The Graphic and the Grotesque: Doing History With Your Dad’s Violent, Funny (and Possibly Racist) Comic Strips

Scholars know little of the inner lives of past children. Discovering a large collection of adolescent art, now older than 80 years old, seems like an archival treasure. James “Jimmy” Kugler (1932–1969) of Lexington, Nebraska, drew more than 120 sheets of comic strips, including retelling the Pacific theater of World War II as a violent confrontation of humanoid “Frogs” and “Toads.” The rest of the collection are gangster horror stories and violently humorous, single-panel drawings. What historical context helps make sense of such art? My father died over 50 years ago, and few if any of his classmates and loved ones are still alive. I describe searching through local newspapers, telephone directories, contemporary American propaganda and comic books, movies, just about anything that my father might have read, watched or seen. I treat the project as a microhistory of adolescent rebellion inspired by wartime propaganda and popular culture. What we may want from the past, I argue, contrasts what the past cannot give us. I hope to depict the necessity, and limits, of historical explanation and speculation.