East Meets West

"Chung ta ca quyet nhat dinh rang nhung nguoi thiet menh o day se khong phai l`a nhung nguoi da chet vo ich . . ." With this stirring Vietnamese rendition of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address (". . . we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain . . ."), the U.S. State Department this week got ready to launch a new kind of cold war against Communism in the Far East--propaganda by the comic-book method.

The Department's first venture into the cartoon field is a simply written, effectively illustrated biography of eight Americans: Presidents Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln, Poet Walt Whitman, Social Worker Jane Addams, Scientist George Washington Carver, Industrialist Andrew Carnegie, Inventor Thomas Alva Edison. The first shipment (65,000 copies), on the presses this week in Manhattan, will go to Viet-Nam. Later, 65,000 apiece will be sent to Indonesia, Korea and Thailand.

The books are a combined operation of the Office of International Information, which wrote the scripts and did the translating, and of 33-year-old M. Philip Copp, a former Manhattan art agent who underbid comic-book publishers for the $24,000 contract. To do the eight four-page, black & white biographies, Copp hired Artists Bruno Premiani and William Draut, two veterans of Wild West comics.

For most Far Eastern readers, it will be their first look at a comic book; for many, it will be their first look at a book. By printing the books on heavy paper instead of newsprint, the U.S. expects them to last until upwards of 50 people have thumbed through each one.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.