Comics and cartoons often are the best teaching tools. Not just because pictures are worth a thousand complicated and confounding words, but with a combo of drawings and words you get the picture—see what I mean?! This concept is no better illustrated than in this gem of a training booklet illustrated by none other than the creator of “The Spirit” comics, Will Eisner. Produced by the U.S. Army in 1944, it’s an instruction pamphlet for young pilots to master the basics of safe flying, complete with two quizzes and two pages of “Slanguage” at the end.
The “art ideas” were contributed by the Air Traffic Control Division of the Civil Aeronautics Administration, and the guide was published by the Army Air Forces’s Flight Control Command.
“To the young men of America whose hearts are in the sky, we present this booklet,” it begins. “Its pictures teach the rules that every pilot must know before he can earn his wings.”
