“A Fantasy With Implications Concerning Reality:” How Marvel and DC Comics Helped Establish the “Good War” Myth

Kenneth S Capps

Advisor: Christopher H. Hamner, PhD, Department of History and Art History

Committee Members: Meredith H. Lair, Spencer Crew, Alison Landsberg

Horizon Hall, #3223
April 09, 2026, 10:30 AM to 12:30 PM

Abstract:

This dissertation examines how Marvel and DC Comics, specifically Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos and Our Army at War, featuring Sgt. Rock, shaped American cultural memory of World War II and contributed to the construction of the “Good War” myth during the 1960s and 1970s. Produced in the midst of the Vietnam War, these comics offered a sanitized, heroic, and emotionally controlled vision of World War II that contrasted sharply with the conflict’s historical realities, and with the gritty portrayals found in early postwar cinema.
 Drawing upon more than 1,300 published letters from readers and their editorial responses, the study demonstrates that war comics functioned as participatory sites of historical negotiation. Through their serialized form, low production costs, and prominent letter columns, Marvel and DC cultivated an interactive feedback loop in which audience expectations, commercial pressures, and Comics Code Authority restrictions collectively shaped portrayals of realism, femininity, masculinity, representation, and trauma. This dynamic produced a version of World War II that emphasized unity, moral clarity, and American virtue, while minimizing segregation, gender inequality, psychological breakdown, and the brutality of combat.
 The dissertation analyzes five thematic arenas, realism, femininity, civil rights and racial representation, romance and masculinity, and emotional stress, to show how each contributed to a mythologized narrative of wartime heroism. Marvel often addressed contemporary social issues more directly, including anti‑racist storylines and expanded representation, while DC approached these themes more cautiously. Both, however, projected anachronistically integrated and idealized military units and consistently marginalized women’s wartime roles, reflecting the influence of postwar domestic ideology.
By tracing how readers and creators jointly shaped these depictions, the dissertation positions war comics as a crucial but overlooked cultural medium that helped bridge early postwar realism and the highly romanticized World War II narratives that dominate late‑20th‑ and early‑21st‑century film and television. Ultimately, the project argues that the cumulative effect of editorial choices, market demands, and audience participation produced a durable, simplified memory of World War II, one that continues to structure American understandings of war, heroism, and national identity.