A Sailor’s Story


By Sam Glanzman (Dover Comics & Graphic Novels)
ISBN: 978-0-486-79812-7

Inexplicably, many superb creators who dedicate a lifetime to producing a volume of work are never properly rewarded for their efforts. Probably the most shamefully neglected of these hidden stars – at least in the American comicbook industry – is Sam Glanzman.

With a solid, uniquely informative and engagingly rough-hewn style, “SJG” has worked since the 1940s on a variety of titles for a host of publishers, mostly on material in war, mystery, fantasy and adventure anthologies, but also occasionally on serial characters such as Willy Schulz, Hercules and Tarzan for Charlton, the astoundingly cool (and shamefully still uncollected) Kona, King of Monster Island for Dell and for DC The Haunted Tank and most significantly for us here U.S.S. Stevens (DD 479).

It is this last series of guardedly-autobiographical tales, derived from his tour of duty on that self-same American navy Destroyer during World War II, which formed the precedent for the superb compilation at last collected here – and if anybody from DC is reading this, those U.S.S. Stevens strips are so-very-long overdue for a trade paperback treatment, too…

This criminally neglected talent had been quietly and resolutely generating comics magic for decades in his underplayed, effective and matter-of-fact manner and was still improving – crafting superb narrative art without flash or dazzle, winning fans among the cognoscenti yet largely unnoticed or at least unlauded by mainstream fans – when in 1987 he produced a quasi-autobiographical graphic novel that made quite a few waves.

Marvel editor Larry Hama made the bold decision to publish Glanzman’s understated, unadorned, wryly elegiac account of his days as a young man aboard a Pacific Fleet Destroyer as part of the company’s Original Graphic Novel imprint.

A Sailor’s Story captivatingly related his experiences as a young man aboard the U.S.S. Stevens in a no-nonsense, highly entertaining manner and broke new ground in the progress of the graphic novel as a medium for artistic expression. It also reached a lot of buyers who wouldn’t be caught dead with a copy of Spider-Man or Conan…

It was a high point in American sequential narrative and even spawned a sequel volume – an unprecedented feat for the line at a time when superheroes and licensed properties monopolised the marketplace.

Glanzman is a natural storyteller, with the ability to make dry fact entrancing and everyday events compelling. With his raw, gritty drawing style and powerful sense of colour he weaves memory into magic. His depiction of ship-board life is informative and authentic, and his decision to down-play action and concentrate on character is brave and tremendously effective. He also knows how to make a reader laugh and cry, and when.

A Sailor’s Story is a moving and obviously heartfelt paean to lost days: an impassioned tribute to lost friends and comrades; a war story that glorifies life, not death, by a creator who loved the experience and loves his art-form. When you read this superb book you will too.

Utterly devoid of unnecessary melodrama and conniving faux-angst, the history lesson starts as young Sam J. Glanzman enlists one year after Pearl Harbor – as soon as he turns 18. All the orphan leaves behind him in frigid upstate New York is one friendly farmer who promises to look after his devoted dog Beauty…

What follows is a mesmerising succession of snippets and memories and observations pieced together into a mosaic of life afloat during wartime: learning to speak what amounts to a new language, playing pranks and growing up in a pressure cooker. Along the way you make a few friends, some enemies but mostly just acquaintances: people doing the same things as you at the same time in the same place, but not necessarily for the same reasons and certainly with no dreams except having it all end…

Sam sees the world, the best and worst of life and survives the sailor’s greatest enemies: unseen, distant strangers trying to kill you, mindless tedium and dire, soul-destroying repetitive routine, eventually finding his niche – if never a decent place to sleep…

Through brief and terrifying clashes with the enemy, intimate associations and alliances aboard ship, intimate assignations ashore or on the frequent and increasingly bizarre and hilarious “Liberties” (those breaks from active duty us TV-reared landlubbers all mistakenly think of as “shore leave”), the author debunks the myth of the magic of the seas, only to recreate it recast in terms any modern reader will instantly understand…

Eventually the war ends and long after that so does the sailor’s service, with only the merest few of his unforgettable memories shared…

The sheer overwhelming veracity of the episodes is utterly overwhelming. Raucously funny, ineffably sad – “Beauty’s fate” will break your heart or you’re not and never have been human – devoutly forgiving, patiently understanding and stunningly authentic…

This long longed-for complete edition (thank you, Dover Books!) also includes that sequel from 1989. Wind, Dreams and Dragons returns to the Pacific at the height of the war with a specific theme in mind and, by clever use of narrative devices such as Ship’s Travel Logs incorporated into the beguiling page designs, diagrams and cutaways as part of the text plus astoundingly affecting intimate details – most trenchantly humorous – fondly recalled and seamlessly staged, manages to instil an even more documentary atmosphere into this wonderfully human-scaled drama.

This is used to create a foreboding sense of dread as the crew encounters and learns to live with the then-unknown terror weapon of suicide-pilots who would become a household name to us: Kamikaze…

Combining the folksy, informative charm of the first volume with the “hurry-up-and-wait” tension of modern warfare, all delivered in an increasingly bold and innovative graphic style, Wind, Dreams and Dragons is one of the best explorations ever produced of sea-combat as seen through the eyes of the ordinary seaman and compellingly communicates the terror, resolve and sheer disbelief that men on both sides could sacrifice so much…

This is a fitting and evocative tribute from one who was there to all those who are no longer here…

As if those back-to-back blockbusters were not enough, this oversized (279x210mm), fully colour-remastered paperback tome comes with a flotilla of extras beginning with a Foreword by Max (World War Z) Brooks and Introduction from original editor Larry Hama.

Following the colourful comics there is also a star-studded ‘Tributes’ section by Glanzman’s contemporaries: moving and frequently awe-struck commemorations, appreciations, shared memories and even many art contributions from Alan Barnard, George Pratt, Beau Smith (who shares a personal sketch SJG created for him), Stephen R. Bissette, Carl Potts, Chris Claremont, Denny O’Neil, Kurt Busiek, Stan Lee, Paul Levitz, Joe R. Lansdale, Walt Simonson, Russ Heath, Joe Kubert, Steve Fears, Thomas Yeates, Timothy Truman, Will Franz and Mark Wheatley.

There’s even a splendid photo parade entitled ‘Sam’s Scrapbook’ and warmly impassioned ‘Afterword’ by Chuck Dixon.

Topping everything is a new 10-page black-&-white hauntingly powerful USS Stevens tale entitled ‘Even Dead Birds Have Wings’. Now all we have to do is get those 50 or so USS Stevens micro classics tales into a book too… as soon as possible…

Shockingly raw, painfully authentic, staggeringly beautiful, A Sailor’s Story is a magnificent work by one of the very best of “The Greatest Generation”, a sublimely insightful, affecting and rewarding graphic memoir every home, school and library should have…
Artwork and text © 2015 Sam Glanzman. All other material © 2015 its respective creators.

A Sailor’s Story will be released on May 29th 2015 and is available for pre-order now. Check out www.doverpublications.com or your internet retailer or comic shop of choice.