Category: War Stories

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Blazing Combat


By Archie Goodwin & various (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-366-8

If you’re a bold young publisher or passionate young author you know you must be doing something right when the American government is out to get you. At least that must have felt the case for struggling print entrepreneur Jim Warren and writer/editor Archie Goodwin in the months that followed the launch of the war anthology comics magazine Blazing Combat.

Warren had originally established himself with the black and white B-Movie periodical Famous Monsters of Filmland and satire magazine Help!, when in 1965 he took his admiration of the legendary 1950s EC Comics to its logical conclusion by reviving the concept of horror short stories for older fans by launching Creepy. Stuffed with clever, sardonic, tongue-in-cheek comics chillers illustrated by the top artists in the field (many of them ex-EC stars) he circumvented the all-powerful Comics Code Authority – which had ended EC’s glory days and eventually their entire comics line – by publishing as a newsstand magazine.

It was a no-lose proposition. Older readers didn’t care to be associated with “kid’s stuff” comic-books whilst magazines had tempting cachet (i.e. mild nudity and little more explicit violence) for readers of a transitional age; moreover the standard monochrome format was a quarter of the costs of colour periodicals.

Creepy was a huge and influential hit, especially among the increasingly rebellious teen market, often cited as a source of inspiration for the nascent underground commix movement and feeding on the growing renewed public interest in the supernatural. In true Darwinian “Grow or Die” mode Warren looked around for a new project.

At this time the war in Vietnam was starting to escalate, and the 1948 Selective Service Act – which had kept the Military, National Guard and Federal Reserve forces “topped up” with able-bodied men throughout the Cold War and Korean “Police Action” – was increasingly informing young men that they had been called up to “Advise” their allies in Indo-China on how to kill communists…

Archie Goodwin was a young cartoonist and writer working as an assistant art director at Redbook magazine. Another passionate EC fan, he had sold a script to Warren which appeared in Creepy #1, becoming its editor with #4, and was promptly offered the editor’s chair on Warren’s latest brainstorm. If EC horror had come back into vogue wouldn’t that audience also like a mag based on the old company’s landmark war anthologies Frontline Combat and Two-Fisted Tales?

We’ll never know.

Nowadays controversy sells and there’s no such thing as bad publicity but in 1965 it was a different world and these passionately realistic, uncompromising tales of battle were deemed anti-war (can that ever be a bad thing?) and anti-American: not by the readers but by the distributors paid to get Blazing Combat onto the shelves.

With the second quarterly issue copies were arbitrarily being left in warehouses, the American Legion publicly denounced the magazine – presumably for not showing war as a fun-filled, glorious picnic – and US Military authorities had banned the publication from all their PX’s (the Post Exchange and its Navy, Marine and Air Force equivalents were and still are the One-Stop-Shop of US bases and sold everything from reading materials to off-duty shoes – they were a major generator of comic-book sales) citing a number of Vietnam themed tales which implied that American soldiers were killing innocent civilians.

The public revelation of the My Lai massacre of as many as 507 villagers by American soldiers remained covered up until 1969…

Accompanied by fascinating and frankly gob-smacking interviews with Warren and Goodwin this wonderful, astounding collection re-presents all four of these monochrome masterpieces (which ran over a year from October 1965 to July 1966) in a rousing tome filled with trenchant, unforgettable war-stories by some of the greatest artists in the industry.

The moral body-blows and ethical challenges begin with ‘Viet-Cong!’(illustrated by Joe Orlando), just another grisly day in the field for our boys: marching, searching, torturing prisoners… followed by Angelo Torres’ ‘Aftermath!’, a paean to pride and stupidity set during the Civil War. Next is a terse, informative drama about the ‘Flying Tigers!’ drawn by aviation ace George Evans, and disturbing fable about ultimate objectives during the War in the Pacific, ‘Long View!’ by Gray Morrow.

Reed Crandall illustrated ‘Cantigny!’ decrying the patriotic madness of WWI, and Alex Toth drew a beautiful ‘Combat Quiz’ feature, whilst Tex Blaisdell, Russ Jones and Maurice Whitman collaborated on the rousing tale of Revolutionary War hero ‘Mad Anthony!’ The first issue concluded with John Severin’s gritty cautionary WWII tale ‘Enemy!’

‘Landscape!’ is the Vietnam tale that caused all that long-ago furore, once more drawn by Orlando, whilst Crandall tried his hand at Minutemen and Lobsterbacks (rebellious Colonials and British regulars to you) in the painfully ironic story of ‘Saratoga!’ and Korea fell under the spotlight in Al McWilliams’ stirring ‘Mig Alley!’

Orlando recaptured the mania of the Spanish-American War of 1898 in ‘Face to Face!‘ whilst the dream-team of Torres and Al Williamson delivered a brutal classic of tank warfare in ‘Kasserine Pass!’ and Alex Toth’s design and greytone mastery made ‘Lone Hawk’ as perfect a tale of WWI aerial combat as you will ever see…

There’s another (uncredited) ‘Comics Quiz’ to solve before Severin’s chilling psycho-drama ‘Holding Action’ ended that controversial second issue.

The magazine was already doomed by the time ‘Special Forces!’ from Joe Orlando opened the third issue. It’s gory, blasé, day-in-the-life attitudes nicely counter-pointed the human tragedy and triumph of Crandall’s Civil War shocker ‘Foragers’ and the chilling acceptance of the war-obsessed survivors in ‘U-Boat’; Gene Coloan’s first contribution to this ill-starred gem of a series.

Alex Toth co-wrote the ambiguously post-apocalyptic ‘Survival!’, but the potent reductionist minimalism of the art is all his own, whilst Wally Wood wrote and illustrated a slick, stirring thriller in ‘The Battle of Britain’ – the only tale on which Goodwin had no input, and the first to feature non-American protagonists…

The Indian Wars of 1885 provided Gray Morrow with an ideal opportunity to demonstrate the only true winner of genocide in ‘Water Hole’, and the penultimate issue concluded with a saga of unjustified assumptions in Severin’s beguiling Pacific War parable ‘Souvenirs!’

Gene Colan illustrated the final Vietnam tale ‘Conflict!’, an impassioned tale of racism under fire, George Evans returned to the killer skies of WWI in the bloody history lesson ‘How It Began!’ which leads directly into – visually, at least – the best thing in the book.

Alex Toth revisited the glory of his landmark EC tale ‘F86: Sabre Jet!’ (Frontline Combat #12, 1953; track it down – preferably in black and white – it is utterly indescribable in its pictorial brilliance) with another saga of Jet Age combat: ‘The Edge’ a stark, yet oddly comforting homily.

‘Give and Take’ by hyper-realist Russ Heath is a perfect example of the anti-war philosophy and hauntingly lovely, whilst Wally Wood’s sleek imagery and finishing clearly shows how Hitler’s mad arrogance lost the war by mis-using the incredible jet fighter ‘ME-262!’

Severin’s final contribution is the gallows-grim lark of WWI ‘The Trench!’ whilst Reed Crandall’s immense versatility is displayed in a two-tier tale of legendary holding actions. Co-written by the artist, British troops retreating in Greece in 1941 recall another time dedicated soldiers bought time for their nation, living and dying at ‘Thermopylae!’

This volume’s comic section ends in the only way it can, with the grimly pointless, nasty story of military pragmatism and ruthless necessity, with conscience the first casualty, as German and American troops respectively mop up after a ‘Night Drop!’ illustrated with mordant aplomb by Angelo Torres in his too-infrequently seen wash and tone style.

After the aforementioned interviews by Mike Catron this incredible volume ends with all of Frank Frazetta’s original colour cover paintings.

Blazing Combat is a singular vision, filled with artistic wonders and brimming with some of the best and certainly most impassioned writing the gentle genius Archie Goodwin ever penned in his glittering career. This is probably the only book of war comics that comes anywhere near the power, artistry and impact of our own Charley’s War. Whatever your reasons for loving comics you should read this book – and if you don’t like comics at all, read it anyway and have your mind changed for you…

This collection © 2010 Fantagraphics Books. Contents © 1965, 1966 Warren Publishing renewed and assigned to J. Michael Catron 1993. All other material © the respective individual holders. All rights reserved.

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Tales of the Green Beret Books 1-3


By Robin Moore & Joe Kubert (Blackthorne/Comic Strip Preserves)
ISBNs: 0-932629-36-9, 0-932629-48-2 and 0-932629-59-8

If you’re old enough to remember the Viet Nam conflict you’ll understand when I say that it was a war that changed the World’s perception of America. It marked a growth of civil resistance, student unrest and all-pervasive questioning of previously accepted authority. People thought differently after it ended. Most had their eyes opened: many screwed them tighter shut…

It is something we should be aware of now more than ever…

In 1965 a blockbuster book by novelist Robin Moore rocketed to the top of the bestseller lists, generating a film, a hit song and a highly controversial syndicated comic strip. Moore, possibly one of the very first “Embedded Journalists”, trained with and then accompanied America’s elite combat group, the US Army Special Forces, for two years, and was clearly proud to be counted amongst “The Green Berets.”

The United States Army Special Forces is a Special Operations Force designed to carry out six specific briefs: Unconventional Warfare, Foreign Internal Defense, Special Reconnaissance, Direct Military Action, Hostage Rescue and Counter-Terrorism. Units usually carry out these missions with foreign troops on foreign soil, and their remit also includes Search and Rescue, Peacekeeping and Humanitarian Assistance. In later years they have also specialized in Landmine Removal, Counter-Proliferation, Psychological Operations, Manhunting, and Counter-Drug operations.

The unit was formed in 1952 as part of the US Army Psychological Warfare Division, designated the 10th Special Forces Group at the new Psychological Warfare School (which became the John F. Special Warfare Center and School just before these strips premiered).

During the 1960s they were mostly employed in Southeast Asia, South America and Europe in their Unconventional Warfare capacity. The group motto is “De Oppresso Liber” – To Liberate the Oppressed – and relates to their most frequent function: training and advising foreign indigenous forces.

Oddly, the Green Beret itself is a Scottish tradition dating from World War II, when American OSS agents and US Army Rangers (their equivalent to our Commandos) were trained by the Royal Marines and awarded the prestigious headgear for successfully completing the terrifying Commando Training course.

The hats were banned by the US military, but worn clandestinely – and illegally – until 1961, when President Kennedy personally authorized them as a signal of the caliber of soldier able to win one: “a symbol of excellence, a badge of courage, a mark of distinction in the fight for freedom.”

This gesture forever bound the Green Berets to the memory of the murdered President, as the very first week of the strip stirringly affirms. Tales of the Green Berets comes from a time when the USA led the Free World (now there’s a phrase to pick apart semantically), politicians were generally considered to be open and honest and the CIA were good guys. As usual when nations go to war, idealism is always the first casualty, closely followed by young men and foreign civilians…

Fully aware of the value of favourable PR, the strip was created at the urging of Lt. General William Yarborough, who had sponsored Moore’s research and arduous training. He was the current commander of the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and was keen to see the military displayed in a positive light. After a brief but abortive initial opening, the strip launched as a daily on April 4th and Sunday feature on April 10th 1966 from the Chicago Tribune Syndicate, with scripts by Howard Liss and art from the immensely talented Joe Kubert, whose work on DC’s war comic-books was swiftly making him America’s top war artist.

The tales featured a fictionalised reporter, Chris Tower, who had trained with the Green Berets for an article and was now posted to Vietnam by his newspaper magnate father to report on the war…

In the first adventure here ‘Kidnap Ksor Tonn’ Tower meets up with an old friend and becomes embroiled in an operation to abduct a prominent Viet Cong commander: an impressive tale of jeopardy and double-cross. These stories are surprisingly even-handed in their treatment of the conflict, as ‘Sucker Bait’ sees Tower visiting a jungle village of peasants caught in the middle of the war, with heartbreaking consequences…

This is followed by an exotic view of life in Sin City Saigon entitled ‘Chris Kidnapped’ but the perpetrators aren’t political, merely greedy students looking to make some quick American cash…

The first volume ends with the opening shots in a new conflict as Chris flies to Central America to join ‘Operation Oilspot’…

The saga continues in volume two as Chris becomes deeply involved in an ideological battle between the poor peasants of San Marco and Marxist insurgents. In this war for hearts and minds the Green Berets are only “observers”, teaching and training the local soldiery and helping to construct roads and a bridge, but the insurgents are determined to sabotage the project. Moreover they are not so much dedicated communists as profiteering bandits with an eye to the main chance…

This is an impressive saga full of genuine moral conflict and personal tragedy, whilst the next tale ‘Freedom Flight’, switches locales to East Berlin and genres to pure espionage as Tower and a European team warm up the Cold War to smuggle a family through Checkpoint Charlie for a new life beyond the Iron Curtain. Once more the story breaks at a critical moment, to resume in the third and final volume.

On concluding ‘Freedom Flight’ Tower returns to Southeast Asia to examine the links between South Vietnamese Generals – ostensibly the allies of the Americans – and American organised crime. ‘The Syndicate’ is a tense thriller which shows that the modern problem with Vietnamese drug lords was an open secret even in 1967, and as the spellbinding action simultaneously takes place in Asia and America, clearly reveals that the situation was in large part self-inflicted…

This final volume concludes with the somewhat truncated yet engagingly complex political drama ‘Prince Synoc’, wherein a Special Forces trained son of the King of Thailand apparently defects to a faction of the anti-American, anti-monarchist Thai Army of Liberation.

All is not as it seems though, as Tower and the local Green Berets discover… The third and final volume ends here on a rather inconclusive note with the December 31st 1967 Sunday instalment, but I’m not really surprised that these volumes never finished reprinting the entire strip…

The feature was in strange and controversial straits by this time. Although still popular, it had become an easy target for anti-war protesters, with writing campaigns and even picketing of papers that carried it. Kubert’s usually inspired and grippingly evocative textured art suffered (it looks to me like fellow DC artist Jack Abel has ghosted the inking on more than one occasion), and Joe left the strip in January 1968. His last Sunday page was January 7th and his final daily ran three days later. The series continued for a few months more with veteran Tarzan artist John Celardo as illustrator, before succumbing to the inevitable.

Now however, with the distance of decades, surely it is time for this superb and seminal series to be revisited and given the complete deluxe treatment. These cheap and cheerful Blackthorne editions are scarce, often poorly printed and incomplete. The first abortive tale ‘Viet Cong Cowboy’ was not included and since the stories are so very readable it seems only right to also include the missing Celardo strips. After all, this man was also a major artistic talent and I for one would love to review his later efforts…

One more for the graphic novel wish-list then…
© 1986 Tribune Media Services, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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Enemy Ace: War in Heaven


By Garth Ennis, Chris Weston, Christian Alamy & Russ Heath (DC Comics)
ISBN: 1-56389-982-5

Enemy Ace first appeared as a back-up in issue #151 of DC’s flagship war comic Our Army at War: home of the already legendary Sergeant Rock (cover-dated February 1965). Produced by the dream team of Robert Kanigher and Joe Kubert during a period when the ongoing Vietnam conflict was beginning to tear American society apart the series told bitter tales of valour and honour from the point of view of German WWI fighter pilot Hans Von Hammer: a noble warrior fighting for his country in a conflict that was swiftly excising all trace of such outmoded concepts from the business of mass-killing.

The tales, loosely based on Red Baron Manfred von Richthofen, were a magnificent tribute to soldiering whilst condemning the madness of war, produced during the turbulent days of the Vietnam War. They are still moving and powerful beyond belief, as is George Pratt’s seminal 1989 sequel, Enemy Ace: War Idyll.

In 2001, Garth Ennis – no stranger to combat fiction – took another look at the flyer on the other side in a two part miniseries that transplanted him to World War II, and a far less defensible position…

Bavaria, 1942 and forty-six years old Baron Hans von Hammer is visited by an old flying comrade urging him to come out of retirement and serve his country. No lover of Nazism, the old ace has kept himself isolated until now but Germany’s attack on Russia has proven a disastrous blunder, and this last plea is a much warning as request.

The neophyte pilots on the Eastern Front need his experience and leadership whereas Hitler’s goons don’t need much excuse to remove a dissident thorn…

Based loosely on the lives of such German pilots as Adolf Galland, book I of War in Heaven (illustrated by Chris Weston) finds von Hammer as indomitable as ever in the killer skies but unable to come to terms with the increasing horror and stupidity of the conflict and its instigators. The phrase “My Country, Right or Wrong” leaves an increasingly sour taste in his mouth as the last of his nation’s young men die above Soviet fields…

Book II is set in 1945 and sees Germany on the brink of defeat with von Hammer flying an experimental early jet fighter (a Messerschmitt 262, if you’re interested) shooting down not nearly enough Allied bombers to make a difference and still annoying the wrong people at Nazi High Command. He knows the war is over but his sense of duty and personal honour won’t let him quit. He is resigned to die in the bloody skies that had been his second home, but then he is shot down and parachutes into a concentration camp named Dachau…

With art from comics legend Russ Heath, this stirring tale ends with a triumph of integrity over patriotism: a perfect end to the war record of a true soldier.

This slim volume is supplemented by a classic anti-war tale of WWI by Kanigher and Kubert from Star-Spangled War Stories #139. ‘Death Whispers… Death Screams!’ explores the Enemy Ace’s childhood and noble lineage as he endures the daily atrocities of being one of the world’s last warrior knights in a mechanised, conveyor-belt conflict.

Here is another gripping, compelling, deeply incisive exploration of war, its repercussions, both good and bad, and the effects that combat has on singular men. This should be mandatory reading for every child who wants to be a soldier…

© 2001, 2002 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Jack Kirby’s The Losers


By Jack Kirby with D. Bruce Berry and Mike Royer (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-184856-194-6

¡Perfect Christmas Present Alert! – for boys of all ages

There’s a glorious profusion of Jack Kirby material around these days and this astounding collection of his too-brief run on the DC war comic Our Fighting Forces is for far too many an unknown delight. Famed for his larger than life characters and gigantic, cosmic imaginings, the King was a decent, spiritual man from another generation, and one who had experienced human horror and bravery as an ordinary grunt during World War II. Whether in the world-weary verité of his 1950s collaborations with Joe Simon or the flamboyant bravado of his Marvel creation Sgt. Fury, his combat comics looked real: grimy, tired, battered yet indomitable.

In 1974, with his newest creations inexplicably not setting any sales records at DC, and as he tentatively considered a return to Marvel, he took over the creative chores on an established but always floundering series that had run in Our Fighting Forces since 1970.

The Losers were an elite unit of American soldiers formed by amalgamating three old war series together. Gunner and Sarge (later supplemented by the Fighting Devil Dog “Pooch”) were Pacific-based Marines; debuting in All-American Men of War #67, (March1959) and running for fifty issues in Our Fighting Forces (#45-94, May1959-August 1965), whilst Captain Johnny Cloud – Navaho Ace and native American fighter pilot – shot down his first bogie in All-American Men of War #82. He flew solo until issue #115, (1966), and the final component of the Land/Air/Sea team was filled by Captain Storm, a disabled PT Boat commander (he had a wooden leg) who had his own 18 issue title from 1964 to 1967. All three series were created by comics warlord Robert Kanigher.

The characters had all pretty much passed their sell-by dates when they teamed-up as guest-stars in a Haunted Tank tale in 1969 (G.I. Combat #138 October), but these “Losers” found a new resonance together in the relevant, disillusioned, cynical Vietnam years and their somewhat nihilistic, doom-laden group anti-hero adventures took the lead spot in Our Fighting Forces #123 (January/February 1970), written by Kanigher and illustrated by such giants as Ken Barr, Russ Heath, Sam Glanzman, John Severin and Joe Kubert.

With the tag-line “even when they win , they lose” the team saw action all over the globe, winning critical acclaim and a far-too-small, passionate following until #151 (November 1974) when Kirby was given complete control of the series. His radically different approach was highly controversial at the time but the passage of years has allowed a fairer appraisal and whilst never really in tune with the aesthetic of DC’s other war titles the King’s run was a spectacular and singularly intriguing examination of the human condition under the worst of all possible situations.

In ‘Kill Me with Wagner’ the Losers infiltrate a French village to rescue a concert pianist before the Nazis can capture her, but the hapless propaganda pawn has a tremendous advantage, as nobody knows what she looks like. As with most of this series a feeling of inevitable, onrushing Gotterdammerung permeates this tale: a sense that worlds are ending and new one’s a-coming. The action culminates in a catastrophic wave of destruction that is pure Kirby magic.

Most of DC’s war titles sported Kubert covers, but #152 featured the first in a startling sequence of hypnotic Kirby illustrations, almost abstract in delivery, to introduce the team to the no-hope proposition of ‘A Small Place in Hell!’ as they found themselves the advance guard for an Allied push, but dropped in the wrong town: one that has not been cleared… The spectacular action is augmented by a delightful two page Kirby fact feature: Sub-machine guns of WWII, and it should be noted that this collection is also peppered with un-inked Kirby pencilled pages and roughs.

Our Fighting Forces #153 is one of those stories that made the traditionalists squeak. Behind another Kirby cover, the story of ‘Devastator vs. Big Max’ veered dangerously close to science fiction, but the admittedly eccentric plan to destroy a giant German rail-mounted super-cannon wasn’t any stranger than many schemes the Boffins dreamed up to disinform the enemy during the actual conflict…

That tale, with two beautiful info-pages on military uniforms and insignia, is followed by a superb parable about personal honour. Behind another bombastic Kirby cover the team deployed to the Pacific to remove a Japanese officer who’s devotion to ‘Bushido’ had inspired superhuman resistance from his men. The means used to remove him were far from clean or creditable…

Preceded by two pages on war vehicles and a wonderful pencil cover-rough, ‘The Partisans!’ (OFF #155) took the Losers into very dark territory indeed (with two pages on artillery pieces and the pencils for the cover to that issue, before the team returned to America for ‘Good-bye Broadway… Hello Death!’ wherein the team experienced the home-front joys of New York whilst hunting for a notorious U-Boat commander who escaped the sinking of his submarine. Naturally there’s more to the story than first appears… This fast-paced thriller is complemented by a history of battle headgear and another penciled rough.

Issues #157 and 158 comprised a two-part saga about theft, black marketeering and espionage featuring the truly unique personage ‘Panama Fattie!’, whose criminal activities almost altered the course of the war; a tale concluded in the highly-charged ‘Bombing Out on the Panama Canal’ with accompanying pages on ships, subs and Nazi super-planes. Behind the last Kirby cover ‘Mile-a-Minute Jones!’ in #159, is a smaller-scaled duel between a black runner who embarrassed the Nazis at the 1936 Olympics and the Nazi ubermensch he defeated, which reignites on the battlefield with the Losers relegated to subordinate roles.

Kubert and Ernie Chan handled the three remaining covers of Kirby’s run, an indication that his attentions were diverted elsewhere, but the stories remained powerful and deeply personal explorations of combat. In ‘Ivan’ (OFF #160) the Losers go undercover as German soldiers on the Eastern Front and have an unpleasant encounter with Russian Nazi sympathizers whose appetite for atrocity surpasses anything they have ever seen before (supplemented by a two page tanks feature) whilst the hellish jungles of the Burma campaign prove an unholy backdrop for the traumatic combat shocker ‘The Major’s Dream.’

The volume and Kirby’s war work ends with a sly tribute to his 1942 co-creation the Boy Commandos (for more of which get yourself a copy of The Best of Simon and Kirby. ‘Gung-Ho!’ sees young Gunner training a band of war orphans in Marine tactics only to find fun turn to dire necessity when the Germans overrun their “safe” position. This is an optimistic, all-out action romp that ends on a note of hope and anticipation as the King made his departure. With issue #163 Kanigher resumed the story reins, with artists like Jack Lehti, Ric Estrada and George Evans illustrating, and the Losers returned to their pre-Kirby style and status, with readers hardly acknowledging the detour into another kind of war.

Jack Kirby is unique and uncompromising. If you’re not a fan or simply not prepared to see for yourself what all the fuss has been about then no words of mine will change your mind. That doesn’t alter the fact that Kirby’s work since 1939 shaped the entire American comics scene, affected the lives of billions of readers and thousands of creators in all areas of artistic endeavour around the world for generations and which is still, more than 15 years after his death, garnering new fans and apostles from the young and naive to the most cerebral of intellectuals. Jack’s work is instantly accessible, irresistibly visceral, deceptively deep whilst being simultaneously mythic and human.

These tales of purely mortal heroism are in many ways the most revealing, honest and insightful of Jack’s incredibly vast accumulated works, and even the true devotee often forgets their very existence. As Neil Gaiman’s introduction succinctly declaims, “they are classic Kirby… and even if you don’t like war comics, you may be in for a surprise…”

You really don’t want to miss that, do you?

© 2009 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Enemy Ace: War Idyll


By George Pratt (DC Comics)
ISBN: 0-930289-78-1

During the 1960s Marvel gave industry leader National (now DC) Comics an artistic and sales drubbing, overhauling their twenty year position as industry leader – but only in the resurgent genre of super-heroes. In such areas as kids stuff, comedy and romance they still lagged behind, and in the venerable and gritty war-comics market they rated lower even than Charlton.

Admittedly they weren’t really trying, with only the highly inconsistent Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos as a publication of any longevity, but that didn’t stop National’s editors and creators from forging ahead and inventing a phenomenal number of memorable series and characters to thrill and inform a generation very much concerned with all aspects of military life.

Enemy Ace first appeared as a back-up in issue #151 of the flagship war comic Our Army at War: home of the already legendary Sergeant Rock (cover-dated February 1965). Produced by the dream team of Robert Kanigher and Joe Kubert it told bitter tales of valour and honour from the point of view of German WWI fighter pilot Hans Von Hammer: a noble warrior fighting for his country in a conflict that was swiftly excising all trace of such outmoded concepts from the business of mass-killing.

The tales, loosely based on Red Baron Manfred von Richthofen, were a magnificent tribute to soldiering whilst condemning the madness of war, produced during the turbulent days of the Vietnam War. They are still moving and powerful beyond belief.

As is their seminal sequel, Enemy Ace: War Idyll. Produced in moody, misty, strikingly sombre images by painter George Pratt, it follows the quest of troubled veteran Edward Mannock, recently returned Viet Nam grunt turned photo-journalist, and a man desperately seeking answers to imponderable questions and great truths to cure the damage his combat experiences have caused.

1969, and Mannock’s search takes a pivotal turn when on a routine assignment he discovers Von Hammer. The mythic “Hammer of Hell” is dying in a German nursing home but instantly sees that he and the distraught young man share a deep and common bond…

This is an astounding, deeply incisive exploration of war, its repercussions, both good and bad, and the effects that combat has on singular men. War Idyll is visceral, poetic, emotive, evocative and terrifyingly instructive: with as much impact as All Quiet on the Western Front or Charley’s War. Every child who wants to be a soldier should be made to read this book.

You don’t want me to talk about it, but you do need to experience it, and once you have you’ll want to share that experience with others…
© 1990 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Charley’s War volume 5: Return to the Front


By Pat Mills & Joe Colquhoun (Titan Books)
ISBN: 978-1-84576-769-9

The fifth instalment of Mills and Colquhoun’s astonishing comic strip condemnation of the Great War (and war-mongering in general) picks right up from the previous volume (Blue’s Story) as recuperating boy-soldier Charley Bourne settles his affairs in London before reluctantly returning to the terrifying trenches and insane warlords on both sides of No-Man’s Land, whose callous and inept tactics and strategies decimated an entire generation of Europe’s manhood.

Charley’s War, originally published in the weekly comic Battle (from #200, 6th January 1979 until October of 1986), tells the story of an underage East-Ender who lies about his age to enlist in the British Army setting out to fight the Hun in 1916. Writer Mills fully exercised his own political and creative agendas on the series and, as his own always informative commentary relates, was always amazed at what he got away with and what seeming trivialities his editors pulled him up on. Here for example, as the lad rejoins his unit in April 1917, just in time for the third Battle of Ypres, the creators was allowed to wallow in historical accuracy, and some intriguing gallows humour, capitalising on the lengthy build-up of troops which forced a long period on tedious inactivity upon the already bored soldiery.

Life in the trenches was notoriously hard and unremittingly dull… except for brief bursts of action which ended so many lives. By closely following the events of the war, powerful episodes featuring such insanity as a Cricket match played out whilst shells rained down, brutal forced marches that incapacitated already shattered “Tommies”, dedicated heroes destroying their own equipment and a dozen other daily insanities of the military mind are exposed with devastating effect.

The saga focuses far more on the characters than the fighting – although there is still plenty of harrowing action – and reveals to the readers (which at the time of original publication were presumed to boys between ages 9-13) that “our side” could be as unjust and monstrous as the “bad guys”.

Charley receives the dubious honour of being seconded a servant to the callous officer Captain Snell who thinks the war a terrific lark: thereby revealing an utterly different side to the conflict, and acts as the only voice of reason when the veterans of earlier conflicts take out their resentment on the new replacement troops – all conscripted, and commonly seen by the hardened survivors of early years as cowards and shirkers for not volunteering.

But although the horrors and madness and incessant waiting for the big show to begin are omnipresent, things do proceed: as the book closes Charley discovers that his unit has been posted to join an engineering detail short of manpower. The losses were caused by cave-ins and flooding, and Charley realises that his next job will be to complete a year-long project to tunnel under a vast ridge of solid rock and undermine the German Guns on the Messine Ridge. If they don’t get killed he and his comrades will be packing the explosives for the biggest explosion the world has ever experienced…

Brutal, dark, beautiful, instantly affecting and staggeringly informative, there has never been a series like Charley’s War: it is something future generations will scorn you for not reading…

© 2008 Egmont Magazines Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

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The Best of GI Joe


By Larry Hama & various (Panini Books UK)
ISBN: 9787-1-84653-425-6

The torrent of material tying in to the blockbuster move (see GI Joe: the Rise of Cobra Official Movie Prequel and GI Joe: Snake in the Grass) continues with this very welcome compendium collecting some of the most impressive highlights of Marvel’s output: a hugely successful mini-franchise that encompassed three regular titles plus many specials at one stage.

I’ve no real interest in the film, but the toy, cartoon and comics phenomenon reached way more impressionable minds that most modern comics could even imagine and many of the strip adventures (both US and Marvel UK’s) were highpoints of sequential narrative at a time when innovation and imagination were highly regarded – and rewarded – so it’s great to see some of them finding a fresh audience.

In case you came in late: GI Joe is the operating name for an American covert, multi-disciplinary espionage and military intervention force that draws its members from all branches of the services. At the time of these tales the Joes and terrorist secret society Cobra are well known to each other and engaged in a full-on clandestine global war…

The collection begins with the ultimate “classic Joe” story; a magnificent example of disciplined storytelling from Larry Hama who wrote all the tales in this volume, and laid out this sharp tale of Yankee ninja Snake-Eyes rescuing operative Scarlett from Cobra captivity. Originally published in GI Joe #21, ‘Silent Interlude’ was embellished by Steve Leialoha, and tells a riveting action-packed yarn without ever using dialogue or captions.

This is followed by a more traditional, but no less impressive yarn from issue #24. Illustrated by the legendary Russ Heath, ‘The Commander Escapes!’ sees a small team of Joes attempting to keep Cobra’s leader captive, with all their enemy’s vast resources arrayed against them, and in #26 Leialoha returned for ‘Snake-Eyes: the Origin’, a complex Vietnam saga that barely scratches the surface of a long-running mystery…

‘Shakedown!’ (GI Joe #34), with art from Rod Whigham and Andy Mushynsky, is a cracking tale of ultra-modern jet dogfighter that would make Hans von Hammer proud whilst ‘Going Under’ from #63, (by Ron Wagner and Mushynsky) finds a select team undercover and facing the Soviet analogues of Borovia in an attempt to rescue Joes held in an infamous Gulag. Regrettably it’s the middle of a much longer epic and impressive though it is, there’s no resolution to be had for new readers.

Hama successfully reprised Silent Interlude in #85’s ‘SFX’, with Paul Ryan illustrating a classy, high body-count ninja tale featuring Snake-Eyes’ polar opposite Storm Shadow, and issue #86 celebrated the 25th anniversary of the original toy’s release (we called him Action Man in the UK) with the excellent Marshall Rogers and Randy Emberlin depicting ‘…Not Fade Away!’ – where the team meet the original “Real American Hero” when Cobra commandos seize New York landmark…

The superb Tony Salmons pencilled ‘No Simple Solutions’ (#91) with Emberlin inks, a engrossing yarn detailing a duel between genius of disguise Zartan and the martial arts marvel Blind Master; a cracking fight issue, but as a component of the hugely extended Snake-Eyes origin, the unresolved sub-plots are a little confusing in places…

‘Hero of the People!’ from #104 (with art from Mark Bright and Emberlin) finds Snake-Eyes in Borovia as the country reels under an anti-communist revolution: another epic with no conclusion in this volume, but at least the book ends on a classy mote with the complete story ‘All in a Night’s Work’ (art by Herb Trimpe and Mushynsky) from GI Joe Special Missions #17 as Stalker leads a covert team on a simple rescue mission against terrorists only to discover he’s been set up to take a fall by elements of his own government…

I’m never sure of the social value of stories where secret government operatives act beyond the law or the constraints of Due Process but the kid in me adores the pure satisfying simplicity of seeing a wrong and righting it: so on those terms this book of clever, witty action-packed adventures of honourable warriors doing their job is a delight worth sharing. Won’t you have some…?

© 2009 Hasbro. All Rights Reserved.

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The Best of Battle


By various (Titan Books)
ISBN: 978-1-84856-025-3

For most of the medium’s history British comics have been renowned for the ability to tell a big story in satisfying little instalments and this, coupled with superior creators and the anthology nature of our publications, has ensured hundreds of memorable characters and series have seared themselves into the little boy’s psyches inside most British adult males.

One of the last great weekly anthology comics was the all-combat Battle, which began as Battle Picture Weekly (launched on 8th March 1975), and through absorption, merger and re-branding (becoming Battle Picture Weekly & Valiant, Battle Action, Battle, Battle Action Force and Battle Storm Force) before itself being combined with Eagle on January 23rd 1988, after 673 blood-soaked testosterone drenched issues, fought its way into the bloodthirsty hearts of a generation, consequently producing some of the best and most influential war stories ever.

This action-packed compendium features the opening salvos of some of the very best from those 13 odd years produced by a winning blend of Young Turk writers Pat Mills, John Wagner, Steve McManus, Mark Andrew and Gerry Finley-Day and stalwarts of the old guard Tom Tully, Eric and Alan Hebden, with art from Colin Page, Pat Wright, Giralt, Carlos Ezquerra, Geoff Campion, Jim Watson, Mike Western, Joe Colquhoun, Eric Bradbury, Mike Dorey, John Cooper and Cam Kennedy.

The strips featured are D-Day Dawson (a sergeant with only a year to live and nothing to lose, by Gerry Finley-Day, Ron Carpenter & Colin Page), Day of the Eagle (a spy serial by ex-SOE agent Eric Hebden and artist Pat Wright), The Bootneck Boy (a little lad who lives his dream by becoming a Marine, by Finley-Day, Ian McDonald & Giralt), and the legendary Dirty Dozen-inspired Rat Pack, by Finley-Day and then featuring some of Carlos Ezquerra’s earliest UK artwork.

Ezquerra also shone on Alan Hebden’s anti-establishment masterpiece Major Eazy, whilst Fighter from the Sky is the first of the comic’s groundbreaking serials telling World War II stories from a German viewpoint. Written by Finley-Day and drawn by the superb Geoff Campion it tells of a disgraced paratrooper fighting for his country, even if they hated him for it.

Hold Hill 109 by Steve McManus and Jim Watson was a bold experiment: basically a limited series as a group of Eighth Army soldiers have to hold back the Afrika Korps for seven days, with each day comprising one weekly episode. Unbelievably only the first three days are collected here, though, as apparently there wasn’t room for the complete saga!

Darkie’s Mob (John Wagner & Mike Western) is another phenomenally well-regarded classic as a mysterious maniac takes over a lost and demoralised squad of soldiers in the Burma jungles intent on using them to punish the Japanese in ways no man could imagine, whilst Finley-Day and Campion’s Panzer G-Man tells of a German tank commander demoted and forced to endure all the dirty jobs foisted on the infantry that follow and Johnny Red, by Tom Tully and the great Joe Colquhoun, follows a discharged RAF pilot who joins the Russian air force to fight over the bloody skies of the Soviet Union.

Joe Two Beans by Wagner and Eric Bradbury follows an inscrutable Blackfoot Indian through the Hellish US Pacific campaign, The Sarge (Finley-Day& Mike Western) follows a WWI veteran as he leads Dunkirk stragglers back to England and then on to North Africa, and Hellman of Hammer Force (Finley-Day, Western, Mike Dorey & Jim Watson) follows a charismatic and decent German tank commander as he fights Germany’s enemies and the SS who want him dead.

Alan Hebden and Eric Bradbury’s Crazy Keller was an US Army maverick who stole, cheated and broke all the rules. He was also the most effective Nazi killer in the invasion of Italy, whilst The General Dies at Dawn saw Finley-Day and John Cooper repeat the miniseries experiment of Hold Hill 109 (this time in eleven instalments each representing one hour – pre-dating Jack Bauer by two decades) as Nazi General and war hero Otto von Margen tells his jailor how he came to be sentenced to the firing squad by his own comrades even as Berlin falls to the allied forces.

I don’t really approve of Charley’s War being in this book. Despite it being the very best war story ever written or drawn, uncompromising and powerfully haunting, as well as Pat Mills and Joe Colquhoun’s best ever work, it’s already available in beautiful collector volumes and the fifteen pages here could have been better used to complete Hold Hill 109 or even reprint some of the wonderful Complete-in-one-part war tales the comic often carried.

Enough barracking: Fighting Mann, by Alan Hebden and Cam Kennedy, was the first British strip set in Viet Nam, and followed the hunt of retired US Marine Walter Mann who went “in-country” in 1967 to track down his son, a navy pilot listed as a deserter, and the book concludes with Death Squad!: A kind of German Rat Pack full of Werhmacht criminals sent as a punishment squad to die for the Fatherland in the icy hell of the Eastern Front. Written by Mark Andrew and illustrated by the incomparable Eric Bradbury this is one of the grittiest and most darkly comedic of Battle’s martial pantheon.

This spectacular blend of action, tension and drama, with a heaping helping of sardonic grim wit from both sides of World War II and beyond as well as the unique take on the American soldier, hasn’t paled in the intervening years and these black and white gems are as powerful and engrossing now as they’ve ever been. Fair warning though: Many of the tales here do not conclude. For that you’ll have to campaign for a second volume…

© 2009 Egmont UK Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

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GI Joe: Snake in the Grass – UK Edition


By Chuck Dixon & Robert Atkins (Panini Books)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-424-9

I’ve already admitted to knowing precious little about the forthcoming blockbuster GI Joe movie and I’m prepared to say even less about it. But considered as a memory-drenched toy, cartoon and comics phenomenon of the 1980s it’s probably something that affects most of you ether personally or through family, and certainly doesn’t need any more opinion from me. However the film-promotion machine has generated a couple of splendid new comics adventures (see GI Joe: the Rise of Cobra: Official Movie Prequel) and I’m more than happy to babble on about them…

In case you were wondering: GI Joe is the operating name for an American covert, multi-disciplinary espionage and military intervention force that draws its members from all branches of the services. At the time of these tales it is just setting up, as is a super-secret society called Cobra that appears bent on World Domination. Neither organisation is aware of the other…

This volume collects the first six issues – plus the teaser #0 – from IDW comics and tells a refreshingly straightforward, full-on battle-romp, courtesy of scripter Chuck Dixon and artist Robert Atkins.

As the new ultra-covert GI Joe team are setting up their hidden subterranean desert base The Pit, a new super-technological device in an impenetrable crate is recovered from a mysteriously sunken freighter. Transferring it to the Pit might just be the biggest mistake the strike force ever makes…

Meanwhile high-end arms dealer Nico Mandirobilis finds himself on the run from a teleporting assassin sent by a disgruntled client: the sinister covert cabal called Cobra. As a Joe team is dispatched to round him up, the thing – or things – in the crate break loose, tearing the Pit to Shrapnel and making for the surface where they can transmit all the Joes files to their masters…

And at the same time high-tech and insufferably independent weaponsmith Destro discovers an unwelcome guest in The Baroness, who wants nothing more than to see him die…

This tense, twisty thriller is as high on suspense as action, with chases, battles and double-crosses a-plenty, but everything might just turn on the choices and actions of renegade Joe Snake Eyes, who slips ninja-like into and out of the picture, bent on a mission all his own…

It’s often tricky to transfer the sheer pace and spectacle of a summer blockbuster into a readable comicbook but Dixon and Atkins pull it off with great style in a manner that can be happily enjoyed by all but the very youngest of kids as well as their nostalgia-jazzed dads.

© 2009 Hasbro. All Rights Reserved.

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GI Joe: the Rise of Cobra: Official Movie Prequel – UK Edition


By Chuck Dixon & SL Gallant (Panini Books)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-426-3

I know very little about the movie blockbuster GI Joe and I’m prepared to say even less about it. As a nostalgia-charged toy, animated cartoon and comics sensation of the 1980s the franchise is probably carrying enough baggage to cripple a half-track, and certainly doesn’t need any more opinion from me. However the film-Promotion Machine has generated a couple of new comics adventures and I’m more than happy to babble on about them.

First up is the Official Movie Prequel trade paperback which collects a four issue miniseries, each chapter relating an individual exploit of one of the franchise’s major players. All are written with adrenaline-addictive passion – and a fair bit of tongue-in-cheek wit – by gung-ho action-meister Chuck Dixon with superbly gritty and realistically understated art from SL Gallant.

In case you were wondering: GI Joe is the operating name for an American covert, multi-disciplinary espionage and military intervention force that draws its members from all branches of the Services. At the time of these tales it is just setting up, as is a super-secret society called Cobra that appears set on World Domination. Neither organisation is aware of the other…

Chapter 1 focuses on dedicated soldier Duke Hauser, relating a covert insertion into a “friendly” South American nation where rebels have found a way to interfere with US Military Satellites. Ever the total professional, Duke accomplishes the op with guns blazing and meets the man who will one day recruit him for “the Joes”…

The Scots of Clan McCullen have been weapon makers and arms-dealers for centuries. The Lairds of Destro are seen here learning salutary lessons from some less reputable and distinguished clients such as the Confederate Army during the American Civil War and modern day terrorists. The current Destro will be a pivotal part of Cobra – if not a willing participant in all their schemes…

The Baroness is one of the deadliest women alive, and her high-octane adventure finds her seducing an oil sheik, battling warriors and wild beasts and even dying for her cause…or does she?

This slim tome, power-packed with thrills, concludes with an early mission for mute American ninja Snake Eyes who has to rescue the Vice-President (and a bunch of other, less important, foreign dignitaries) from Eco terrorists determined to flood half of Russia by blowing up the world’s largest hydro-electric dam…

These are no-nonsense, stripped-down blockbuster style plots: lean, clean and designed to thrill, and as such they are some of the best of their kind that I’ve ever seen. Slick, efficient and clever with breakneck pace and still room for humour, these are just what the doctor – or perhaps battlefield surgeon – ordered.
© 2009 Hasbro. All Rights Reserved. © 2009 Paramount Pictures Corporation. All Rights Reserved.