World War 3 Illustrated - Content and Editorial Profile

Content and Editorial Profile

A predominantly black-and-white printed comic book story anthology, World War 3 Illustrated has featured full color covers and occasional special color sections “within book.” It has historically carried advertising of less than ten pages total per issue and has ranged in total page count from 80 pages to 138 in recent issues of the last decade. Typical World War 3 Illustrated issues are focused on a single political issue, theme or broad subject decided upon by the editorial staff. Artists and writers are then invited to develop material addressing the issue’s subject. This approach of incubating material around a different political concern or specific topic every single issue has made the magazine an extremely diverse and unpredictable periodical anthology in the world of comics and possibly the longest-running of its kind in print, at over 30 years of publication.

Unlike other comic book anthology-format magazines like Heavy Metal or the defunct Epic Illustrated, World War 3 Illustrated is known more for the sustained or recurring presence of certain artists, than any ongoing series across issues of character-based episodic features such as in Mad magazine. Sandy Jimenez's "Shit House Poet", running exclusively in World War 3 Illustrated since 1991, is the exception, as the longest-running recurring feature with an identifiable single cast of characters. 2011 marked its twenty-first year in the magazine.