Ol' Blood & Ghosts
War-Horror Comics
& Collective Memory
War comics as a distinct genre emerged circa 1940 with Dell’s War Stories and have persisted as a staple of comic book publications ever since – and yet they remain marginalized in fandom and academia, especially within the U.S. Early war comics, and many still today, were jingoistic features of action and heroism. Beginning in the 1970s, many also developed anti-war subtexts with emphasis on the senselessness and chaos of war violence. True life war comics have been on the rise since 2005 through the work of comics journalists. “Comic art was an important element in the foundation of the military-industrial complex Eisenhower described” in his 1961 Farewell Address, and characters like Marvel’s Iron Man, Wolverine, Captain America, and the Punisher have been premised on military identities and become established icons of a military ethos. The nature and consequences of World War II also inserted hauntings and monstrosities into the war genre. The massive loss of life prompted a resurgence of popular attention to ghosts (and thus an afterlife) – much the way that deaths in the Civil War helped advance the spiritualist movement, and the atrocities and mad science of the Third Reich were analogized in tales of monster-making. Though many of these spectralities were found in popular films of the day (such as A Guy Named Joe or The Canterville Ghost, and King of the Zombies or Return of the Vampire), war-horror began appearing in comic books in the 1950s with "The Haunted Tank." The war-horror hybrid genre would be solidified in the 1970s, thanks to the terrors and controversy of Vietnam, with Weird War Tales. In the 21st century, the war-horror genre has seen remarkable growth, with a variety of supernatural war stories reimagining the American Civil War, World War I, World War II, the Vietnam War, and the war in Iraq. At the same time, the public has been dealing with changing ideas about nationalism, patriotism, historical record, and public memory. W. Scott Poole argues that monsters are born out of history and tell us about their historical moment. Thus, with a framework of public/collective memory and engagement with spectralities studies in sociology (which considers how “hauntings” explain injustices, inequities, and socio-political traumas), this volume will consider such questions as: How do supernatural stories engage with cultural attitudes toward war? In what ways do these stories echo or challenge the popular memories of wars? How do they ask us to think again about battlefield heroism, military ethics, and the politics of sacrifice? What can we learn from attending to war comics? What do comics, specifically, suggest or achieve that war-horror in other media formats could not?
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Knopf, C.M. (2023). Shark storms: Syfy’s splasher and splashstick films. In J. Wigard & M. Ploskonka (Eds.), Attack of the new B movies: Essays on SYFY original films, pp. 113-130. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co.
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Knopf, C.M. (2023). Cthulhoo-Dooby-Doo!: The re-animation of Lovecraft (and racism) through subcultural capital. In T. Lanzendörfer & M.J. Dreysse Passos de Cavalho (Eds.), The medial afterlives of H.P. Lovecraft: Comic, film, podcast, TV, games, pp. 159-172. Palgrave Macmillan.
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Knopf, C.M. (2022). Heterotopia and horror at Show’s End. In J. Darowski & F.G.P. Berns (Eds.), Critical approaches to horror comic books: Red ink in the gutter, pp. 223-234. New York: Routledge.
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Knopf, C.M. (2020). The American nightmare: Graveyard voters, demon sheep, devil women, and lizard people. D. Picariello, ed. The politics of horror, pp. 3-16. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
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Knopf, C.M. (2020). UFO (unusual female other) sightings in Saucer Country/State: Metaphors of identity and presidential politics. In S. Langsdale & E. Coody (Eds.), Monstrous women in comics, pp. 257-273. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi.
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Knopf, C.M. (2019). Politics as “the sum of everything you fear”: Scarecrow as phobia entrepreneur. In D. Picariello (Ed.), Politics in Gotham: The Batman universe and political thought, pp. 159-176. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
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Knopf, C.M. (2019). War is hell: The (super)nature of war in the works of Mike Mignola. In S.G. Hammond (Ed.), The Mignolaverse: Hellboy and the comics art of Mike Mignola, pp. 144-155. Edwardsville, IL: Sequart Organization.
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Knopf, C.M. (2018). Marvel’s Shamrock: Haunted heroine, working woman, guardian of the galaxy. In M. DiPaolo (Ed.), Working class comic book heroes: Class conflict and populist politics in comics, pp. 206-225. Jackson MS: University Press of Mississippi.
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Knopf, C.M. (2018, Jun 11). BrainDead: The horrors of election 2016. In Media Res, Politics & Horror Week.
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Knopf, C.M. (2016). Zany zombies, grinning ghosts, silly scientists, and nasty Nazis: Comedy-horror at the threshold of World War II. In C.J. Miller & A.B. VanRiper (Eds.), The laughing dead: The comedy-horror film from Bride of Frankenstein to Zombieland, pp. 25-38. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
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Knopf, C.M. (2015). The U.N.dead: Cold War ghosts in Carol for another Christmas. In C.J. Miller & A.B. Van Riper (Eds.), Horrors of war: The undead on the battlefield, pp. 136-53. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.