Heading:
Author:
Title: UNITED STATES MARINES No. 3
Place Published:
Publisher:Magazine Enterprises [Indicia: Magazine Enterprises]
Date Published: 1944
Description:

Good- (1.8). Front cover presents well for this grade, but cover is detached from pages and spine has several splits and chips amounting to about 60% of the spine's length; some tears and small chips to edges of covers; soil spot to inside front cover with small soil spot to margin of facing page. Cream to off-white pages. A case could be made for a more conservative grade of 1.5, due to the spine wear, but since the cover displays nicely we're erring, perhaps, on the side of liberality. Cover: Creig Flessel. Art: Mart Bailey, Henry Kiefer, Creig Flessel, Ray McGill, Ogdan Whitney. Overstreet: "Classic WWII Tojo cover." GPAnalysis: No reported sales in this grade. A 2.0 sold for $240 in July 2020.

A Marine zaps a grotesquely-caricatured Tojo in the face with a flamethrower on this mag's cover. The image seems to foreshadow the atomic fire that would soon annihilate Hiroshima and Nagasaki — even the shape of the billowing smoke seems to suggest the Japanese islands.

"The comic book series 'United States Marines,' published with the cooperation of the Marine Corps, typified comic book representations of Japanese during the last years of the war... [U.S. Marines #3] is typical of the effort, supported by the Writers' War Board, to represent Japanese characters as deserving of extermination by the Allies. Board-sanctioned stories assured readers that such violence was not only acceptable but also essential to preserving peace in the postwar world." — Paul S. Hirsch, Pulp Empire: The Secret History of Comic Book Imperialism. University of Chicago Press: 2021, pp. 54-55.

Consignments welcome for PBA's Fall 2022 Comic Book sale. Pre-Code Horror, Golden Age and Silver Age comics, original art, vintage comic-related photos and ephemera sought. Send inquiries to ivan@pbagalleries.com.