Synopses & Reviews
The U.S. Army teamed up with cartoonist and graphic artist Will Eisner to produce teaching tools for U.S. soldiers in a medium that they could easily understand. The M16A1 Rifle: Operation and Preventive Maintenance, first printed in 1969, features a female narrator who instructs GIs on the proper care of their AR-15 (military name M16A1) rifles—firearms notorious for jamming and malfunctioning. More than a simple manual and step-by-step guide, this unconventional yet important military document tried to appeal to soldiers with suggestive chapter titles such as “How to Strip Your Baby,” “What to Do in a Jam,” “Sweet 16,” and “All the Way with Négligé.” A copy of the thirty-two-page booklet was issued to nearly every soldier serving in Vietnam.
Synopsis
A U.S. Army training manual, presented in a unique comic book format.
About the Author
The U.S.
Department of the Army is headquartered at the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, and authors
The Soldier's Guide,
The Complete Guide to Edible Wild Plants,
U.S. Army Ranger Handbook,
U.S. Army Hand-to-Hand Combat,
U.S. Army First Aid Manual,
U.S. Army Weapons Systems,
U.S. Army Special Forces Handbook,
U.S. Army Guide to Boobytraps,
U.S. Army Explosives and Demolitions Handbook,
U.S. Army Special Forces Guide to Unconventional Warfare, and
U.S. Army Special Forces Medical Handbook.
Will Eisner was born William Erwin Eisner on March 6, 1917 in Brooklyn, New York. By the time of his death on January 3, 2005, Will Eisner was recognized internationally as one of the giants in the field of sequential art, a term he coined.
In a career that spanned nearly eight decades--from the dawn of the comic book to the advent of digital comics--Will Eisner was truly the 'Orson Welles of comics' and the 'father of the Graphic Novel'. He broke new ground in the development of visual narrative and the language of comics and was the creator of The Spirit, John Law, Lady Luck, Mr. Mystic, Uncle Sam, Blackhawk, Sheena and countless others.
During World War II, Will Eisner used the comic format to develop training and equipment maintenance manuals for the US Army. After the war this continued as the Army's
P.S. Magazine, which is still being produced today. Will Eisner taught Sequential Arts at the New York School of Visual Arts. The textbooks that he wrote based on his course are still bestsellers. In 1978, Will Eisner wrote
A Contract with God, the first modern graphic novel. This was followed by almost 20 additional graphic novels over the following 25 years.
The "Oscars" of the Comic Industry are called The Eisner Awards, and named after Will Eisner. The Eisners are presented annually before a packed ballroom at Comic-Con International in San Diego, America's largest comics convention.
Wizard magazine named Eisner "the most influential comic artist of all time." Michael Chabon's Pulitzer-prize winning novel
The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay is based in good part on Eisner. In 2002, Eisner received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Federation for Jewish Culture, only the second such honor in the organization's history, presented by Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Art Spiegelman.
Robert A. Sadowski is a contributing editor for
Gun-Tests and
SHOT Business magazines and a contributor to
AR Guns and Hunting,
Gun Hunter,
Cabela’s Outdoor Journal, and
Game & Fish,
New England Edition magazines. He is the author of the
Shooter’s Bible Guide to Combat Handguns and the Shooter's Bible Guide to Firearms Assembly, Disassembly, and Cleaning.