Another one that may be of help in getting background on comics during the period you are interested in-
http://www.amazon.com/Comic-Book-Nation-Transformation-Culture/dp/080186514X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1332415879&sr=1-1Since it seems to me that you are tying in the perception of how men should behave in war I would suggest that you examine as many of the war comics from the 1950s and 60s as you can.
You will find on the site here many PD war comics from the 1950s. All of these companies published war comics in the 1950s- Ace, Ajax-Farrell, American Comics Group, Avon, Better/Standard, Charlton, Comic Media, Fawcett, Fiction House, Harvey, Hillman, Key, Magazine Enterprises, Quality, St. John, Toby, Youthful and Ziff-Davis (and possibly one or two I'm forgetting). Also check out the Government Pamphlets including PS Magazine.
You won't find E C Comics here (because their comics are still copyrighted) but their two war comics (
Two-Fisted Tales and
Frontline Combat) have been reprinted in various formats over the past three decades and you be able to track them down in one form or another. These are generally considered the high-point of the genre too so I really do recommend that you check them out.
Unfortunately two other 1950s companies who you won't find here (because their comics are also still copyrighted) are DC and Atlas (Marvel) who were also the two most prolific publishers of war comics during that decade. DC does have one Showcase Presents
Our Army At War volume (reprinting 20 issues) and Marvel has one Marvel Masterworks
Battlefield (reprinting 11 issues). Considering that in the 1950s DC published around 450 war comics and Atlas around 500 this will only give you a small sampling of those company's war comics but at least it is something. Actually tracking down the original comics would be costly and could take years.
For comics of the 1960s GAC has a few digital war comics in their Silver age section (mostly Charlton IIRC). Beyond that there is a Fantagraphics reprinting of Warren's
Blazing Combat (which was one of the few comics to actually do stories on the Vietnam war while it was ongoing). Marvel has published some reprint volumes of
Sgt. Fury (one of their few war comics of the 1960s) and DC has some Showcase Presents volumes of
Sgt. Rock,
Enemy Ace, and
Haunted Tank available.
If you actually want to try tracking down any original comics from the 1960s might I suggest Dell's
Jungle War Stories (11 issues) which also actually featured stories on the Vietnam war concurrently with the war. The issues aren't prohibitively expensive and there aren't so many that it would take forever either.
Best
Joe
P. S. If you want to look for suggestions on your thesis as regards movies might I suggest Nitrateville as there are some pretty knowledgeable folks there.
