--- title: Classic Comics: In Praise of an American Art Form description: Photos from the 1940s and 1950s featuring people young and old, all over the world, engaged in that rewarding pursuit: reading comics. canonical: https://time.com/22575/classic-comics-in-praise-of-an-american-art-form/ author: Ben Cosgrove article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-03-26T17:50:52.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-05-11T05:08:34.227Z og:title: Classic Comics: In Praise of an American Art Form og:description: Photos from the 1940s and 1950s featuring people young and old, all over the world, engaged in that rewarding pursuit: reading comics. og:url: https://time.com/22575/classic-comics-in-praise-of-an-american-art-form/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt4e12b007da05ee06/698847a8cd1bba96c76fa6ec/1151960.jpg?branch=production&width=796&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 796 og:image:height: 448 og:image:alt: Comic book artist Bob Kane og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Classic Comics: In Praise of an American Art Form twitter:description: Photos from the 1940s and 1950s featuring people young and old, all over the world, engaged in that rewarding pursuit: reading comics. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt4e12b007da05ee06/698847a8cd1bba96c76fa6ec/1151960.jpg?branch=production&width=796&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # LIFE With Classic Comics: In Praise of an American Art Form by [Ben Cosgrove](https://time.com/author/ben-cosgrove/) ## Ben Cosgrove Mar 26, 2014 5:50 PM UTC  Comic book artist Bob Kane, who along with writer Bill Finger created Batman, poses with his iconic illustrations, 1966. Comic book artist Bob Kane, who along with writer Bill Finger created Batman, poses with his iconic illustrations, 1966.Yale Joel—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images by [Ben Cosgrove](https://time.com/author/ben-cosgrove/) ## Ben Cosgrove Mar 26, 2014 5:50 PM UTC Comic books, cartoons, the [Sunday funnies](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunday%5Fcomics) — the seemingly inexhaustible variety of ways in which comics have been created, presented and enjoyed through the years says as much about the readers who devour them as it does about the medium itself. Comic fans, after all, usually gravitate toward the _form_ — i.e., the melding of the written word and graphically inventive still pictures — rather than embracing a specific _format_ to the exclusion of all others. There are purists, of course — often humorless, male and, for the most part, single — who tend to draw hard, distinct lines between the myriad media in which comics have been produced. For instance, they might state, categorically, that comic books have nothing, _nothing_, to do with comic strips like, say, _Hagar the Horrible_, _Boondocks_ or [_Doonesbury_](http://doonesbury.slate.com/). Others clasp their Alan Moore and Frank Miller graphic novels to their chests and refuse to concede that Harvey Pekar’s _American Splendor_, Peter Bagge’s _Neat Stuff_ or any _Calvin and Hobbes_ collection one wants to name might be as great (if not greater) an imaginative feat than [_Watchmen_](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watchmen) or _The Dark Knight Returns_. But for most of us, comics are comics are comics, and we’ll just as happily sit down with a Fantastic Four adventure written, lettered and colored in 1981 (Firefrost, anyone?); a dog-eared _Maus II_; or the companionable fare in pretty much any Sunday newspaper. In that spirit, LIFE.com offers photos from the early 1940s through the late ’50s celebrating the ever-expanding universe of the comic: pictures of men, women and children caught up, if only for a while, in captivating, imaginary worlds that somehow manage to feel at-once utterly familiar and wholly, vividly new. _— Ben Cosgrove is the Editor of LIFE.com_  A sailor reads a comic book aboard the USS Doran in 1942 Thomas McAvoy—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  A mother reads her children the comics while traveling on the "El Capitan" train between Chicago and Los Angeles, 1945. Sam Shere—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  A young boy reads a comic strip while his leash-tethered mutt waits forlornly for their walk to continue, 1944. Nina Leen—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Former Vice President and Secretary of Commerce Henry A. Wallace reads the comics, 1946. Walter B. Lane—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  A Turkish soldier and a young girl look at an American comic book during the Korean War, 1951. Carl Mydans—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Garden City, New York, 1942. Alfred Eisenstaedt—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Religious comic books, 1943. Walter Sanders—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Private Ernest Dandou reads a comic book at paratrooper camp, Georgia, 1944. Frank Scherschel—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  A young girl reads a comic book at an Anchorage, Alaska, supermarket in 1958. Dmitri Kessel—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Actress Buff Cobb (one-time wife of journalist Mike Wallace) reads comic books at home in 1946. Martha Holmes—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Two Dutch children read comic books in 1953, Netherlands. Nat Farbman—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Comic book artist Bob Kane, who along with writer Bill Finger created Batman, poses with his iconic illustrations, 1966. Yale Joel—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Scene from the 1954 Senate Subcommittee Hearings into Juvenile Delinquency, which focused much of its time and energy on the "dangers" posed by comic books. Yale Joel—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Scene from the 1954 Senate Subcommittee Hearings into Juvenile Delinquency, which focused much of its time and energy on the "dangers" posed by comic books. Yale Joel—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Reading comic books at local drug store, Des Moines, Iowa, 1945. Nina Leen—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Cartoonist Chester Gould sits on a wall beside the cemetery where he "buried" vanquished villains from his Dick Tracy comic strip, 1949. Francis Miller—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Small boys read comic books during a speech by Dwight Eisenhower in Montana, 1952. Ralph Morse—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  A Turkish boy (center) rents out comic books to local children to support his family in the Philippines in 1945. Carl Mydans—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  American troops read comic books during the Korean War, 1951. John Dominis—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Lieutenant Frank Hensley reads a comic book after loading cargo on plane, 1950. Joseph Scherschel—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  A father reads the Sunday comics to his daughter, 1946. Nina Leen—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Reading a comic book while traveling on a Pullman car, 1945. Sam Shere—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Reading the comics section of the Detroit Times on a typical Sunday during World War II. 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