Charles de Gaulle

Few comic book figures blur the line between history and sequential art quite like Charles de Gaulle, who made his four-color debut in Real Life Comics #1 back in 1942 — right in the thick of the Golden Age, when the world's headlines were feeding directly into the funny pages. Published under the American Comics Group banner, this real-world statesman turns up across a fascinatingly eclectic range of titles, from Air Fighters Comics to the wonderfully offbeat Herbie, sharing pages with an extraordinary roster of twentieth-century giants including Winston Churchill, Fidel Castro, and Queen Elizabeth II. With appearances stretching across an remarkable 75-year span through 2017, de Gaulle stands as a testament to how comics have long used the giants of global history as vivid shorthand for the era's stakes and drama — eleven catalog appearances that quietly tell a big story about the medium's appetite for the real world.