Cassy Lee

 Denali Sai Nalamalapu . Holler: A Graphic Memoir of Rural Resistance, Timber Press, 2025. ISBN: 9781643265230, $21.99. https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/denali-sai-nalamalapu/holler/9781643265230/?lens=timber-press

 Denali Sai Nalamalapu is a climate activism organizer from Southern Maine and Southern India. Denali lives in Southwest Virginia. They have written for Truthout, Prism, and Mergoat Magazine, and their climate activism has been covered in Shondaland, Vogue India, Self, The Independent, and elsewhere. They studied English Literature at Bates College and completed a Fulbright grant in Malaysia. You can find them at @DenaliSai on Instagram.

 Holler: A Graphic Memoir of Rural Resistance is their first book. In this powerful work of graphic nonfiction, Denali tells their own story of getting involved in climate activism and serves as a guide introducing readers to six ordinary people- a teacher, a single mother, a nurse, an organizer, a photographer, and a seed keeper - who became resisters of the Mountain Valley Pipeline, a project that spans approximately 300 miles from northwestern West Virginia to southern Virginia

The following video conference interview with Nalamalapu took place on May 12, 2025 and has been edited for clarity.

Cassy Lee: The title has such a clever double meaning— “holler” as in a rural Appalachian valley, and “holler” as in to get loud. I grew up in a rural area of California where climate activism was often seen as “treehugger” stuff. How did you find the courage to start “hollering?” Has this work made you feel more like an outsider in your hometown—or brought you closer to your community?

Denali Sai Nalamalapu: For me, coming from India to the U.S., I think I was kind of preprogrammed to hold nuances like what it means to be an environmental protector in a world and a country that often doesn't like activists, at least in a generalized form. And part of that's just because I am always, to some degree, an outsider either in the U.S. or in India, so I'm very used to things that I do not culminating in a sense of fitting in. Also, I am innately someone that feels injustice very deeply. So on top of living in the dynamic of always feeling like an outsider to some degree, I also regularly feel compelled to investigate and speak about injustice in a way that is not always welcomed by normalcy and certain communities and people who for different reasons would like to maintain the status quo. I think those two attributes about me as a person helped prepare me for the realities of being a climate activist, which is this interesting mix of caring about people and place even when people might not be excited about having you there. And I think as a queer and activist of color, there are even more nuanced layers [in me] than your average climate activist.

Generally, activists get portrayed as looking a particular way. But I was interested in telling this story in particular because the activists don't look a specific way. And I feel a sense of belonging in that reality, which is that, for example, one of the characters has lived on family land for seven generations from when her white ancestors settled on this land. And one of the individuals in the book is from the Monacan tribe who are indigenous to this land, and she came later in her life. She grew up in Baltimore and then came back to Appalachia where her ancestors once lived and the Monocan tribe currently is. It's been important to me to tell those nuanced stories because I think climate activists get sidelined in part because there's an unwillingness to really understand how diverse the movement is.

p. 22

CL: Why did you choose comics as your storytelling format? Your clean, consistent style—line drawings, limited palette, expressive characters—conveys so much with apparent simplicity. How did you develop this style?

DSN: When I was a child, my mom gave me a secondhand cartooning how-to book. I was really captivated by this way of interpreting people's faces in many different shapes and exaggerating different parts of them and making the landscape around them in some way part of the cartoon as well. And then as I grew older, I got more into traditional forms of writing and art that are respected more by people like my teachers or members of my family. For example, I got into things like portraiture and ceramics and printmaking, which tend to be more highly respected than comics. I think I was figuring out what my voice was and what felt authentic to me and what other people responded to. I was also really into writing and ended up studying English literature in college. Then when I was thinking about how the Mountain Valley Pipeline site had been communicated previously and what we hadn't done to communicate the struggle against this pipeline, comics and graphic novels came to mind. And I realized that I could merge my love for illustration and my skills in writing into the comics and graphic novel form.

I started consuming and creating more comics and, in reflection, I think of it as a full circle moment where I started with cartooning and learning how to write in my young childhood, and then diverged for thirty years, and then now came back to the form and feel really connected to it as a tool of climate communications. So often the narrative around climate change and the science of climate change is conveyed in black and white text. I think that leaves a lot of people out of the movement and unable to access the stories, but a form like comics where you can access information through the words, you can access information through the pictures, you can access emotions through the pictures. There are just so many different ways of absorbing different parts of the story for people of all ages and all levels of busyness, and that feels really important to me.

CL: I appreciated how the book begins with your personal connection to the land, then expands to feature stories of six everyday people who may not have considered themselves activists, but who took action against the Mountain Valley Pipeline in different ways. Was your goal always to have a balance between an element of both graphic memoir and comics journalism centered on a diversity of voices, or did that approach evolve as you got deeper into the project?

p. 156

DSN: When I started the project, I initially just wanted to profile six different activists, and their work and their stories. But as I worked with mentors and my editor and my agent on making my manuscript more accessible and sharpening it as one does during the editing process, we realized collectively that a guide with whom someone could walk through the stories and initially get to know and then learn along with could help the reader take in the nuances and the complexity and the, depth of each individual story. I think because of being socialized as female and especially being an Indian daughter, I was taught to be in the background and be more behind the curtain and uplift others. So it didn't come intuitively to put myself in the story.

p. 55

I am glad I did because I think a lot of environmental narratives get told with the person behind the curtain as sort of an unnamed omniscient narrator. But I think it's important for us to put ourselves into these stories sometimes because we are just as human and complex and flawed and nuanced as the people we're writing about. And so for the reader to get to see that, I think is an important marker of transparency and speaks to the reality that nothing is apolitical. There is a reason why I told this story, and there's a reason why I live in and am connected to Appalachia. And I wanted to share that with readers so that we could carry on together.

CL: Spoiler alert: despite years of resistance, the MVP began pumping gas in June 2024—even after pipeline ruptures during testing. A year later, what has the impact been on the community? Do some locals see benefits? What’s happening with the proposed extension to North Carolina—are protests ongoing?

DSN: I live in Southwest Virginia in one of the communities that's right next to the pipeline, and it has always been true that the pipeline was a project created to make a company money. It was never a project created because there was an existing need.

Scientists have long been certain that we don't need new fossil fuel projects. And particularly, the Southeast of the U.S. does not need more gas pipelines. Sometimes I think of the number of pipelines we have in the U.S. as similar to the number of highways we have. Like, if you look at a map of the pipelines in the U.S., it makes you dizzy. And so we never needed another one.

It's just that some CEOs decided that they wanted to take advantage of the Appalachian fracking boom in the twenty-tens and pumped out as many project proposals as they could to see what stuck and what didn't. So I would say that still stands today. The gas isn't needed in our communities. What we actually need are more renewable projects that can bring us into the future rather than drag us into climate demise. And then in terms of the Mountain Valley Pipeline Southgate Extension, the MVP and many other fossil fuel companies are continuing to be prolific in how many new fossil fuel projects they're proposing, including the MVP’s proposing an extension into North Carolina called the Southgate Extension.

p. 125

So right now, that project is trying to get regulatory approval to go into North Carolina and resistance continues, especially with indigenous led groups on the ground in North Carolina. But  next to that extension, there are dozens of other fossil fuel projects that are being proposed in Virginia and North Carolina. Resistance to those projects continues, as well as advocacy in the courts, because often the fossil fuel industry will target climate activists with really serious criminal and civil charges. Many activists in the Mountain Valley Pipeline movement were targeted with those charges and are still defending themselves in court. So that fight also continues in this misuse of the courts for this dying industry's aims, and is something that, for example, Enbridge, a big fossil fuel company, used as a tactic in the North Midwest of the United States to hurt Greenpeace, one of our biggest environmental groups in the country. The current federal administration is only stoking more fears that climate activists will be targeted in ways like they were with the MVP.

CL: There’s a poignant scene in which after the pipeline gets pushed through, you enter a period of depression. How do you keep hope alive? Are you focusing on new causes now? Any you’d like to highlight for our readers?

DSN: I think that an important part of climate activism is to redefine winning as not just 100% sunny circumstances, but rather as a reality that holds more realistic complexity. For example, winning the climate fight doesn't necessarily look like a pristine utopia, and losing the climate fight doesn't necessarily look like complete demise, but rather there's a complete gray area spectrum of possibility in between the two. It's similar with the Mountain Valley Pipeline fight. Like, some people, especially fossil fuel proponents, will say climate activists lost that fight. But there is a case to be made that ten years of community-led struggle and ten years of this pipeline getting tied up in the courts and in regulatory agencies because of its own ineptitude is a community win. I mean, so many community members, including the ones profiled in this book, built lifelong alliances and friendships and relationships from the pipeline fight. And I think that's an important part of being human is to build community with each other. So my hope is that we can redefine winning in a more nuanced way. Yes, we can always have long-term strategy and it's important to have long-term goals, but I think it's also really important to honor the work we do and did every day, and that's important to me when I think about the Mountain Valley Pipeline site. Yes, this one pipeline did go forward. But, also, the fossil fuel industry took note of how much resistance happened on the ground and especially in a marginalized and over-exploited region like Appalachia. They took note of the reality - that these people that they thought they could prey upon and would just be silent about it - weren't silent. So that's where I get my hope. I also think that I feel most authentically connected to the communities and planet when I'm fighting for them. The surface level, “did we win?” sort of mentality feels less truthful. Even if one wins against one pipeline site, there are so many other fossil fuel projects that are being proposed in so many other communities enduring disproportionate burdens of environmental injustice, that we have to support and be in community with each other. So the reality is a lot more complicated than did one fight culminate in the end of a project or not.

Two things are making me feel very grounded right now. One is supporting local climate leadership on the city and state level. In a time where the federal administration is rolling back environmental protections and attacking states and local governments for their climate action, it's a really important and beautiful thing to lean into strengthening our state and local governments. Our localities along with our communities are on the front line of the climate crisis, especially in places like Louisiana and Florida and California, but also in places like Western North Carolina and Appalachia and other parts that aren't coastal. And so our localities are not only leading on climate action, but they aren't going to stop anytime soon even though the federal government is attacking their climate action. So what feels really helpful to me is both supporting local climate candidates in Southwest Virginia, but also there are so many mayors that are running on climate platforms that are really exciting in terms of municipal executive leadership and from there on up including Congress in Washington DC.

p. 113

The other thing giving me hope right now is mutual aid networks because I do think getting involved in local networks is not only an important thing to do in the present, but is also a radical reimagining of our future and a practical one in terms of making connections. You need to know who has a hammer in your neighborhood and who knows how to grow the best tomatoes. Those are very practical things that will be helpful. I mean, we just saw with bird flu what it was like to have eggs that cost $9 a dozen. I think it's important that we know who is resourced locally to weather storms that we've weathered before and that are increasingly impending, especially with corrupt administrations that only support billionaires. So mutual aid, both on the day-to-day level and broader, feels important to me. With both of those things, most people have a local government, and most people have at least a regional mutual aid network. So these feel, to me, like tangible things that we can do alongside any broader climate action that I think is still important. It's still important to gather in large numbers and show each other how many of us there are and other strategies that maybe seemed more like the go-to in hopeful times.

CL: Do you see yourself primarily as a climate activist or as a cartoonist/author/artist? You said this book was the hardest thing you’ve done. Do you see yourself doing more comics like this? What’s next for you?

DSN: I definitely think my organizing and my creative work are important together. They sort of feed each other. I don't think I see myself in the near future stopping either because my organizing work feels very practical. It feels like I can see the difference that I'm making in my relationships with people. I focus on communication, the media and social media. And my creative work feels like more of the slow deep work. I worked on Holler for three years, which is a lot longer than any specific organizing project, beyond stopping the Mount Valley Pipeline, which was a very big project. The creative work is longer than the day-to-day projects, and it's more playful and colorful, and it's the stuff that feels like it's what I would be doing if the world was a better place. So I guess they kind of balance each other out. The organizing work fills a part of me that feels like I can't just sit and watch the world burn. And the creative work is partially that, but it's also really fun, so it gives me energy to do the organizing.

I find it really helpful to have multiple projects moving at once because otherwise, I put too much pressure on myself for one project. I don't think it's actually reasonable to be so worked up about one thing that I’m doing, so I like having multiple projects. And these days, what I'm thinking about is middle grade and young adult fiction and what it could be like to tell diverse stories of environmental resistance for and from the perspective of young people. In a different way, I don't think we can look to any one source right now to tell our story of climate hope. So what does it look like for us to write that story into existence? Those are the two general projects I'm working on right now.

CL: Who did you imagine your audience to be while writing? What do you hope readers take away from the book?

DSN: I remember the first reader that came to mind is the grandchild of a nurse who reads the story of Karolyn Givens and feels connected to her story because their grandmother was a nurse and then follows the book from there. I imagined just random people picking up the book and seeing that a college student is in the book and feeling a connection because they're a college student. I imagined people who are ordinary people who know about climate change and environmental destruction but maybe don't feel like they have the skills to do anything about it – they don't feel like their background is in forestry or sustainability or biology and feel sort of outside the movement. My hope is that they'll pick up the book and feel a connection to these stories and then start thinking about what's going on, where they are, and how they want to plug in with the skills that they have.

p. 32

Cassy Lee is a librarian and a comics artist, currently finishing up her MFA in Comics at California College of the Arts to bring these passions together. She is working on a graphic novel memoir about healing from the intergenerational trauma she experienced in her own rural childhood. You can see her work at cassylee.com.

All artwork is from Holler: A Graphic Memoir of Rural Resistance © Copyright 2025 by Denali Sai Nalamalapu. Published by Timber Press, Portland, OR. Used by permission of the publisher. All rights reserved.