| Original caption: “I’m tired of taking the rap for missing a German or Jap – that Dope dents the fins and the blinking bomb spins and swoops all over the map.” During World War II, the United States faced the monumental task of educating and training millions of soldiers quickly. The United States Army turned to innovative methods, including comics, to meet this challenge. Will Eisner, often hailed as 1 of the most influential figures in the history of comics, was already a prominent name in the comic book industry before he was enlisted to aid the war effort. 1 of the most memorable characters to emerge from this era was Joe Dope, a bumbling, but well-meaning soldier created by the legendary cartoonist Will Eisner (March 6, 1917 – January 3, 2005). Eisner was drafted into the United States Army in “late ‘41, early ‘42” and then “had about another half-year which the government gave me to clean up my affairs before going off” to fight in World War II. He was assigned to the camp newspaper at Aberdeen Proving Ground, where “there was also a big training program there, so I got involved in the use of comics for training. I finally became a warrant officer, which involved taking a test – that way you didn’t have to go through Officer Candidate School.” En route to Washington, he stopped at the Holabird Ordnance Depot in Baltimore, where a mimeographed publication titled Army Motors was put together. “Together with the people there, I helped develop its format. I began doing cartoons – and we began fashioning a magazine that could talk to the GIs in their language. So I began to use comics as a teaching tool, and when I got to Washington, they assigned me to the business of teaching – or selling – preventive maintenance.” Eisner then created the educational comic strip and titular character Joe Dope for Army Motors, and spent 4 years working in The Pentagon editing the ordnance magazine Firepower and doing “all the general illustrations – that is, cartoons” for Army Motors. He continued to work on that and its 1950 successor magazine, PS, The Preventive Maintenance Monthly, until 1971. Eisner also illustrated an official Army pamphlet in 1968 and 1969 called The M16A1 Rifle, specifically for troops in Vietnam, to help minimize the M16 rifle’s notorious early reliability problems with proper maintenance. Eisner’s style helped popularize these officially distributed works to educate soldiers on equipment maintenance better. Eisner created the educational comic strip and titular character Joe Dope for Army Motors, and spent 4 years working in the Pentagon editing the ordnance magazine Firepower and doing “all the general illustrations – that is, cartoons” for Army Motors. Today, Eisner is credited with popularizing the term “graphic novel” and helping to establish the genre as a legitimate form of literature. | |
| Image Filename | wwii0907.jpg |
| Image Size | 5.83 MB |
| Image Dimensions | 6371 x 4978 |
| Photographer | Will Eisner |
| Photographer Title | Office of War Information |
| Caption Author | Written or Adapted by Jason McDonald |
| Date Photographed | January 1, 1942 |
| Location | |
| City | Washington |
| State or Province | District of Columbia |
| Country | United States |
| Archive | National Archives and Records Administration |
| Record Number | NWDNS-44-PA-1143TT |
| Status | Caption ©2026 MFA Productions LLC Please Do Not Duplicate or Distribute Without Permission; Image in the Public Domain |
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