Draza Mihailovich: Comic Book Hero

by Carl Savich
The Chetnik guerrilla resistance movement led by Draza Mihailovich reached superhuman dimensions in the U.S. during World War II. Indeed, his exploits became the stuff of legend, rivaling the superheroes in comic books. Draza Mihailovich himself became a comic book hero and the Chetnik guerrillas assumed the status of superheroes.
Before television and mass market paperbacks, comic books were a dominant, mainstream form of entertainment in the U.S. The period from the late 1930s to the late 1940s became the Golden Age of Comics, a period when comic books proliferated the market. In the early 1940s, there were 125 different regular comic books published in the U.S. with sales of 25 million copies per month with a total yearly revenue of $30 million. The superhero archetype was developed during the 1930s with the appearance of Superman in June, 1938 in Action Comics #1 and Captain Marvel in the 1940s.
The first major appearance of Draza Mihailovich in an American comic book was in the September, 1942 issue of Real Heroes Comics, the cover story “The Chief of the ‘Chetniks’: Draja Mihailovich”, issue #6, published by Parents’ Magazine Press, a division of the Parents’ Magazine Institute in New York. The comic book was about real-life people: “Real Heroes Comics … Not about impossible supermen, but about real-life heroes and heroines who have made and are making history!” Draza Mihailovich, “Chief of the Chetniks”, was across from New York Yankees icon “Iron Man” Lou Gehrig on the cover. The comic book series featured stories on Franklin D. Roosevelt, Eddie Rickenbacker, Molly Pitcher, “PT Boat Hero” John D. Bulkeley, and Francis “Swamp Fox” Marion.
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