‘Broken kites’: the representation of vets in comics of the Vietnam War
The talk addresses the direct representation and erasure of traumatized veterans, while also considering the wider representation of trauma at play in comics about Vietnam. CONTENT NOTE: some images of combat and violence; sustained discussion of trauma and PTSD.
College of Arts School of Modern Languages and Cultures Stirling Maxwell Centre
Date: Thursday 06 March 2025
Time: 16:00 - 17:00
Venue: Library Seminar Room (formerly TalkLab, University of Glasgow Library, level 3) + Zoom (see below)
Category: Public lectures
Speaker: Harriet EH Earle, Sheffield Hallam University
Document: Broken kites event poster
Stirling Maxwell Centre & Andrew Hook Centre for American Studies
Thursday, 6th March 2025, 4 p.m. [note different time than usual]
The Vietnam War is an important benchmark in the history and development of trauma as both a medical diagnosis and as a cultural phenomenon. For soldiers, their war stories do not stop at the end of the conflict. The returning soldier – the veteran – is not a common character type but is a familiar one across American popular culture forms, especially film and television. But when they are present, the depictions follow a narrow model, that is both instantly recognizable and mostly inaccurate.
This talk addresses the direct representation and erasure of traumatized veterans, while also considering the wider representation of trauma at play in comics about Vietnam. Beginning with a brief overview of the relationship between Vietnam and trauma, I show how vets are either ignored or painted in offensive, inaccurate ways. I perform some close analyses of three comics that focus on vets: Hellblazer #5 (Delano et al., 1988), Enemy Ace: War Idyll (Pratt, 1990), and The Legion of Charlies (Veitch and Irons, 1971). And finally, I will attempt to answer the question ‘so what?’ What does this mean for vets, for comics, and for our understanding of trauma?
Content note: some images of combat and violence; sustained discussion of trauma and PTSD
Dr Harriet Earle (Hattie) is a Senior Lecturer in English and Creative Writing at Sheffield Hallam University and Research Fellow at the Centre for War, Atrocity, and Genocide at the University of Nipissing (ON, Canada). She is the author of Silence in the Quagmire: US Comics of the Vietnam War (2025), Comics, Trauma, and the New Art of War (2017) and Comics: An Introduction (2020). She writes books on the topic of comics, war, and violence. When she’s not doing that, Hattie listens to podcasts while making fibre art.
In-person: Library Seminar Room (Level 3, TalkLab), University of Glasgow Library
On-line: Zoom, register here.