Government Comix--more exciting than it sounds...

April 14, 2009 11:23 AM

After two years of work of collecting, scanning, and tagging, the Government Comics Collection at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln library has gone live. This digital collection features "comic books affiliated with state and federal U.S. government agencies, as well as the UN and the EU (and a couple from Canada and one from Ghana)" and includes comics and art by Will Eisner, Scott Adams, Hank Ketcham ("Dennis the Menace Takes a Poke at Poison"), and more.

Found via the University of Florida Comix Scholars listserv, which is unfortunately not archived and searchable at this time.

posted by Tesseractive (7 comments total)

Gentlemen, start your photoshops.
posted by verb at 12:07 PM on April 14, 2009

The great thing about old government publications is that they don't always need tweaking or altering to make the message amusing. Advances in public knowledge alone can make old ideas wacky. Stay off of marajuana and stick with cigarettes because they're healthier! Children make the best toys because they know toys (and their little hands are nimble)! Military service abroad is like a paid vacation in weird, foreign lands!
posted by filthy light thief at 12:18 PM on April 14, 2009

This is supercool; thanks for posting.
posted by wittgenstein at 12:55 PM on April 14, 2009

wowman: your search returned no results
posted by nasreddin at 1:36 PM on April 14, 2009

What wittgenstein said. I've loved this stuff for years; there's something so perfect about military and government agencies using the comic format to educate their masses. The Pogo Primer for Parents (TV Division) from 1961 is priceless, only in part because of the cross-dressing Pogo mom:

This is a parent afraid of a T.V. set.
This is a child not afraid of the T.V. set.
Why is the parent afraid of the T.V. set?
He is afraid because of what it might do to his child.

And Komrad Ivan is fun, too, if only for evidence that the Army was still using "jalopies" as ultra-hip slang in 1979. Thanks so much; this is a great find.

*starts looking for vd comics*
posted by mediareport at 4:59 PM on April 14, 2009

And Komrad Ivan is fun, too, if only for evidence that the Army was still using "jalopies" as ultra-hip slang in 1979. Thanks so much; this is a great find.

Oh man, that was hilarious. "Hey dude, let's rap about Warsaw Pact medium-altitude anti-aircraft defense systems, baby!" The slang is so ridiculously forced. Didn't they realize that the target audience would better retain the information if it wasn't presented in such a laughably dorky way?
posted by DecemberBoy at 6:29 PM on April 14, 2009

For those interested in Eisner's work for Uncle Sam, Virginia Commonwealth University Libraries hosts a full run of his work on PS Magazine. More Eisner-illustrated preventive maintenance than anyone but the most hardcore of Eisnerschpritzers will ever need: 229 issues, 3 specials, and 22 index issues.

(Note: I do work at VCU Libraries, but I post this out of a desire to help my fellow Eisner buffs.)
posted by cupcakeninja at 3:41 AM on April 15, 2009