Balkan Supermen: Draza Mihailovich and the Chetniks in American Popular Culture: World War II Comic Books

Draza Mihailovich was one of the most popular and acclaimed European resistance leaders in the United States and Britain during World War II. At least five major novels were written about him and his movement. Two major movies were made based on his resistance movement and he appeared on the covers of magazines and comic books in the United States.

Draza Mihailovich and the Chetnik guerrillas appeared in at least six major comic books in the United States during the Golden Age of Comics, the late 1930s to the late 1940s:

 1) Real Life Comics, #8, November, 1942, Nedor Comics. Contents:  4. “Draja Mihailovitch, the Yugoslav MacArthur”, cover by Alex Schomburg; 

2) Military Comics, Stories of the Army and Navy, #14, December, 1942, Quality Comics.  Contents: 3. “Mission to Yugoslavia”, by Fred Guardineer, script, pencils, inks.  8.  “The Chumps and the Chetniks”, Shot and Shell, by Klaus Nordling, script, pencils, inks. Military Comics ran for 43 issues, from August, 1941 to October, 1945, with an October, 2000 issue, Millennium Edition: Military Comics No.1, published by DC;

3) Master Comics, Captain Marvel Jr., #36, February, 1943, Fawcett Comics. Contents:  1. “Liberty for the Chetniks”, artwork by Emmanuel Mac Raboy, pencils, inks. Master Comics ran for 133 issues, from March, 1940 to April, 1953;

4) Thrilling Comics, American Crusader, #35, May, 1943, Standard Comics, Nedor Group. Contents: 2. “The American Crusader Joins the Chetniks”. Thrilling Comics ran from February, 1940 to April, 1951 for 80 issues;

5) Kid Komics, Red Hawk, #3, Fall Issue, September, 1943, Timely Comics. Contents: 10. “The Origin of Red Hawk”, featuring Jan Valor; artwork by George Klein, pencils. Cover by Alex Schomburg, pencils, inks. Kid Komics ran for 10 issues, from February, 1943 to Spring, 1946; and,

6) Black Cat Comics, #1, June-July, 1946, Harvey Comics. Contents: 3. “The Story of the Fighting Chetniks”, attributed to Arthur Cazeneuve. Black Cat Comics ran for 65 issues until April, 1963 with various title changes: Black Cat: #1-15, #20-29, #63-65, Black Cat Western: #16-19, Black Cat Mystery: #30-53, 57, Black Cat Western Mystery: #54, Black Cat Western: #55, 56, and Black Cat Mystic: #58-62.

The first major appearance of Draza Mihailovich in an American comic book was in the November, 1942 issue of Real Life Comics. The publisher and editor of Real Life Comics, Ned L. Pines, was a major publisher of comic books during the Golden Age of Comics. The comic book Real Life Comics was published by Nedor Publishing at 10 East 40th Street in New York City. It was a comic book series that ran from September, 1941 to September, 1952 for 59 issues. The covers were created by Alex Schomburg, one of the major comic book artists of the 1930s and 1940s. Pines also published Thrilling Comics, Startling Comics, Standard Comics, Better Comics, and Exciting Comics. Pines also purchased Hugo Gernsback’s Wonder Stories science fiction magazine in 1936 and published it as Thrilling Wonder Stories and established the Popular Library paperback series in 1942. The comic book series Real Life Comics was published every other month and cost ten cents. The comic book featured real persons such as Leonardo Da Vinci, Igor Sikorsky, Claire Chennault, and Draza Mihailovich. 

Draza Mihailovich was featured in one issue of the comic book, No.8 from November, 1942, Volume 3, No. 2., consisting of 7 pages. Mihailovich was also on the cover drawn by artist Alex Schomburg. Mihailovich was in section 4 entitled “Draja Mihailovitch: The Jugoslav Hero.” The title of the story was “Draja Mihailovitch, the Yugoslav MacArthur”, comparing him to U.S. General Douglas MacArthur. The story is introduced as follows: “Drawing upon a background of military education and diplomatic skill, the commanding officer of the Chetniks has held the hordes of Hitler and Mussolini at bay.” The issue also contained comics featuring Miguel Cervantes, Leonardo Da Vinci, Johnny Appleseed, Claire Chennault, and Benito Juarez.

The comic recounted Draza Mihailovich’s service in World War I, his diplomatic assignment in Czechoslovakia in 1936 as the military attache, his imprisonment by Milan Nedich, and his emergence as a resistance leader in 1941. The comic focuses on his guerrilla activities against the German occupation forces, derailing trains, engaging in sabotage, and organizing a massive popular resistance movement.
 
Draza Mihailovich was also featured on the cover of Time magazine in 1942, in the story “The Eagle of Yugoslavia”, the cover of Liberty magazine, which at one time had a circulation second only to the Saturday Evening Post and which ran from 1924 to 1950, in an article entitled “Hitler’s No.1 Headache”, and a major motion picture was made in the United States by 20th Century Fox entitled Chetniks! The Fighting Guerrillas (1943). In Britain, the movie Undercover (1943), originally titled Chetnik, was made that loosely recounted the guerrilla movement of Draza Mihailovich. Undercover was released by Columbia Pictures in 1944 in the United States as Underground Guerrillas.

At least five major novels were also published detailing the exploits of Draza Mihailovich and the Chetniks during World War II. British author George Sava (1903-1996) wrote the novel The Chetniks in 1942, which was published by Faber and Faber in London. Thw Rugged Guard, A Tale of 1941 was a novel on Draza Mihailovich written by Hungarian-born British author Paul Tabori (1908-1974) published in London in 1942 by Hodder and Stoughton. In the US, L.B. Fischer published Sergeant Nikola: A Novel of the Chetnik Brigades by Istvan Tamas (1907-1974), which was reviewed in the Sunday, December 13, 1942 issue of the New York Times by Fred T. Marsh, in Harper’s magazine by Katherine Gauss Jackson in the January, 1943 issue, and by John Selby in the December 5, 1942 issue of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in the section “This World of aBooks”. Sergeant Nikola was described as: “Contemporary World War Two novel of the Black Mountain guerrillas, who, under General Draja Mikhailovitch, immobilized ten German divisions in the Balkans during the war.” In 1943, E.P. Dutton in New York published The Wrath of the Eagles: A Novel of the Chetniks by Frederich Heydenau (1886-1960), which was reviewed in the New York Times by Robert St. John in the Sunday, June 27, 1943 issue under the title “Balkan Supermen”. In May, 1943, a spy thriller was published by John Long Ltd. in the UK by crime fiction author John Creasey (1908-1973) entitled The Valley of Fear that featured British secret service agent Dr. Stanislaus Alexander Palfrey of Z.5 who is sent to Yugoslavia to join the Chetnik guerrillas. Palfrey travels to the mountain headquarters of Draza Mihailovich, who is referred to as General Mihail in the novel, where he must uncover a traitor who is leaking information to the Nazis. The novel was reprinted in 1949 by Long, in 1966 by Arrow as a paperback, 1967 by Long, and in 1973 by Walker and Company in the U.S., under the title The Perilous Country.

In the December, 1942 issue of Military Comics, #14, Draza Mihailovich and the Chetniks were featured in a story entitled “Mission to Yugoslavia”. The comic book superheroes that join Mihailovich and the Chetniks are Captain Bill Dunn and Boomerang Jones, who pilot the rocketship called The Blue Tracer. The writer and the artist of the story was Fred Gaurdineer. In the story, Dunn and Jones are sent by a character that looks like President Franklin D. Roosevelt to Yugoslavia to help Mihailovich and the Chetniks engage German troops who are attacking them. Dunn and Jones fly The Blue Tracer to Serbia and land on a pre-determined white circle and join Mihailovich and the Chetniks. Outnumbered and outgunned, the Chetniks do not have a chance. Dunn and Jones, however, use The Blue Tracer to make a tunnel in the mountain which enables the Chetniks to attack the German troops by surprise. 

In Kid Komics, #3, Fall Issue, September, 1943, Jan Valor joins Mihailovich and the Chetnik guerrillas. Jan Valor was an American fighter pilot, who with his girlfriend Tanka, helped General Draza Mihailovich and the Chetniks of Yugoslavia to fight against German troops. Jan is the pilot of the Red Hawk, a fighter plane, and allows the guerrillas to fly the plane. Timely Comics would evolve into Marvel Comics.

Mihailovich and the Chetniks would also appear as allies of Captain Marvel Jr. and the American Crusader.

Captain Marvel Jr. joins the Chetnik guerrillas of Draza Mihailovich in “Liberty for the Chetniks” by Mac Raboy, Master Comics, #14, February 24, 1943.