World Comic Book Review

28th March 2024

The Eight Most Iconic Guns in Comic Books

Guns and comic books have a long-standing relationship, but the use of guns in comic books very much dependent upon the respective comic book sub-genre.

War-themed comic books published during World War Two and after featured characters which had, as a rule, no qualms about shooting dead opposing soldiers in often stylised, bloodless battle scenes. These sorts of exchanges of fire are most prevalent in the very long-running series, Commando: For Action and Adventure, a British war comic published by D.C. Thompson & Co since 1961 and approaching its 5000th issue. Soldiers die from gunshot in “Commando” stories, but gore is never depicted.

This absence of bloodshed in these comics is a sanitisation of war for a youthful audience. There is no torn flesh and bone by sniper rifle, no fly-infestation of shredded organs by machine gun. To a very significant extent this absence of gore glorifies war: it makes it harmless save for enemies dropping bloodlessly to the ground, and the hero’s occasional, barely-debilitating bullet wound in the shoulder (one of the few bullet wounds not likely to be fatal).

This has changed in more recent times, with comic books following the lead of online games such as “Gears of War”, but also by writers seeking greater realism as the audience has grown older and more sophisticated.

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A quick overview of tobacco smoking in mainstream comic books – Japan, the US, and France/Belgium

In a peer-reviewed article entitled “Smoking in Movies: Impact on Adolescent Smoking” written by James D. Sargent MD (Adolsc Med 16 (2005) 345-370, there is a startling finding:

“Adolescent never smokers who nominated a star who smoked on screen were 1.4 times more likely to take up smoking over the 4-year follow-up period, even after controlling for other baseline influences… [there is] strong… epidemiologic evidence of a link between exposure to movie smoking and adolescent smoking. It is notable that the estimates of the effect of seeing movie smoking on smoking initiation in both longitudinal studies were almost identical to estimates that were obtained for the cross-sectional samples. This suggests that continued exposure to movie smoking and its effect on adolescent smoking persists over time.”

If there is to be any conclusion from this survey, it is that the frequency of the depiction of smoking in comic books after decades of public education on the risks of smoking tobacco has not diminished, save in the US.

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Swine Before Pearls: Pugad Baboy

Pugad Baboy
May 15, 1988 – Jun 4, 2013
Philippine Daily Inquirer
Author: Pol Medina, Jr.

Pol Medina Jr.’s “Pugad Baboy” (lit. “Pig’s Nest”) is one of the most successful comic strips in the Philippines in terms of revenue and influence. The series started in one of the country’s established daily broadsheets, the Philippine Daily Inquirer, on May 18, 1988. It gained enough popularity to warrant a successful line of merchandise, yearly compilations, full-sized comic book spin-offs, and even a star-studded live action TV series (which, unfortunately, failed to see commercial success).

The comic strip is set in a fictional Filipino community, with focus revolving around several families:

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Pixelated Images, Obscenity, Japanese Manga, and The Inspiration of Detention

“What is Obscenity?”
(Koyama Press, May 2016)
Writer: Rokudenashiko

We start this article by noting it is not a review: we have not yet received a copy of the graphic novel, “What is Obscenity?” But we look forward to doing that, and in any event the stir surrounding Rokudenashiko and her work is of itself newsworthy.

As we have previously discussed in our article on “Prison School”, comic books in Japan (“manga”) are frequently a creative vehicle for pornography. Article 175 of the Criminal Code of Japan forbids distributing “indecent” materials. The practical consequence of that law is that gentalia is either drawn in an entirely fuzzy or obscured way, or are overlaid by a “mozaiku” (meaning a “mosaic”, or pixelated image).

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