Into the Jungle!: A Boy's Comic Strip History of World War II (Cultures of Childhood)

Near the end of World War II and after, a small-town Nebraska youth, Jimmy Kugler, drew more than a hundred double-sided sheets of comic strip stories. Over half of these six-panel tales retold the Pacific War as fought by Frogs and Toads, humanoid creatures brutally committed to a kill-or-be-killed struggle. Michael Kugler reproduces the never-before-published comics of his fathers adolescent imagination as a microhistory of American youth in that formative era. Also included in Into the Jungle! A Boy's Comic Strip History of World War II are the likely comic book models for these stories and inspiration from news coverage in newspapers, radio, movies, and newsreels.