Joe, Willie, Sad Sack and G.I. Joe

My always questing brain settled on WWII cartoons for today's post.  I didn't realize what I was getting into -- Disney and Dr. Seuss both produced propaganda for the U.S.'s war effort.  Some of Seuss' work is clearly racist (gasp!).  Wikipedia's article on WWII cartoonists mentions a cartoonist --

Arthur Szyk received recognition for his political cartoons during World War II. First lady Eleanor Roosevelt called him a "one-man army." Adolf Hitler even put a price on his head.

I was thinking of Sad Sack and the guy that did Joe while he was in the trenches.

Bill Mauldin drew Willie and Joe cartoons during the war.  Here's a lovely homage from RoadCaptainEntertain:

 

Sad Sack is a comic strip and comic book created by Sgt. George Baker, also during this war.  According to Wikipedia:

Set in the United States Army, Sad Sack depicted an otherwise unnamed, lowly private experiencing some of the absurdities and humiliations of military life. The title was a euphemistic shortening of the military slang "sad sack of shit", common during WWII. The phrase has come to mean "an inept person" or "inept soldier".

Here's a sample:

The term "G.I.Joe" was coined by Dave Breger who

...created the syndicated Mister Breger (1945–1970), a gag panel series and Sunday comic strip known earlier as Private Breger and G.I. Joe. The series led to widespread usage of the term "G.I. Joe" during World War II and later. Dave Breger was his signature and the byline on his books. During World War II, his cartoons were signed Sgt. Dave Breger.

Posted at ComicArtFans by John Michael Jackson is this piece of memorabilia by Dave Breger:

G.I. Joe evolved into a media blitz in the '80s.  The National Review revisited the era in this article, written by Loren A. Smith.  There's a wiki called JoeGuide, last article posted in 2006.

And that's the news today from the front, folks.

-- Marge