Into the Jungle!

Jimmy Kugler (1932-1969) was born and raised in Lexington, Nebraska. Part of a large German immigrant community, he attended Lexington schools and was active in football, basketball, classroom art, and wartime activities like scrap metal drives. A year after graduation he moved to Denver. Meeting Patricia Andrews, they married and moved west, first to Salt Lake City, finally to Portland, Oregon. There they raised three children: Michael, Steven, and Tamara. Jimmy worked various jobs: driving a diaper truck, in the shipping industry along Portland's Willamette River, or in small factories. Patricia separated from Jimmy in 1968, moving with the children to Colorado. A year later she reconciled with him, and planned to return to Portland. Before leaving Patricia learned that Jimmy, who had broken his leg playing mushball, suffered a series of epileptic seizures from poor medical treatment, as well as alcohol abuse. He died in July of 1969. Michael Kugler is professor of history at Northwestern College in Orange City, Iowa. He teaches modern European history, specializing in the Scottish Enlightenment and the history of the social sciences.

Michael Kugler's microhistory approach, drawing on a never-before-published personal collection of World War II comic strips, adds a unique element to current memory studies of the Second World War as well as the graphic interpretations of international events.--Lisa L. Ossian, author of The Forgotten Generation: American Children and World War II Kugler's stories can - and should be - analyzed as both an artifact of post-war adolescence and as objects of historical memory. Introducing these comics to a wider audience makes Into the Jungle! a significant first step in what is sure to become wider study of Kugler's work.--Mike Rhode "International Journal of Comic Art" Professor Kugler makes it easy to see how a kid could want to create his own version of the exciting, explosive, and terrifying war that was being hyped in the media and in the ubiquitous products of the propaganda machine.... Into the Jungle! A Boy's Comic Strip History of World War II is virtually plotless - yet it's violent, disturbing, and pulsing with energy and emotion.--Paul Karasik "The Comics Journal"