Our Artists At War: The Best Of The Best American War Comics Preview

Our

t a R TISTS A

by Richard J. Arndt & Steven Fears

WAR THE BEST OF THE BEST AMERICAN WAR COMICS

AN ANZM L G T SAM UBER JOE K URTZMAN EY K Y HARV KIRB JACK ANIGHER RT K IN ROBE E GOODW I ARCH L FRANZ WIL

PREFACE.......................................................................................................................................................4 FOREWORD................................................................................................................................................... 6 INTRODUCTION............................................................................................................................................10 INTERLUDE ONE: A PATRIOTIC WAR AND THE FIRST WAR COMICS........................................................15

CHAPTER ONE: HARVEY KURTZMAN AND THE EC WAR COMICS.... 18 INTERLUDE TWO: DC’S BIG FIVE AND THE NEAR DEATH OF THE GENRE................................................38

CHAPTER TWO: ENEMY ACE............................................................ 40 INTERLUDE THREE: WAR COMICS IN THE EARLY 1960s..........................................................................52

CHAPTER THREE: BLAZING COMBAT............................................... 54 INTERLUDE FOUR: THE AMERICAN WAR COMIC GROWS UP....................................................................66

CHAPTER FOUR: CHARLTON, WILLY SCHULTZ AND THE IRON CORPORAL.............................................................................68 CHAPTER FIVE: SAM GLANZMAN AND THE U.S.S. STEVENS..........88 INTERLUDE FIVE: THE LONG, LINGERING END......................................................................................... 101

CHAPTER SIX: JACK KIRBY’S COMBAT TALES............................... 102 INTERLUDE SIX: FOLLOWING THE FALL—THE END OF MAINSTREAM WAR COMICS............................. 113

CHAPTER SEVEN: THE CREATORS COMING UP: DON LOMAX, WAYNE VANSANT & GARTH ENNIS.......................114 DON LOMAX......................................................................................................................................... 114 WAYNE VANSANT............................................................................................................................... 119 GARTH ENNIS...................................................................................................................................... 128 INTERLUDE SEVEN: WHERE CAN WE FIND THIS STUFF?......................................................................144

CHAPTER EIGHT: FINALE................................................................. 146 THE BEST OF THE ‘REAL BIG FIVE’ AND BEYOND................................................................................... 150 FROM STEVE FEARS........................................................................................................................... 150 FROM RICHARD ARNDT...................................................................................................................... 153 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS........................................................................................................................ 156 REFERENCES.............................................................................................................................................157 AUTHORS’ BIOS........................................................................................................................................ 158

D N A R A W C I T O I R T A P A S C I M O C R A W T S R I F E TH Nearly two years before the U. S. officially entered World War II, comic books had begun launching their gaudy heroes against fascists. At first it was against planes and dictators wearing emblems that vaguely resembled Nazi Germany’s swastika, but by the spring of 1941 the kid gloves had been dropped and Timely’s (today’s Marvel Comics) newest character—Captain America—was shown on his first cover to be punching out Adolf Hitler.

He wasn’t the only comic book hero standing up against fascism. By the time the United States officially entered the war, nearly every comic book publisher had already aligned themselves against an enemy that the country was not yet officially battling.

Why did comics, a business still less than ten years old, take on such an extreme political position? It was likely due to the makeup of the creators and publishers of the comics. A great many were Jewish. Another significant number were African-Americans, Asian-Americans and even a fair number of women. This unusual composition of ethnic and gender talent wasn’t by accident.

The newspaper comic strips had become a prestigious market for graphic writers and illustrators. Nearly every young writer and artist who entered comics in those early days was hoping that doing so was a stepping stone to doing a newspaper comic strip.

However, that hope was complicated when racism reared its ugly head. Comic strip creators got a great deal of publicity in those days and those who got the most pictures taken by the press were white men, the more rugged looking the better. The newspaper syndicates, which distributed the comic strips, weren’t exactly welcoming Jewish, Negro, Asian and women creators. At least in part, the syndicates were worried that various markets, particularly in the south, would reject work done by such creators. Many Jewish creators changed their names to sound less ‘ethnic’, including Stanley Lieber (Stan Lee), Jacob Kurtzberg (Jack Kirby), Robert Kahn (Bob Kane) and Eli Katz (Gil Kane).

Working in comic books didn’t pay anywhere near as well as comic strips. Most of the comic book creators 

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Fig 8: Captain America Comics #1 (Mar. 1941) Art by Jack Kirby and possibly Joe Simon, this first issue debuts with Cap punching Hitler a full year before we entered the war. Note the original design of Cap’s shield, which was changed to the familiar round shield for legal reasons in #2. TM & © Marvel Characters Inc.

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16 were not credited for their work. Still, the increasing demand for the 64-page, gaudy books meant that as long as you were fast and could make your deadline you had a job you could live on—no small thing in a country still recovering from the effects of the Great Depression.

Many of the creators entering the field were teenagers. Joe Kubert was only eleven when he got his first professional job. Sam Glanzman only fifteen. Nearly everyone except the publishers were in their teens or early twenties. The Jewish members often still had friends and family living in Europe. The events unfolding there, especially in Germany and Italy, had a decided impact on them. In fact, nearly every ethnic minority in America had good reason to fear and distrust the Nazi regime.

Comic books were selling millions of copies every month. Kids had fallen in love with them and comics could easily be found in stores, newsstands and professional offices. They were easy to carry around and a relatively cheap form of entertainment. They were also beginning to be recognized for their potential to not only be entertainment but propaganda.

Unlike their parents, children of that era didn’t read headlines from newspapers. TV news was nonexistent.

Newsreels that played before the start of the movie were often the spot where a kid went to the lobby for popcorn and candy. Comics, however, were everywhere.

If a kid couldn’t buy them for him or herself, their friend

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Fig. 9: Detective Comics #65 (July 1942) The Boy Commandos debuted in the previous issue, but this first cover appearance teamed them up with Batman and Robin for the first and last time. Art

by Jack Kirby and Joe Simon (for the Commandos) and Jerry Robinson (for Batman and Robin).

TM & © DC Comics.

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or their brother or sister had some. You could trade with other kids for ones you hadn’t read. Awareness of the world situation was far more likely to be noticed by kids if it was in something that they used and had around them all the time.

When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, comics changed almost overnight, though many hadn’t been neutral to begin with. Companies like Timely, Quality and Lev Gleason featured anti-fascist and outright antiNazi covers and stories as early as 1940. Now, however, all the comic book companies joined in the war effort.

Nearly every issue of every comic published either actual stories set in actual war zones or featured ads for buying war bonds and helping in paper drives.

Author Paul Hirsh makes a compelling case for the WWII use of positive propaganda created by the comic book publishers in his excellent online article “War in

Fig. 10: Soldier on the frontline reading comics. Even in a foxhole you’d find scenes like this.

the Funnypapers: Cooperation Between the Federal Government and the Comic Book Industry, 1940–1945.”

Various government agencies, including the Office of War Information and the Writers’ War Board found that comics provided an easily understood and relatively cheap method to ‘sell’ the war to young people as well as develop an adult market for such comics. The agencies and the publishers joined forces to plug positive examples of American values versus the goals and aims of Germany, Japan and Italy in four-color comics. Publishers reaped huge financial benefits from this wartime cooperation with the federal government.

The American comic book and the propaganda contained within was not only seen in this country but worldwide as millions of copies were sent overseas to G.I.s for reading material and then passed along to the

20 dated Oct. 1951, from Fawcett Publications, featuring a Moldoff cover and interior stories from Moldoff, George Evans and Bernard Baily.

By late 1949, Gaines was willing to entertain the horror notion again and, along with his editor Al Feldstein, a talented young writer/artist, began doing try-out horror tales in the back of his crime comics in early 1950. The horror stories appeared to be a hit and Gaines converted his two crime comics into The Vault of Horror and The Crypt of Terror (soon renamed Tales from the Crypt) and his main western title into The Haunt of Fear.

All three titles were immediate and runaway hits. At the same time as he converted his crime and western comics to horror, Gaines also converted his romance titles to tales of sci-fi and fantasy, many of which also had a horror undertone. These horror and science fiction stories were well written (plotted by both Gaines and Feldstein and scripted by Feldstein) and, equally important, much more mature and thoughtful than any previous comic book efforts in either genre. That, coupled with Gaines’ willingness to pay quite good rates for his artists, soon had the publisher being able to choose the best artists currently in the field to draw his comics. Realizing that he was no longer following trends but creating them, Gaines advertised his new comics under the umbrella title ‘The New Trend Comics’.

Within months, various other comic companies copied the success of his titles and, over the next five years, an astonishing number of titles devoted to horror appeared.

Twenty-nine separate publishers launched dozens of comics dealing with horror alone while many non-horror comics used horror motifs on their covers and in their stories.

None of these publishers or comics were as good as the EC titles although a number of them were still quite good. Such companies as Timely/Atlas (today’s Marvel Comics), Fawcett, Harvey and St. John’s produced solid comics in the horror genre.

With the success of his horror comics, Gaines was willing and eager to push into new fields. His second wave of New Trend comics featured a more mature revival of his crime comics and, most important to this book, an adventure comic called Two-Fisted Tales.

Two-Fisted Tales was the notion of one of Gaines’ new artists, Harvey Kurtzman (Oct. 3, 1924-Feb. 21, 1993), who had proven to be not only a decent artist but also an accomplished writer. The latter aspect was probably quite important to Gaines and Feldstein as they themselves were already committed to writing six horror, science fiction and crime titles needing 144 separate original stories a year. To continue to expand EC’s titles, Gaines needed somebody with writing and drawing talents on the level of Feldstein.

Kurtzman turned out to be the man. 

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Fig. 15: Harvey Kurtzman was a singular genius in the comics field. Not only did he revolutionize war comics, but he created MAD magazine and was considered the ‘grandfather’ of underground comics. © the respective copyright holder.

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Fig. 16: Kurtzman’s wartime art, done when he was an actual soldier at Camp Sutton, NC in the camp newspaper—The Carry All (Apr. 15, 1944). © the respective copyright holder.

25 actual combat. The actual combat veterans knew what war really was like—something that had not been clear to the civilian editors, writers and artists in 1941, even though many of them were actually the same creators of 1950. In addition, even those WWII military and civilian men and women in the industry who had not been in actual combat had seen the horrifying effects of war. During WWII, thousands of homes had sported a gold star in their windows, an indication that a member of their family had died in combat. Thousands of soldiers had returned from the war wounded in both body and mind.

At least 60 million people had died in WWII. Much of the hardship and bloodshed had been captured by cameras or relayed by combat reporters. For the United States alone, 407,000 military deaths were recorded. An additional 671,846 soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines were wounded. There were 12,000 civilian deaths, including 9,500 members of the Merchant Marines. It’s likely that none of those figures included deaths in the military or civilian support groups from accidents, non-combat plane crashes, illnesses, and simple happenstance, which would not have been recorded as military deaths. The country hadn’t seen carnage like that since the Civil War. Beyond all of that and following the actual war, much of the country had been exposed to the horrors of German and Japanese atrocities during the war years— concentration camps, massacres, the brutalization and genocide of Jews, gypsies, political dissidents, and many more. Former P.O.W.s wrote novels detailing the horrors of such things as the Bataan Death March and the deprivation of the prison camps. The ‘gung ho’ attitude of the war years’ films, books and comics, which came out when many Americans simply had no direct knowledge of such things, was over.

Under the shadow of atomic war, there had been a steady, darkening aspect to art and culture in the years since WWII ended. Comic books, like all other aspects of art, had changed. The super-hero, who had been the mainstay of comics from 1938-1949, had fallen out of fashion since there were no longer Nazis and Japanese to fight. New comics dealing in new genres such as teenage humor, funny animals, romance, westerns, crime and, thanks to EC, horror were becoming the new comics to read. In fact, EC Comics became the company that reflected those darkening attitudes of art and culture as if proclaiming them from a mountaintop.

One can’t ignore the fact that EC’s New Trend comics were dark. It was rare in either the horror or science fiction comics for the good guys to win. In fact, there often weren’t any good guys in an EC tale. Cheery, happy endings were not the norm, and when the occasional one did crop

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Fig. 23: ‘Two Drunken Soldiers’ from Squa Tront #11. Art by John Severin.

Severin was one of the four main artists early on in both Two-Fisted Tales and Frontline Combat. He took over as editor on Two-Fisted Tales when it returned to being an adventure comic with #36 (Jan. 1954). This art combines both his military and humor art. © John Severin.

Fig. 22: Two-Fisted Tales #19 (Jan.-Feb. 1951) Art by Harvey Kurtzman. Although the title wouldn’t switch from an adventure comic to a straight war comic until the next issue, this cover featured the first of Kurtzman’s classic war covers, highlighting a gripping John Severin/Will Elder war story inside. Artwork is copyrighted material owned

by William M. Gaines, Agent, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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E H T D N A E V I F G I B S ’ C D E R N E G E H T F O H T A E D NEAR

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EC’s success with war comics, as had happened with their horror comics a year earlier, unleashed a flood of such titles—effectively establishing war comics as a separate genre in the field. Atlas (formerly Timely Comics and nowadays known as Marvel) alone had at one point an astonishing twenty-five separate war titles—more titles than many companies published altogether.

Nearly every company leapt on the bandwagon, publishing hundreds of war comics between 1951 and 1954. None of them were as good as EC’s two titles but a number of them were quite good, especially from the Atlas, Fawcett and Harvey companies. The end of the

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Fig. 41: Our Fighting Forces #1 (Oct.-Nov. 1954) Art by Jerry Grandenetti. This was the fourth ‘Big Five’ DC title and appeared just before the debut of the Comics Code, which greatly affected all comics.

TM & © DC Comics.

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Korean War caused many of the companies to abruptly halt production of their war series. Perhaps the glut of titles was having an effect or perhaps the publishers assumed that the end of the war, as had happened with the end of WWII, would mean the end of interest by the buying public in war comics. Whatever the reason, the number of war strips dropped by more than half in less than a year. The advent of the Comics Code in 1955 killed most of the rest, as many of the smaller publishers realized that their main stock in trade—a dizzying array of ultra-violent covers and stories—would no longer be possible under the strict rules of the Code. The third hammer-blow was the collapse of the nation’s largest magazine distributor— American News Company—in 1957. By 1958, Atlas had gone from well over a hundred titles a month to eighteen titles total—only one of which was a war title. Quality was gone, with its best title—G.I. Combat—crossing publishers to National/DC Comics. Harvey’s last war title ended in 1957. Only Charlton, the cheapest paying publisher in the business at the time, and National/DC still published more than one war title per company.

Then, in 1959, editor Robert Kanigher started putting recurring characters in the five war titles that National/DC published. Mind you, recurring characters in war comics were not new. Blackhawk, the Boy Fig. 42: G.I. Combat #44 (Jan. Commandos and Airboy had 1957) Art by Jerry Grandenetti. been recurring characters in This was the first DC issue of a the 1940s and 1950s. Blackhawk title originally published by had started at Quality Comics Quality Comics. It is an excellent and was still being published at example of DC’s wash tone/gray the time by DC itself. Atlas had tone technique—pioneered by two recurring heroes in their Jack Adler. TM & © DC Comics. war titles—Combat Kelly and

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Fig. 45: Robert Kanigher probably created more memorable characters in comics than anyone with the exception of Jack Kirby. His best creations were Enemy Ace and Sgt. Rock.

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Fig. 46: Joe Kubert started his career at age 11. Starting in the mid-1950s he largely concentrated on war comics and co-created some of the best at DC Comics.

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This second examination of the ‘Real Big Five’, following EC’s 1950s war titles, centers around Hans von Hammer, the WWI German war ace. Nicknamed the ‘Hammer of Hell’, von Hammer made his debut in Our Army at War #151 (Feb. 1965), which went on sale Dec. 3, 1964. While his series was called ‘Enemy Ace’ he is curiously never referred to by that nickname, although he has several others. Women, particularly nurses, called him the ‘Angel of Death’. His own men (and von Hammer himself) often referred to him as a ‘Killing Machine’. The ‘Hammer of Hell’ was what the German press and the Allied forces most commonly called him.

Created by writer/editor Robert Kanigher (Jan. 8, 1915-May 7, 2002) and artist Joe Kubert (Sept. 18, 1926Aug. 12, 2012), von Hammer was clearly based on the actual WWI German ace Manfred von Richthofen, whose nickname on both the German and Allied side was the Red Baron (at roughly the same time that Enemy Ace debuted, the Red Baron became Peanuts’ writer/artist Charles Schultz’s character Snoopy’s main nemesis during his ‘World War I Flying Ace’ fantasies). Like von Richthofen, von Hammer was a German aristocrat (the von in their names is an indication of that), flew a red Fokker DR1 Tri-plane, received silver cups for each enemy plane downed and had their respective nicknames. However, von Richthofen died during the war, almost certainly from ground fire during a low-flying air battle on Apr. 21, 1918, while von Hammer is revealed to have lived until 1969 [Enemy Ace: War Idyll, DC Comics, 1990].

The notion that an American comic book company would issue a series with the hero being an ace for the other side was considered quite controversial in 1964 and, indeed, DC Comics tiptoed around exactly what kind of character ‘Enemy Ace’ was when he made his debut.

The cover to Our Army at War #151 featured only a flaming question mark and the caption “Who is the blazing enemy we dare not show on our cover? Who? Who? Who? Who?” It’s notable that the lead character in Our Army at War, Sgt. Rock, only had ten pages of story in this issue while the ‘Enemy Ace’ back-up tale was fifteen pages in length— an additional indicator that ‘Enemy Ace’ was originally intended as a lead feature in one of the war books. 

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ENEMY ACE However, DC editorial must have gotten cold feet over the idea of highlighting a character who could be shooting down American planes. And, in fact, in most of his 1960s run, von Hammer never fought American pilots. The scripts were usually very clear that his opponents were either French, British or Canadian rather than American.

Even beyond his German origins and allegiance von Hammer was an unusual character for war comics. While, like all the DC war heroes, he was both competent and professional in the craft of war, physically he looked fairly different from the usual American war hero of the 1950s-early 1960s. Like many aristocratic German war heroes of the era, he had a facial scar on his left cheek.

These scars, usually obtained from dueling or fencing with sabers, were marks of honor among the aristocracy and commonplace enough during the World War I years to become a cliché for German-based villains in American and British movies for several decades following the end of WWI. Von Hammer was tall and thin, with a wiry build and dark hair, quite unlike the brawny American war comic heroes like Sgt. Rock, the Sarge of ‘Gunner and Sarge’ or Marvel Comics’ Sgt. Fury. Von Hammer could easily have passed for a gothic Edgar Allan Poe hero.

Matching his gothic looks, he was quite melancholy in his outlook and quite possibly the first consistently brooding character to appear outside of the horror genre in comics. Like many real aerial warriors of WWI, von Hammer displayed a code of chivalry or nobility that echoed the armored knights of medieval times. Those pilots who betrayed that code, whether on his side or the enemies’, earned his disdain. Even while adhering to the code, von Hammer worried constantly that his soul and his decency were being destroyed or corrupted by the horrors of the aerial combat he found himself in every day, as well as the deaths of the young pilots he commanded and by the mounting number of kills he was credited with.

In von Hammer’s world, the silver cups that he awarded himself for each downed plane (exactly as von Richthofen had been awarded during WWI, until silver came into short supply) weren’t signs of his accomplishments as much as a reminder of his culpability as a ‘killing machine’. 

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Fig. 47: ‘Enemy Ace’ from Our Army at War #151 (Feb. 1965) Story by Robert Kanigher, art by Joe Kubert. DC was so worried about having a German flying ace as a possible headliner than Enemy Ace didn’t even appear on the cover for his debut. Instead they used a question mark. TM & © DC Comics.

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44 Star Spangled War Stories with #138 (May 1968), replacing In #140 von Hammer actually has a mid-air collision the curious ‘War that Time Forgot’. with the Hangman which results in von Hammer’s hands Kubert’s cover for #138 is one of his best, and being badly burned and his capture by the French. The certainly one of the most iconic of the 1960s covers.

Hangman, also a nobleman, allows von Hammer to reside It features a large portrait of von Hammer, inked in a at his estate while his wounds heal. Von Hammer meets charcoal style, while in the foreground, crossing his face, the Hangman’s beautiful sister Denise, whom von Hammer is a flaming French plane being riddled with bullets by von is attracted to, although she doesn’t appear to return Hammer’s tri-plane. It is masterful art. the affection for her nation’s enemy. During a riding That issue also excursion, a nearly ushers in one of healed von Hammer von Hammer’s most escapes by stealing a memorable foes: the French Spad airplane French war ace the and makes it back to Hangman. The Hangman his own airfield. It is left wears a hangman’s unclear at story’s end if hood, held onto his the pursuing Hangman head by a hangman’s survived his showing of noose wrapped around kindness and respect his neck. He uses for von Hammer. the hood to hide the In #142 we discover hideous facial scars he’d that the Hangman did suffered from an aerial indeed survive the engine fire. Flames pursuit of the fleeing from an engine fire were von Hammer, but his particularly perilous in next encounter with a WWI bi or tri-plane. von Hammer has him Because of the forward shot down in flames—a movement of the plane, cruel death for a man the flames would stream already badly scarred straight back over the by the flames of war. low windshield. WWI Within days word arises planes didn’t have glassof a new, fearsome enclosed canopies so French warrior flying the flames would be a plane marked with right in a pilot’s face. a harpy. It is the late Von Hammer Hangman’s sister also has his first fullDenise, who has taken fledged romance with over his command. a German nurse after How this could happen being wounded by the in the French army of Hangman. Kanigher and that day is completely Kubert do a very nice job unexplained. There is in a very few pages to also a major art error let us know that women here as Denise was were wildly attracted depicted with dark  Fig. 50: Star Spangled War Stories #138 (Apr.-May 1968) to von Hammer’s good hair in #140 but only looks and ‘star’ quality, four months later she’s Art by Joe Kubert. Kubert’s beautiful cover for the first but were just as often a blonde. This isn’t issue of Enemy Ace’s run in SSWS is even more breathtakrepulsed by his chilly Kubert’s only art error in ing than Showcase #57’s excellent effort. TM & © DC Comics. manner and ‘Angel of the series. He routinely Death’ persona. drew von Hammer’s orderly Heinrich or Schultz (or possibly In #139, Kanigher gives us a taste of von Hammer’s Heinrich Schultz) as different men, even though their back story. In flashback sequences we see him becoming personalities were identical, probably because he didn’t a master swordsman at a very young age (likely accounting have time to go back and see how he’d originally drawn for the scar on his cheek, although the actual wounding him, although, as the editor of the war books by this time, is not shown). We see his interaction with his much older that was his job. father, whose kindly old man appearance belies his strict In a convoluted storyline, von Hammer’s guilt over killing military background and his near constant drumming of the man who saved and befriended him, combined with his the concept of honor into the younger von Hammer’s head. distaste for fighting a woman (let alone one he had feelings 

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N I S C I M O WAR C s 0 6 9 1 Y L R THE EA The last of Atlas Comics’ 1950s war titles—Battle— was cancelled in 1960. For the next year, only DC and Charlton continued publishing war comics. Charlton comics, including their war titles, were very run of the mill during this time period. On the other hand, DC’s war books featured strong leading characters and ideas and had some of the best art to appear in the early 1960s.

In 1961, however, things started to change. Dell was the largest comic book publisher in the country at the time and one of only two comic book publishers (the other was Gilberton, which published Classics Illustrated) to bypass the Comics Code Authority, largely because their own internal guidelines, set in place to placate the many movie studios and licensed characters that they published, meant that their comics tended to be quite wholesome without the need for the Code. In 1961 they launched Combat, a largely ad-free 32-page comic that focused on one major WWII battle per issue.

The writer for the first five issues or so is unknown, although Paul S. Newman was likely the writer from #6-26. The artist for all twenty-six original issues was Sam Glanzman, heretofore somewhat of a journeyman artist, but one who really began to come into his own on this title. Combat was an impressive book, from its first issue to its last, and within short order easily became the equal or better of DC’s Big Five titles. By 1965 Dell had launched two more all-Glanzman war titles: the Kanigher-like tales of Air War Stories and the Combatlike World War Stories.

In 1963, Marvel Comics, under Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, launched Sgt. Fury (and His Howling Commandos— although the squad’s name was always on the cover, the indicia states the actual title was Sgt. Fury), featuring a squad of Army rangers, somewhat confusingly calling themselves commandos—which was a British term.

Like Sgt. Rock, Fury often worn a battle-torn shirt, led a small squad of ethnically-diverse men who often used nicknames instead of given names for character identification. In many ways, this title was simply a grown-up version of Kirby’s old kid gang, the Boy Commandos.

Yet it’s here, and in Our Army at War’s Sgt. Rock stories, that comics finally acknowledged the growing Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. DC introduced

Jackie Johnson in 1961, a Black soldier and somewhat of an anagram of baseball player Jackie Robinson and fighter Joe Louis, in the pages of Our Army at War #113 (Dec. 1961). Although no overt racial comments or themes are in this story, it was highly unusual after the advent of the Comics Code in 1955 to see a Black man used as a lead in a story.

In Sgt. Fury #6 (Mar. 1964), scripter Stan Lee and co-plotter/artist Jack Kirby directly delivered a story

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Fig. 62: ‘Behind Rommel’s Lines’ from Combat #5 (July-Sept. 1962) Writer unknown, art by Sam Glanzman.

Glanzman and Paul S. Newman—who was generally the writer—made Combat one of the best war titles of the early-mid-1960s. © Dell Publishing.

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Fig. 64: ‘The Fangs of the Desert Fox!’, pg. 8 from Sgt. Fury #6 (Mar. 1964) Story by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee, art by Kirby and George Roussos. Bigot George Stonewall meets the ethnically diverse Howling Commandos.

TM & © Marvel Characters Inc.

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Fig. 63: Sgt. Fury #3 (Sept. 1963) Art by Jack Kirby and (likely) Steve Ditko. This dynamic cover was the best one that Kirby drew during his time actually drawing this book.

Fig. 65: Our Army at War #160 (Nov. 1965) Art by Joe Kubert. It was in both Marvel’s and DC’s war comics that the practice of outright bigotry was explored.

The last comic company to do so was EC, nearly a decade earlier.

TM & © DC Comics.

TM & © Marvel Characters Inc.

dealing with racial prejudice—probably the first such story to appear in comics since EC Comics, which had done a number of them both pre- and post-Code—went under.

This was an important story in comic book history as Lee and Kirby finally shook off comicdom’s unspoken fear of the Comic Code’s draconian rulings and delivered a ‘preachy’ story dealing with race that still holds up today. [See chapter seven for more on this story.] A year and a half later, in Our Army at War #160 (Nov. 1965), Robert Kanigher and Joe Kubert resurrected Jackie Johnson, who hadn’t been seen since his initial appearance in 1961, for a similar story.

Like the Sgt. Fury tale, this story also deals with a Black man providing a blood transfusion for a racist (in this case, a Nazi trooper) who is apparently startled to realize that Johnson’s blood is as red as his. Following this story Johnson became a regular character in Rock’s Easy Company.

The irony of all three stories was that the U.S. Army was strictly segregated in WWII and neither Johnson

nor Jones would have been allowed in the all-white military units they appeared in, in the comics.

By 1965, the Big Five started showing signs of weakness. Johnny Cloud had lost his lead spot in AllAmerican Men of War to WWI Balloon Buster ace Steve Savage—who was a much more conventional character than the Native American Johnny Cloud. A little over a year later the book was cancelled altogether. Gunner, Sarge and Pooch would also see their lead feature cancelled in Our Fighting Forces, first for a short-lived series featuring Sgt. Rock’s younger brother, Larry, who fought in the Pacific Theater; then for Lt. Hunter and His Hellcats, who were first a modern-day group fighting in the then-new war theater of Vietnam, and later, retrofitted into WWII with Hunter morphing into his own father. With the exception of Enemy Ace, all of the DC recurring characters seemed to be on somewhat shaky ground, recycling stories from earlier days. Fortunately for war story fans, something that was both new and old was about to bring the war comic back to the heights of the EC run.

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3 By 1965 the Comics Code Authority had been in effect for a decade. The humor magazines—MAD, which transformed from a color comic book into a black-and-white magazine (thus creating the genre), and its imitators Cracked (1958) and Sick (1960)—had escaped the Code’s dictates by insisting they weren’t comic books at all but satirical black-and-white magazines and, as such, were aimed at an older audience, and thus displayed on newsstands far away from those tacky comic books. The reality was they were simply a different form of comic books and the fact that they were magazines didn’t really change the audience they were aimed at. The difference was that if the average color comic book was aimed at children between the ages of 8 and 12, the humor black-and-white comic magazines were aimed at children between the ages of 10 and 14. They were still comics, with much the same audience.

Jim Warren created Warren Publishing as a means of publishing his Playboy knockoff, After Hours. After Hours didn’t last very long but publisher Warren was determined to keep going. He started a number of humor magazines, including Harvey Kurtzman’s Help!, as well as a number of one-shot magazines, some of which used fumetti—a form of comics that uses photos rather than drawn art for illustrations. In 1958 Warren and editor Forrest Ackerman, a well-known collector of movie and science fiction memorabilia, created Famous Monsters of Filmland, a movie magazine that focused on the popular horror films of the 1920s-1950s. It quickly became Warren Publishing’s most successful magazine, inspiring dozens of future filmmakers, writers, artists and editors and is almost certainly one of the cornerstones of the Fantasy/ Science Fiction explosion that has taken place in the last forty-five years in the U.S. publishing, film, television and comics fields.

Moving from the horror movies and television shows that Famous Monsters favored to doing actual horror comics wasn’t all that big a step. Warren was already a comics fan and had published a one-shot Flintstones comic book for the 1964 New York’s World’s Fair. He was also experimenting with adapting horror films into short comic tales in the pages of Famous Monsters’ sister

 Fig. 66: Archie Goodwin started his full-time career as an editor and writer at Warren in 1964.

He would become the most respected and beloved editor in the comics field by the time of his death in 1998.

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55

BLAZING COMBAT

magazine Monster World, as well as having an occasional comic story appearing in the satirical Help! Add to that the fact that he was a fan of the EC Comics that ran from 1950–1955 and you had the recipe for a revival of horror comics in black-and-white magazine form—which was the only way they could be published using that EC mode since the Comics Code Authority strictly forbid most of the words and monsters that should reasonably populate a horror comic.

The result was Creepy, a horror comic in black-andwhite form that was an instant success. Warren’s efforts came along at a fortunate time for him. Many of comicdom’s best artists were bored with the tame pablum that traditional comics had been largely forced into since 1955. Warren was offering a new market, one that didn’t obscure artwork, good or bad, with color overlays. In  Fig. 67: Blazing Combat #1 (Oct. 1965) Frank Frazetta’s powerful paintings were usually seen on horror, fantasy or science fiction book covers, but his work for Warren— Blazing Combat in particular— was strong and vibrant.

Originally published by Warren Publishing, © J. Michael Catron, used by permission.

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56 black-and-white comics, your artwork had to be good or the flaws would vividly stand out.

A large number of the Warren artists were former EC artists as well—Frank Frazetta, Wallace Wood, Joe Orlando, Angelo Torres, Al Williamson, Reed Crandall, George Evans and the like. It was Al Williamson, who’d joined in with Warren’s horror project early on, who used his friendships with those other artists to bring them on board for Creepy. Each of the aforementioned artists were outstanding illustrative artists in a market where the need for great illustrative storytelling had begun to dry up. Their own natural competitiveness also created a largely friendly effort to show off their skills and provide some of the best visual comic artwork that had been seen in the field. Warren was the lucky recipient of all that.

He also had one more secret weapon: the writing skills of one Archie Goodwin (Sept, 8, 1937-Mar. 1, 1998). Goodwin too had been a fan of the EC comics line and had, in fact, contributed extensively to the first EC fanzine, Hoohah, which was one of the first comic book fanzines ever. Before his work at Warren Publishing, he’d only written one comic script, in 1957 (although it wasn’t published until 1962) for Harvey Comics. That science fiction story was penciled by Reed Crandall and inked by Al Williamson. Since then he’d finished a tour in the military and was working for Redbook magazine. When Jim Warren, and his first editor Russ Jones, began looking for story scripts for Creepy it was quite likely Goodwin’s friend, Williamson, who recommended him as a writer for the magazine. He wrote seven high quality stories for the first two issues of Creepy and was named story editor by the second issue. By issue four, Jones was gone from the Warren fold and Goodwin was both the full editor and the main writer of all the Warren black-and-white magazines.

Since Warren was following the EC mode, the second comics magazine he wanted to start was a war magazine.

Goodwin would not only edit the book but write nearly every story that appeared there.

 Fig. 68: ‘Viet Cong!’ from Blazing Combat #1 (Oct.

1965) Story by Archie Goodwin, original art by Joe Orlando. Goodwin’s first Vietnam story was published on July 29, 1965, three weeks before the escalation on Aug. 18, 1965 put the U.S. firmly in the conflict. Originally published by Warren Publishing, © J. Michael

Catron, used by permission. Image courtesy Heritage Auctions.

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57 Blazing Combat #1 appeared with an on-sale date of July 29, 1965 and a cover date of Oct. 1965. Behind a stunningly dynamic cover painting by Frank Frazetta lay seven strong stories and a one-page filler called ‘Combat Quiz’. The artists were some of the best of the day—Joe Orlando, Angelo Torres, George Evans, Gray Morrow, Reed Crandall, John Severin and Alex Toth, among others. All of the stories were written by Goodwin.

Like the EC books Two-Fisted Tales and Frontline Combat, Blazing Combat didn’t shy away from covering the current ongoing war. That first issue’s lead-off story is ‘Viet-Cong!’, written by Goodwin, ghost-penciled by Jerry Grandenetti and inked by Joe Orlando (Orlando was the sole artist credited). The story is largely about the way that the war in Vietnam was different from previous wars that the U.S. had been involved in—particularly the eight-to-five workday aspect of the war as soldiers were helicoptered out to the front lines in the mornings and taken back to their bases in the late afternoon. It also details the various ways the Viet Cong guerrillas used to hide, often in plain view, in supposedly friendly villages. It further details the torture of prisoners by the South Vietnamese army, which in this story includes a form of water-boarding. While not militantly anti-war, it is certainly a far stronger look at war—particularly this war—than any color comic of the time could or would have put into print.

The second story, ‘Aftermath’, was a fairly conventional Civil War tale, except the ending clearly shows a herd of starving wild hogs, intent on eating the dead bodies of the soldiers whose story we’ve been following, again

 Fig. 69: ‘Combat Quiz’ from Blazing

Combat #1 (Oct. 1965) Art by Alex Toth. Unlike filler pages in most comics, such pages in war comics—whatever company they came from—were usually of pretty high interest to the reader.

Originally published by Warren Publishing, © J. Michael Catron, used by permission.

 Fig. 70: ‘Enemy’ from Blazing

Combat #1 (Oct. 1965) Story by Archie Goodwin, art by John Severin. This grim story about stealing the gold fillings from dead soldiers was based on actual events during WWII. Originally pub-

lished by Warren Publishing, © J. Michael Catron, used by permission.

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INTERLUDE

66

4

N A C I R E M A E TH P U S W O R G C I M O C R A W Several events contributed a renaissance of sorts for color war comics in 1968. The genre, particularly at DC, had been wandering a bit aimlessly from 1964-1968. “The War that Time Forgot” lost its slot in StarSpangled War Stories to Enemy Ace. Our Fighting Forces were running the largely boring adventures of Capt.

Hunter and his Hellcats in World War II. Sgt. Rock and the Haunted Tank seemed to be selling well in both their titles but the stories were awfully familiar to longtime regular readers. All-American Men of War was cancelled. A sixth DC war title, Capt.

Storm, which depicted the adventures of a one-legged P.T. boat skipper in the Pacific, lasted only a little over two years before also being cancelled.

Dell, which had split into two separate companies—Dell and Gold Key—in 1962, had cancelled nearly all of its war titles, except for TV tie-ins, with Combat becoming a reprint title in 1968.

Robert Kanigher retired from his editor position in 1968 due to health reasons, although he would continue as the lead writer of the war books until their demise in the 1980s. His best artist, Joe Kubert, took over the editorial reins and gradually ushered DC’s Big Five—now the Big Four—into a renaissance. Impressed by the Warren books, especially Blazing Combat, and dismayed by the ultra-conservative storylines he’d been asked to draw while working as the artist on the comic strip Tales of the Green Beret from 1965-1967, Kubert was ready for something new. The first full evidence of this was in Our Army at War #196 (Aug. 1968), which featured a Sgt.

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Fig. 81: Our Army at War #196 (Aug. 1968) Art by Joe Kubert. This landmark issue of OAAW separated the early Sgt. Rock stories from the more introspective tales of 1968-1975. TM & © DC Comics.

67 Rock story entitled ‘Stop the War, I Want to Get Off!!!!’ and had the usually rock-steady Sgt. Rock on the verge of a mental breakdown from the horrors of the war he’d witnessed.

From 1968-1974, DC published an astonishing number of great stories and revitalized all their recurring lead features. Kanigher appeared to be ready to largely drop his gimmick tales and provided some outstanding stories, particularly in his ‘Robert Kanigher’s Gallery of War’ feature that ran in numerous titles. Artists such as Kubert himself, war comic veterans such as Russ Heath, John Severin, Dan Spiegle, Alex Toth, Ric Estrada, Sam Glanzman, Fred Ray, Frank Thorne and others, including newcomers like Ken Barr, Walt Simonson and Dan Green, reinvented how the DC war books appeared.

At Marvel, writer Gary Friedrich, along with artists Dick Ayers and John Severin, began their ‘The’ series in Sgt. Fury, where moralistic stories beginning with ‘the’, such as ‘The War Lover’, ‘The Deserter’, etc., begin appearing as a sort of mini-series amid the regular adventures of Sgt. Fury and his Howlers.

Yet it was lowly Charlton Comics, a company that had never previously published anything but run-of-themill or worse stories in the war genre, which unexpectedly provided the most astonishing upgrade in quality and storytelling.

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Fig. 82: Sgt. Fury #75 (Feb. 1970) Art by John Severin. Writer Gary Friedrich wrote a mini-series of sorts in Sgt. Fury, called the “The” series, because they all started with that word—’The Informer’, ‘The Peacemaker’, and in this case, ‘The Deserter’ that pulled the rough and ready Howler back into relevance. TM & © Marvel Entertainment

CHAPTER

68

4 

Fig. 83: Willi Franz was fifteen years old when he first contacted Sam Glanzman, sixteen when he sold his first war comic script.

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Fig. 84: Sam Glanzman is one of the most underrated writer-artists in comics history.

His career spanned from the 1940s to 2016. Photograph by

Charlton Comics, located in Derby, Connecticut, was probably the last place in the 1960s that any thoughtful comic book reader might look for high quality stories.

They paid the lowest rates in the business. They regularly employed some of the worst artists in the business. The parent company, Charlton Publications, was a curious company in that it was not only the publisher but also the printer and distributor of their own magazines. No other comic book company, nor most publishers in the book business, could claim that. Charlton published an enormous number of magazine titles but their bread and butter magazines appeared to be in the popular music field; comics were strictly a sideline. In fact, it was well known in the industry that the publishers had little concern or caring for the comic books they produced, and that the only reason they had for publishing comics at all was so that the printing presses they owned could be printing something 24 hours a day.

Even the physical aspect of the comics they published was shoddy. Pages were routinely unevenly trimmed or of irregular sizes. The cheap newsprint paper they used was often yellow or grayish in appearance even when the comic was brand new. Even the covers of new comics at times looked and felt filthy with dirt, probably caused by the presses not being cleaned regularly. The coloring was often out of register, giving the pages a blurry look.

The stories were bizarrely written; it was not unusual to finish a Charlton tale and realize that the eight, nine or fourteen-page story you had just finished really didn’t have an ending. It just…stopped. It was widely rumored that the editors didn’t even read the stories they were publishing.

Still, that very lack of caring somehow managed to produce some of the most interesting comics around.

Charlton was well known as a place where if you were competent you could turn in a story or art job and that it would be immediately accepted and promptly paid for, even if the pay was very low. No editorial changes required! That was an enormous advantage to freelancers who needed a quick paycheck and were accustomed to the micro-managing delays of, say, the DC offices. You could also experiment with story structure or page design with

Steven Fears.

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69

CHARLTON, WILLY SCHULTZ AND THE IRON CORPORAL no real fear of editorial telling you no. Artist Sam Glanzman changed the entire look of the main character of Hercules, a Charlton comic he was drawing in 1968, in the third issue.

When he was asked whether the editor or the writer had made the decision to change the look of the character, he replied that neither had. He changed the character’s looks because he wanted Hercules to look more like the figures on a Grecian urn... and that nobody at Charlton had said anything about the change at all [Alter Ego #92 (Mar. 2010), pgs. 3-10, interview with the author]! That kind of freedom, coupled with the prompt payment (other comic companies often made you wait for weeks for checks, or forced a writer or artist to actually come to the office to demand the check be cut) made a lot of high-quality writers and artists work at Charlton even when they could be making more money, on more prestigious titles, elsewhere.

Charlton didn’t even follow then-current comic trends. Super-heroes, the biggest thing in comics at the time, were never a big thing at Charlton. It published a much more widespread line of comics that either DC or Marvel did during this period and continued this well into the 1970s—funny animal, comedy, comic strip and TV adaptations, romance, ‘mystery’ (aka horror) and, for the purposes of this chapter, a lot of war comics.

Since the late 1950s, the aforementioned Sam Glanzman had been drawing the best of Dell Comics war titles—Combat, World War Stories and Air War Stories— as well as the giant monster comic Kona and numerous adaptations of popular TV shows and movies. During this same time period he was also drawing high-quality adventure books like Hercules and an unauthorized Jungle Tales of Tarzan for Charlton. Most of his Charlton work, however, consisted of war stories, usually very short five-page efforts, as all of the Charlton war books of the time were anthology titles with no main or recurring characters.

In 1967, soon to be leaving outgoing Dick Giordano and incoming editor Sal Gentile decided to follow DC Comics’ lead and put a recurring character as the lead-off story in a number of their war books, while the rest of those books continued to feature stand-alone stories. 

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Fig. 85: D-Day #5 (Oct. 1967) Art by Rocco Mastroserio. This title was unusual in that, while it was listed as a quarterly comic, it only appeared once a year, around the date of the D-Day invasion. Originally published by Charlton Comics. © the respective copyright holder.

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70 While Charlton’s main writer, Joe Gill, wrote the Vietnam adventures of the popular ‘Shotgun Harker and the Chicken’ for Fightin’ Marines, it was a very young—still a sixteen-year teenager in high school!—writer named Willi Franz who was asked to come up with the recurring characters for the titles Fightin’ Army and Army War Heroes. Together he and Glanzman came up with two of the greatest recurring storylines and characters in comic book history.

Glanzman had begun his comic book illustrator career back in the Golden Age of comics. Among the earliest comics work he did, was appearing as a teenage artist in several issues of Amazing Man Comics along with his brother, Louis Glanzman, who went from comics to become a famed paperback, National Geographic, National Lampoon and Time magazine cover artist.

With American’s entry into World War II, Sam joined the U.S. Navy and served aboard the destroyer, the U.S.S. Stevens.

After the war, he worked manual jobs, but decided to get back into illustrating comics in the 1950s. During the 1950s and 1960s, he did the majority of his work for Charlton or Dell.

Franz was only fifteen years old in late 1965 when he contacted Sam for advice about his own artwork. Sam thought he was a decent artist but was quite impressed by the quality of the stories that Franz wrote to accompany his thumbnail artwork, and urged him to contact Dick Giordano—at the time the editor of Charlton’s comic line. Within a year, Franz and Glanzman were a team at Charlton. Not known for quality stories or art, Charlton still managed to allow the Franz/Glanzman team to create some superior stories.

Both of the characters that Franz and Glanzman created together debuted in their respective titles in issues cover-dated Oct. or Nov. 1967. Franz had only just seen his first comic story published earlier that year, but he’d evidently impressed his editor by writing a booklength, twenty-seven page tale for D-Day #5 (Oct.1967).

D-Day was a curious Charlton book that only came out once a year. That ‘D-Day’ story, illustrated by Bill Montes and Ernie Bach, was tough, hard-hitting and, perhaps most interestingly, told from the viewpoint of a German officer commanding one of the pill-boxes on Omaha Beach. That story earned Franz a bonus (something that probably didn’t occur too often at penny-pinching Charlton) and the opportunity to pitch his ideas for three ongoing characters, all to be illustrated by Glanzman.

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Fig. 86: ‘D-Day’ from D-Day #5 (Oct. 1967). Charlton usually used short stories in their war titles, but the lead stories in both D-Day #3 and 4 ran for 27 pages, making them mini-epics. This story was also unusual in that it featured D-Day as seen from the eyes of a German defender. Originally published by Charlton Comics. © the respective copyright holder.

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71

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For Fightin’ Army he came up with ‘The Lonely War of Capt. Willy Schultz’.

Schultz is an American officer in a tank company stationed in the deserts of North Africa. He was falsely accused by a jealous fellow officer named Wilkes of murdering their commanding officer, a general’s weak-willed and incompetent son, in the midst of a battle. Schultz was quickly court-martialed by the grief-stricken general and condemned to death by firing squad. On his way to the rear, the jeep he’s in is struck by a shell and the M.P.s guarding him, with the exception of Wilkes, are killed.

Schultz leaves the trapped Wilkes to be rescued by others and strikes off on his own across the desert. He comes upon a German tank and a dead German.

While there, he realizes that if he’s to successfully escape a firing squad he will not be able to return to his own army.

Since his parents were immigrants and he speaks fluent German, he decides to make his escape through the German lines. He trades his tattered uniform for the dead German’s and continues his journey through the front lines. He comes upon a German tank command and is slightly wounded there during a U.S. air strike. Short of men, the German commander assigns the supposedly lost ‘German’ Schultz to one of his tank crews. Willy commits an act of sabotage to destroy the Germans’ fuel and ammo before the next day’s assault but is further injured in the blast.

Not suspecting him, his new German comrades place him in a field hospital.

That ended the first episode, all told in a lightning fast ten pages!

The second serial Franz came up with was called ‘The Iron Corporal’ and was set in the jungles of New Guinea in the Pacific Theater.

Franz created this serial because he’d seen a little-known British movie called The Long, the Short and the Tall (aka Jungle Fires) where the soldiers wore bush hats [as related in Charlton Spotlight (Winter 2015)]. He liked the look so much that he created a storyline around soldiers who could wear those hats! Since bush hats were Australian, his unit was an Aussie one, but here Charlton editorial made a rare demand. They insisted that the lead character, Ian Heath, the ‘Iron Corporal’ of the serial, be both an American volunteer who’d joined the unit before the attack on Pearl Harbor and that, since he was called the ‘Iron Corporal’, that he actually be partly made of iron! The first idea Franz dispatched in a single line in the first story and never referred to it again. For most of the Iron Corporal stories, Heath was considered just another Australian.

Fig. 87: ‘The Charge Is Murder!’ from Fightin’ Army #76 (Oct. 1967) Story

by Willi Franz, art by Sam Glanzman.

This ten-page introduction to the saga of Willi Schultz moved at lightning speed, with plot complications on nearly every page. Originally published

by Charlton Comics. © the respective copyright holder.

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83 back, embedding itself in his backpack. He died instantly.”

[Army War Heroes #22 (Nov. 1967)]. Nobody else in comics at the time described bullet paths through a human body.

Since the advent of the Comics Code in 1955, war comics had been one of the few places where someone could be shot and killed, but there were a lot of ‘requirements’ that greatly changed the look between a pre-Code and post-Code war book. PreCode books routinely showed a bullet’s impact on a soldier.

Bullet holes and blood were commonplace. Post-Code that kind of contact was often offpanel and no blood or evidence of a bullet-ridden uniform was shown. Most wounds were only ‘flesh’ wounds and easily handled by the wounded man.

Torn uniforms came about due to bomb or shell blasts that tore the cloth but not the skin beneath. Russ Heath recalled to the authors how he wasn’t allowed to show machine gun bullets striking or going through a soldier, so he would draw the impact of the bullets on walls directly behind the soldier’s twisting body but not show any evident wounds or gore [Comic Book Creator #4, (Spring 2014)].

In pre-Code comics, battlefields were often strewed with shell holes, broken or blasted equipment and dead bodies. In post-Code books the ground of a battlefield often looked like a slightly untended park, with a few broken branches lying around.

As time went on, German or Japanese dead might be seen there but never American or Allied bodies. Johnny Cloud’s fallen compatriots’ planes tended to be seen clearly going down but the final crash was usually not shown. One of Sgt. Rock’s most typical stances was of him standing over a fallen Easy Company soldier who was already buried, with the dead man’s rifle bayoneted into the grave and his helmet sitting atop the rifle stock. The body was rarely seen lying in the dirt. We never see the grave being dug.

This held true for the ‘Iron Corporal’ as well. We see the aforementioned Phil staggered by a bullet (with the 

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Fig. 103: Army War Heroes #33 (Aug. 1969) Original art by Sam Glanzman.

By this time, Glanzman was actually drawing new covers for this series— all of the Iron Corporal. Originally published by Charlton Comics. © the respective copyright holder. Image courtesy Heritage Auctions.

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88

5 

Fig. 108: Sam Glanzman was and still is a vastly underrated writer and artist. Joe Kubert told the authors that “Glanzman’s an incredible artist and he has an [intense] emotional content to his work that I think is admirable.”

Photograph by Steven Fears.

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Fig. 109: Combat #24 (Apr. 1967) Art by Sam Glanzman. Three years before the debut of Glanzman’s U.S.S. Stevens strip, Sam’s destroyer made its comics cover debut on the cover of Combat #24. It’s first appearance in comics was in the story ‘Escape’ from Combat #16 (Apr.June 1965). © Dell Publishing.

89

SAM GLANZMAN AND THE U.S.S. STEVENS When Sam Glanzman was serving in the U.S. Navy in World War II, he kept a diary with notes and sketches that recorded what life was like aboard his ship, the U.S.S. Stevens (DD-479). The diary was filled with his sketches, featuring both small and large drawings in ink or pencil, just so he would have a visual record of what he did during the war. In later years he would use these drawings, notes and recollections as the basis for three very personal projects—the U.S.S. Stevens series, which stands as the pinnacle of Glanzman’s numerous masterpieces in the comics field, as well as his two-volume graphic autobiography A Sailor’s Story and, finally, ‘Sam Glanzman’s War Diaries’, another DC ‘filler’ series which used some of the actual 1940s sketches and recollections on the page.

By early 1970, Dell had ceased producing new war stories and was content to simply reprint issues of Combat.

Their adventure and movie adaptations were also becoming things of the past. At Charlton, Glanzman’s series with Willi Franz—’The Lonely War of Capt. Willy Schultz’ and ‘The Iron Corporal’, were both on the chopping block for cancellation and Glanzman’s only other series there, ‘Shotgun Harker and the Chicken’ (written by Joe Gill), wouldn’t provide enough pages for him to make a living at Charlton.

So Glanzman approached DC Comics. This wouldn’t be the first time that Glanzman had sought out work there.

He’d applied some years earlier to then-editor Robert Kanigher, but was rebuffed when Kanigher expressed his dislike of artists in general and how he expected his artists to draw every detail, including the wood grain on rifle butts [from a Glanzman interview with the authors]. Realizing he wouldn’t work well with Kanigher as an editor, Glanzman remained at Dell and Charlton for the time being.

However, by 1970 fellow artist Joe Kubert had been the editor of the DC war books for about a year and a half.

When Glanzman approached him for work, the results were much more satisfying. Having already proven his ability in the war genre with his outstanding work at Charlton, Dell and Gilberton, Sam brought a wealth of experience with him along with his wonderful talent.

The DC war comics of the 1970s had an impressive stable of fine and steady artists, including Kubert himself, 

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Fig. 110: ‘Battle Prize!’ from G.I. Combat #154 (June-July 1972) Story by Robert Kanigher, art by Sam Glanzman.

Glanzman inherited the “Haunted Tank” feature from Russ Heath, and soon made the odd series his own. TM & © DC Comics.

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90 Russ Heath, Alex Toth, Frank Thorne, Jerry Grandenetti, Ric Estrada, Ken Barr, Jack Abel and the team of Ross Andru and Mike Esposito. When Glanzman joined DC, he became another one of those iconic and reliable artists.

For a time, he continued his work at both DC and Charlton.

His first assignments at DC were filler material such as the two-page hardware-oriented ‘Battle Album,’ the one-page biographical ‘Warrior’ and something of his own creation— ’Table-Top Diorama’, which had much the same intent as ‘Battle Album’—but kid readers could take their scissors out, cut the two pages up and make a diorama from it!

Soon, though, and much more importantly, Kubert gave Sam the space to do his own series based upon his service aboard the U.S.S. Stevens.

No doubt, Kubert initially thought the four and fivepage length of the stories would simply make them additional filler pieces to back up the popular lead features of the four main war titles, but Glanzman, not previously well known as a writer, packed enormous grit and insight into these short tales of life aboard a real destroyer during a time of life or death action. The U.S.S. Stevens had patrolled the Pacific during WWII, and the ocean itself became both a major backdrop and participant for these reality-based stories.

Soon, in addition to the U.S.S. Stevens stories, Glanzman got his first lead assignment in 1972, taking over the ‘Haunted Tank’ feature from Russ Heath.

Unlike his autobiography A Sailor’s Story, the U.S.S. Stevens stories were a blend of Glanzman’s own experiences, as well as stories that fellow sailors had told him and completely fictional tales. These weren’t stories of heroic ‘super’ men, just stories, both quiet and violent, of the men and young boys who’d gone to war for the country they believed in, to face an enemy that had attacked that country. While each little tale was a stand-alone story, the whole series could be considered a mosaic novel, with each story and each character in those stories advancing Glanzman’s viewpoint. Each brief story or chapter built upon the stories going before it and developed a pattern of an ongoing and much larger story.

In an unusual move, Kubert placed the stories, not as backups in one title, but in all of the war comics DC was currently publishing. From Glanzman’s very first story, ‘Frightened Boys…or Fighting Men,” which appeared in Our Army at War #218 (Apr. 1970), the reader was made aware that they were in for something special. Over the next seven years, a total of 59 stories appeared in the various DC war comics. In 1986, three more stories appeared in Marvel’s black-and-white title Savage Tales. The series popped up again in 1992 with a new story in DC’s Sgt. Rock Special. Then in 2012, Glanzman wrote and drew six more Stevens stories for Joe Kubert’s last major editorial project— the anthology comic Joe Kubert Presents.

Glanzman’s last U.S.S. Stevens story was completed in 2015 and published in Dover Publications’ enormous, and long awaited, U.S.S. Stevens reprint volume in 2016, which reprinted all of the U.S.S. Stevens stories.

With these stories, the reader was able to see what living on the edge of war was like for Glanzman and his 

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Fig. 111: Savage Tales, Vol. 2 #3 (Feb. 1986) Art by Mitch O’Connell. The Larry Hama-helmed second version of Savage Tales featured a lot of short war stores. Not only Glanzman’s U.S.S. Stevens tales but great work by the likes of Doug Murry, Michael Golden, Archie Goodwin, Bob Kanigher and John Severin. TM & © Marvel Characters Inc.

fellow sailors—the abject boredom of endless days at sea, the nerve-wracking terror of actual combat and the fear and tension of waiting and wondering when the enemy would attack, even in the quiet moments. Glanzman also provided some personal views on how destroyers looked and functioned. The readers got to see things in those stories which they knew upfront were often based on true events and real people. For Glanzman, this was likely the most personal work of his career, even over his autobiography. For fans of his work, it became clear that the superb work he’d done prior to this effort had just been a prelude to the U.S.S. Stevens stories. In very short order for many readers, it was the appearance of one of Glanzman’s ‘filler’ backup tales that prompted them to buy a DC war comic, not the lead feature at all. 

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91 The very first Stevens story, ‘Frightened Boys…or Fighting Men,’ was about the ship and crew undergoing their first baptism of fire. The bridge commander, T. A. Kelly, is anxious that his green crew rise to the occasion in their first battle action against Japanese fighter and bomber aircraft. He’s aware that his ‘boys’ must become ‘men’ during the fighting. A kamikaze plane attacks and strikes the ship, erupting it into flames without exploding.

The men meet their first crisis and heave the burning wreck over the side before the heat from the flames will detonate it. Captain Kelly is greatly relieved. Although more procedural in nature than later tales, this was a great first story and set the bar high for the stories to come.

Glanzman’s approach to his storytelling was unusual for the time. Because the stories were being used in all the DC titles, he couldn’t do a ‘start-at-the-beginning-and-goto-the-end’ kind of series. His tales would skip back and

forth in chronology. It was rare in the Stevens stories to see recurring characters. Stories focused on a sailor or incident and then moved on, although a young Glanzman himself could often be seen standing in the background or taking part in various activities or fights. You can spot young Sam by his blonde hair. And, very unusual for the time, Glanzman would often tell a tale that focused on the enemy or the civilians in an area, with the ship itself playing only a supporting role. It wasn’t unusual for a Glanzman tale to be told from the viewpoint of a Japanese pilot in a kamikaze plane trying to sink the Stevens.

Each story showed us ‘ordinary’ men doing extraordinary things in order to accomplish their job of fighting the Japanese. Glanzman took care to show the reader that it was a job, not a grab for glory, not ‘super’heroics, nor a pitch for patriotism, although patriotism certainly played a part in these stories. Some days were easier than others aboard ship and some were simply the ‘longest’ day. Glanzman also inserted a considerable chunk of real history, from both sides of the Pacific conflict, in these personal tales.

The third story to appear, ‘The Idiot’ (in Japanese the title translates as ‘Baka’) appeared in Our Army at War #220 (June 1970). Here the reader is introduced to the winged Japanese radio-controlled rocket which the Americans called the Baka.

During the assault on Okinawa on Apr. 6, 1945, there was a harrowing battle endured

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Fig. 112: ‘Frightened Boys…or Fighting Men?” from Our Army at War #218 (Apr. 1970) Story and art by Sam Glanzman. The first U.S.S. Stevens strip has a worried skipper pondering whether his inexperienced sailors were up for the job of war.

TM & © DC Comics.

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Fig. 113: ‘The Idiot!’ from Our Army at War #220 (June 1970) Story and art by Sam Glanzman. Glanzman explains why the Oka suicide planes used at Okinawa were called the Baka (Japanese for idiot) by Americans. TM & © DC Comics.

by the support ships offshore against the Japanese aerial forces, where hundreds of kamikazes and ‘Bakas’ divebombed the U.S. Naval fleet. This was one of the last futile attempts of the Japanese air force to extract a victory over U.S. Naval forces. The U.S. won the battle, but there were many sunken ships for the Americans while the Japanese themselves lost a tremendous number of planes and young pilots.

Glanzman also chronicled the humorous moments aboard ship, although there were times when ill-placed 

humor ended with deadly consequences. In the story ‘Black Smoke’ from Our Army at War #222 (Aug. 1970), the destroyer Rake’s engine room engineer, Roland, is making heavy, greasy black smoke just to aggravate the Chief Water Tender, Harry Nugent. Because this smoke is like a ‘black flag’ against the sky, the Japanese target the ship from the position of the smoke. In the last panel, shells from an enemy battleship, stationed miles away, are bypassing the U.S.S. Stevens and heading directly for the U.S.S. Rake. 

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Fig. 124: Sam Glanzman (on the left) and Joe Kubert (on the right) from Joe Kubert Presents #1 (Dec. 2012) Photograph by Pete Carlsson, taken the summer of 2010.

Fig. 125: A Sailor’s Story (1987–1989) Story and art by Sam Glanzman.

Glanzman’s graphic autobiography was originally published in two 64page trade paperbacks before finally being put together in a 168-page package by Dover Press in 2015.

TM & © DC Comics.

TM & © by Dover Publications, Inc.

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The last of the regular DC U.S.S. Stevens stories was ‘Why?’, which appeared in Sgt. Rock #308 (Sept. 1977). The focus is once again on a young Japanese pilot as he takes off in his plane to battle the approaching American ships.

The pilot attacks a ship, is fired upon and hit, then dives his crippled plane into the ship. The story deals with youth—in its prime full of life and zeal—and how such youth is always picked to fight the wars. On the last page, in the last two panels, we see only death and destruction. “And the young do die…and the old do cry…and I wonder why…why?’

As mentioned, that was the last U.S.S. Stevens tale for nearly a decade. Then in 1986, Marvel editor Larry Hama, a fine writer/artist in his own right as well as a war comics supporter, got Glanzman to continue his U.S.S. Stevens stories under a different title: ‘Tales of Love and War’, which appeared as ten-page stories in the black-andwhite Marvel magazine Savage Tales. All three published tales are strong, poignant stories. A fourth story intended for this title remained unpublished for twenty-nine years before appearing as a special bonus in the 2015 one volume reprinting of Glanzman’s original two-volume autobiography A Sailor’s Story.

Some years later, for DC, Glanzman would return with a new story, ‘Home of the Brave’, which appeared in Sgt. Rock Special #1 (Oct. 1992). This too was a ten-page story in which Glanzman himself cameos as ‘Saipan Sam’. The story addresses the sad tale of a WWII hero who was brain damaged during the war and, years later, ended up a homeless person in New York before being killed by some thugs. This was Glanzman’s last U.S.S. Stevens story 

until 2012 when six new ten-page stories appeared in Joe Kubert Presents.

In 1987, Marvel Comics published the first volume of two of Glanzman’s autobiography A Sailor’s Story. For the first time, Glanzman was given as much room as he needed to tell an expanded story about his time aboard the U.S.S. Stevens. Unlike the U.S.S. Stevens tales from DC and Marvel, A Sailor’s Story is straight autobiography.

However, characters that appeared in the U.S.S. Stevens tales, including Pinky, Buck and Rocco, pop up again in A Sailor’s Story, as do many of the same events, including the crossing of the Equator and the men from another destroyer being killed in Tsingtao, China.

Years later, because of the efforts of Joe Kubert, Glanzman came out of semi-retirement to write and draw those six new stories for the six issues of Joe Kubert Presents which appeared in late 2012 and early 2013 (sadly, shortly after Kubert himself had passed away in 2012).

Glanzman mixed a bit of the elements and storylines from the 1970s era U.S.S. Stevens stories, along with some of the ideas of a few unpublished stories as well as brandnew material to create fresh stories.

Even though quite a few years had passed since he’d done any U.S.S. Stevens stories, Glanzman still had the creative spark to give readers stories about his destroyer that were just as vibrant as any of his earlier tales. Even though some of the storylines may have appeared familiar to longtime readers, a new generation of comic book readers got their first exposure to this master storyteller.

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, G N O L E H T D N E G N I R E LING By the early 1970s, Sgt. Fury was essentially a bi-monthly book, with every other monthly issue being a reprint. The book was cancelled in 1981.

Charlton continued publishing decent war comics until 1977, with some exceptional stories from the likes of Pat Boyette and Tom Sutton, when they went from producing original comics to an all-reprint format. Besides Boyette and Sutton, good work appeared there from such creators as Joe Gill, Nicola Cuti, Don Perlin, Warren Sattler and others.

DC’s books fell back into a somewhat stale routine around 1975, and largely remained so for much of the rest of their runs. Kanigher’s gimmick stories reappeared. Both Our Army at War and Star-Spangled War Stories were retitled to reflect their lead characters, becoming Sgt. Rock and The Unknown Soldier, respectively.

Our Fighting Forces was cancelled in 1978. The Unknown Soldier lasted until 1982. Then both G.I. Combat and Sgt. Rock breathed their last in 1987 and 1988.

At Marvel, editor Larry Hama made an effort in 1985 to revive the war comic with his black-and-white adventure title Savage Tales (1985-1986) and with two color comics—the excellent The ‘Nam, which ran from 1986-1993 and Semper Fi, which ran from 1988-1989. All three were top-notch titles but when they ceased publication so did apparently did any interest Marvel had in war comics.

However, before that happened, something unusual occurred in the pages of DC Comics’ Our Fighting Forces. Jack Kirby, long idolized by fans as ‘King Kirby’ or as the ‘King of Comics’ for his long and extremely innovative years drawing comics, took over the title in mid-1974 and transformed the Ranger team of longtime DC characters Johnny Cloud, Capt. Storm, Gunner and Sarge into an all-purpose fighting team. In the process of doing so he wrote and drew the best war comics he ever produced.

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Fig 126: The ‘Nam #1 (Dec. 1986) Art

by Michael Golden. The ‘Nam ran for 84 issues and told some provocative stories during its seven-year run.

TM & © Marvel Characters Inc.

INTERLUDE

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And, at this point we, the authors, must reveal some convoluted information. This book was originally entitled ‘The Real Big Five’, which, by its very name, was intended to highlight the best five war comics produced in the U.S. We were both in complete agreement on four of those initial choices. The fifth spot was debated over and the pick for position #5 basically came down to two choices— Enemy Ace by Kanigher and Kubert or work by Jack Kirby.

Kanigher and Kubert had produced during their careers, either separately or individually, literally thousands of war stories, but only Enemy Ace fit the criteria that we considered for inclusion into the ‘Real Big Five’.

What exactly is that criteria? A) that the stories reflect a mature, realistic look at war—with no feats or actions that would be physically impossible for an actual human or machine to do. That criteria pushed both Sgt. Rock and Sgt. Fury out of consideration. B) that the stories be of such importance to the field that they created trends that have rippled down through the years to this very day.

The work of Harvey Kurtzman, Archie Goodwin, the team of Willi Franz and Sam Glanzman and Glanzman’s own solo work match those criteria exactly. Much of Kanigher and Kubert’s work does not, but “Enemy Ace” most certainly does. So does some, but not all, of Kirby’s war work.

So why “Enemy Ace” over Kirby? After all, there is nobody in the comics field who has created more trends that continue to ripple through the field than Jack Kirby, and those trends cover nearly every genre of comics out there—from super-heroes to westerns, from crime to science fiction, from horror to kid gang adventures and from romance to war. Kirby did nearly every type of comic one can think of and did most of them extremely well.

Well, over half of Kirby’s war comics consists of his 1940s work with partner Joe Simon on the Boy Commandos, either in their own title or in the pages of Detective Comics or World’s Finest. These are great, entertaining stories, but they were derived, at least in part, from Milton Caniff’s Terry and the Pirates comic strip, and from the Kirby/Simon team’s own concept of the kid gang genre, especially the tales of the Newsboy Legion. Plus,

Fig. 127: Jack Kirby was the most innovative creator in comics history. He scored major hits in such genres as super-heroes, science fiction, romance (he and Joe Simon created that genre), humor, western, and, for our purposes—war comics. 

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JACK KIRBY’S COMBAT TALES the Boy Commandos tales are hardly realistic.

The very concept of any Allied command sending children between the ages of twelve and fourteen out on military missions to fight and kill enemy soldiers is hard to swallow.

Although children certainly fought in the war, only the Nazis and Japanese actually sent children into battle in military units. Plus, the Boy Commandos tales are dotted with fantasy and science fiction stories, most of which, admittedly, are quite entertaining.

Kirby and Simon’s next foray into war comics was the excellent, and initially selfpublished, Foxhole, which for a variety of reasons, lasted only seven issues. Foxhole’s first four issues were published by Mainline, a company that Kirby and Simon set up to both publish and own their own creations. Mainline published four titles during its existence— Foxhole, the western title Bullseye, the crime comic Police Trap and the romance title In Love.

Challengers of the Unknown, which debuted from National Comics in 1957, was also likely initially conceived to be a Mainline title.

Mainline’s, and Foxhole’s, short life was determined by a number of factors, including the downturn in comic sales created by the anti-comics hysteria of 1954-1955, the advent of the Comics Code, whose prohibitions in both story and art greatly shrank the number of publishers, especially small publishers, in the field and the dwindling financial resources of Messieurs Kirby and Simon. Foxhole’s first three issues were pre-Code titles. #4 bore the Comics Code seal on a cover which had 

Fig. 128: Boy Commandos #1 (Winter 1942-1943) Art by Jack Kirby and Joe Simon. This inaugural cover featured Rip Carter, the leader of the group, and Jan, Alfy, Brooklyn (Kirby always had a Brooklyn or Hell’s Kitchen character in his kid gangs or army squads) and Andre, the Boy Commandos! TM & © DC Comics. 

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104 been changed from the original version. The original cover featured a dead Japanese sniper hanging from a tree while the Marine who killed him approaches carefully on the ground. The replacement was a close-up of a Marine’s camouflaged face. It’s a good cover and, to be honest, maybe even a little bit better than the rejected version.

Foxhole was intended to actually start a trend, as the concept was that the only artists and writers who’d been actually soldiers would write and draw the title. Everyone who was credited in the series had their military rank attached to their names.

The title featured stunning covers on #1-6 by Kirby, not only dramatic and well-drawn but beautifully colored. However, due to the demands of being a co-publisher, editor, writer and artist, Kirby only contributed the six covers and two written and drawn interior stories—the tense, six-page ‘Booby Trap’ and an Air Force two-page tale called ‘Hot Spot’, both appearing in Foxhole #2 (Dec. 1954). He also scripted two stories for other artists to illustrate.

After the first four issues and Mainline’s demise, Charlton picked up the title for its remaining three issues. Only the first six have stories or input from either Kirby or Simon. It’s possible that the Jack Kirby covers on Harvey Comics Warfront #28 (Jan.-Mar. 1956) and #29 (July-Sept. 1956) were also unused Foxhole covers. The cover to #29 has been altered, likely due to the Comics Code office, as the Marine shown there is wearing a flame-thrower tank on his back but firing a sub-machine gun into a Japanese tunnel entrance. Death by flame thrower was strictly forbidden by the Code.

Kirby’s artistic contribution to Foxhole in total is eight pages of selfwritten and drawn interior art, the two additional scripted tales for other artists, six covers of Foxhole, another

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Fig. 129: Foxhole #1 (Oct. 1954) Art by Jack Kirby. This cover art by Kirby was a reworking of the painting ‘High Visibility Wrap’ by Joseph Hirsch.

Originally published by Mainline Publications. © Joe Simon & Jack Kirby Estates.

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Fig. 130: Joseph Hirsch’s ‘High Visibility Wrap’. As can be seen, Kirby copied the head, while everything else on his cover is his own creation. © Joseph Hirsch.

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110 are, writing called History of American War Comics and the Real Big Five. Mike Catron looked over the manuscript at one point and suggested that we split the ‘Real Big Five’ material off into its own book. This made sense to us as the history part of that book continued (and continues) to grow and grow. There’s an astonishing amount of information and research involved in a history on war comics.

However, that left us with two problems. First, the Kirby material that would have done him justice needed to be in the History volume. Second, the ‘Real Big Five’ material of Chapters 1-5 wasn’t long enough to justify a full book. Part of that we solved by including the information on Wayne Vansant, Garth Ennis and Don Lomax into the book. At that time—in 2016—Lomax’s Vietnam Journal had already been on our short list for inclusion into the ‘Real Big Five’. The British writer Garth Ennis’ worthy work didn’t fit the ‘American’ part of our criteria. Vansant, who’d done very good work over the years on a large number of war-related projects was still working on his magnum opus—Katusha—and only the first two thirds had been self-published by Vansant himself. All three of them, however, deserved a mention and so a chapter on them was included.

As this book neared its finish in late 2019, we approached publisher John Morrow of TwoMorrows Publishing. While he was in the process of considering it, the Covid-19 shutdown occurred. Not only did all publishing cease for a number of months, but even when it resumed, book and magazine projects were backed up and there was uncertainty as to whether publishers could even recover from the loss of income from the shutdown and pushback.

Finally, in early 2021, John agreed to greenlight the book, even though there is no track record for a nonfiction book on war comics in this country—or, to our knowledge— in any country. It’s a double-edged sword to be first at something. One, critics don’t have anything to really compare you to so they’re sometimes willing to cut you a little slack, but, on the other hand, publishers don’t have anything to compare you with and plowing new literary ground is always a little chancy.

Glanzman’s ‘The Kunko Warrior!’ and ‘Panama Fattie!’s features an overweight female villain, who has a romantic heart beating underneath the girth, pain and sadness of her situation.

Our Fighting Forces #161 highlights Major Geoffrey Soames, whose black dreams ravage him after his command is decimated by the Japanese. In a harrowing, near-horror ending the dreams that drive him to madness actually foretell his death.

Best of all is ‘A Small Place in Hell!’ from Our Fighting Forces #152 (Dec. 1974-Jan. 1975). The Losers aren’t on any mission, but headed to a small liberated French town for some R&R (rest and relaxation). The town isn’t as liberated as they think, however, and soon they’re playing a violent, seat-of-your-pants game of hide ‘n’ seek with the Nazi occupants. There’s literally no let-up in the tension until the last few panels when an unnamed General Patton encounters the disheveled group after their escape from the town and chews them out for their sloppy dress. Few writers or artists can launch their heroes through riveting realistic violence, danger and mayhem like Jack Kirby!

After all that, whew!

We agreed on putting ‘Enemy Ace’ in the ‘Real Big Five’ because we knew that only a few pages later we’d be discussing Kirby’s work on its own. See, originally, all of what is Chapter 1-5 was part of another book we were, and

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Fig. 138: Our Fighting Forces #152 (Dec. 1974-Jan. 1975) Pencils by Jack Kirby. This dynamic cover—Kirby’s first of the Losers gives a strong hint of the action-on-every-page and in every-panel of the story inside.

TM & © DC Comics.

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Fig. 139: ‘A Small Place in Hell!’ pg. 14 from Our Fighting Forces #152. Story and pencils by Jack Kirby. Although it’s unmentioned by talk or captions, Cloud’s scorched eye gradually closes over the rest of the story. A subtle bit of underplaying by Kirby in a story that barely pauses for breath during the action scenes.

TM & © DC Comics

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Fig. 140: Our Fighting Forces #155 (May 1975) Pencils by Jack Kirby. Dynamic as the pencils for this cover were, they give only a hint of the grim and haunting events taking place in ‘The Partisans!’, one of Kirby’s best efforts on the book. TM & © DC Comics.

John liked what he read but did admit that the book was still a little slim and wondered why we hadn’t included anything by Jack Kirby. Not knowing the back history, he had a point. If we were willing to include Don, Garth and Wayne on their work, why not Jack?

In addition, in the time since we’d first split the book Vansant had completed and published, much to our admiration, his fantastic opus— Katusha—in 2019. Ennis had continued publishing fantastic works on a steady basic, mostly dealing with English conflicts and featuring British artists, but all appearing from American publishers. Lomax’s Vietnam Journal began to come back into print.

The book needed updating and Kirby’s work from Foxhole, Battle and Our Fighting Forces needed to take their proper place in this book. So, consider this the ‘Real Big Five’ plus choices Six, Seven, Eight and Nine. We do.

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Fig. 141: ‘The Major’s Dream’ from Our Fighting Forces #161 (Nov. 1975) Story and pencils

by Jack Kirby. This creepy panel is only the first bit of the terrifying, and in some ways, prophetic dreams of Major Geoffrey Soames. TM & © DC Comics.

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D N E E H T L L A F E H T G N I FOLLOW S C I M O C R A W M A E R T S N OF MAI In the years since DC and Marvel cancelled their last ongoing original war titles, there have been fitful efforts on DC’s part to continue the war genre. Some, such as Billy Tucci’s Sgt. Rock: The Lost Battalion, several mini-series written by Garth Ennis and a number of good revivals of the old anthology titles have appeared—although those revivals were often done simply to preserve DC’s copyright on the old titles. Still, for the most part the two mainstream companies have largely abandoned the war genre.

Some of the newer companies have dabbled in the genre, now apparently regulated to a niche market. Eclipse Comics published the left-wing leaning Real War Stories and the excellent graphic anthology collection Brought to Light, which featured

a particularly well-written story by Alan Moore. Dark Horse published their Medal of Honor title. Before his death, Harvey Kurtzman worked on a two-issue revival of Two-Fisted Tales, which was decently written and illustrated.

In recent years, there has started to be a revival of the genre, much of it coming from comic companies such as Avatar and Caliber, and mainstream publishers such as Dover Press, Zenith Press and Dead Reckoning—the latter the graphic novel branch of The Naval Institute, an actual military publishing unit—have published some groundbreaking work.

It is from these publishers, and largely from three specific creators, that the hope and continuance of that revival rests.

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Fig: 143: Sgt. Rock: The Lost Battalion (2009) Art by Billy Tucci. Sgt. Rock and Easy Co. find themselves side-byside with the famed 442nd Regimental Combat Team, which was composed of Nesei—second-generation Japanese-Americans who volunteered for combat duty out of love of their country and to get out of the internment camps that the U.S. government had shoved them into after Pearl Harbor.

TM & © DC Comics.

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Fig. 142: Medal of Honor Special #1 (Apr. 1994) Art by Joe Kubert. Dark Horse Comics made a brief foray into war comics in 1994 with this oneshot special and four issues of a regular series. These five well done issues featured stories of actual Medal of Honor winners and how they won those medals. TM & © Dark Horse Comics, Inc. 

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INTERLUDE

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As mentioned in the previous interlude segment, war comics today are largely a ‘niche’ market. The major comics companies occasionally revive their old characters and titles for a mini-series or a one-shot appearance but, while some of those series and appearances are often very good indeed, the reality is that these efforts are largely publishing decisions made not so much because of faith in the material as a desire to retain the copyrights and trademarks to their old titles. Thus, DC’s Star Spangled War Stories had a recent 2014 revival featuring the fairly mediocre adventures of ‘G.I. Zombie’, probably because the Star Spangled title of old had a lengthy run of the ‘War That Time Forgot’—although a more likely title for something called ‘G.I. Zombie’ would have been a title like Weird War Stories and possibly Ghosts.

However, Weird War Stories already had a recently issued title that would retain the copyright (the excellent reprint volume Showcase Presents: Weird War Stories, Vol. 1) and Star Spangled War Stories was apparently up for renewal.

Since the demise of DC’s Sgt. Rock in June 1988 and Marvel’s The Nam in Sept. 1993, the two major comic book companies haven’t published any ongoing war comic title.

The slack has been taken up by either independent comic book publishers, foreign publishers or the traditional noncomic book mainstream publishers, as well as by writers and artists who have worked steadily to scratch out a publishing venue that works for them.

The three most notable creators involved in this latter process are Don Lomax, Wayne Vansant and Garth Ennis.

Fig. 144: Don Lomax is a Vietnam veteran and his knowledge of and emotions resulting from that conflict are brought to every comic he’s worked on.

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DON LOMAX Don Lomax, born in 1944, is one of the writer/artists who emerged in the late 1980s. In Lomax’s case he produced most of his early war comics for the independent publisher Apple Comics. What is unique about Lomax’s work is that he was an actual Vietnam veteran who based his stories about his experiences during that conflict. 

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THE CREATORS COMING UP: DON LOMAX, WAYNE VANSANT & GARTH ENNIS Much like Glanzman, he made notes and sketches during his time in the ‘Nam that he would later use in some of his stories. His series, Vietnam Journal, began in 1987 and followed the adventures of war correspondent Scott ‘Journal’ Neithammer. Lomax’s comics, coming from a company that ignored the Comics Code, were full of the grit, grime, blood, craziness and nastiness of the Vietnam War. From his first story on, Lomax didn’t pull any punches or glamorize the war because he didn’t have to. He could do stories far more graphic than anything DC or Marvel would attempt.

Neithammer got into the thick of things in Vietnam because he realized that “the real story was not at Battalion Headquarters.” The real story was in the bush with “the slime, the stink, the constant fear and frustration of fighting a war that ‘the Powers That Be’ would not let us win!” Neithammer firmly identified with the Vietnam foot soldier—the grunt.

Lomax was also careful to add to each issue the events of the times back in ‘the world’, as civilian life in the states were called by the soldiers in ‘Nam. Over the course of his stories he wrote and drew details dealing with the homefront, the college campuses, entertainment and national and international news. He spotlighted MIAs and what people could do to try to find the POW/MIAs even years after the end of the war. Any examination of the home front has been unusual in the war comics genre and Lomax is to be commended for including those elements.

Lomax launched a number of other series under the umbrella Vietnam Journal title, including Bloodbath at Khe Sanh, Indian Country, High Shining Brass, Tet ‘68, The Iron Triangle and Valley of Death. Another related series was the six-issue Fire Team from Aircel Comics. He would later do a series based on Desert Shield/Desert Storm campaigns called Desert Storm Journal, which brought back his character, Scott Neithammer, to cover the events of Operation Desert Storm. Lomax gave this series the same treatment and attention that he supplied for Vietnam Journal. 

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Fig. 145: Vietnam Journal #1 (Nov. 1987) Art

by Don Lomax. Lomax’s main character— Scott ‘Journal’ Neithammer—is introduced in the beginning of this long-running series. © Apple Comics & J. Michael Catron. Used by permission. Story & art © Don Lomax.

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Fig. 146: Vietnam Journal #9 (Mar. 1989) Art by Don Lomax. This is a harrowing story that starts in the Mekong Delta where situations just get worse and worse. More insanity in an insane war. © Apple Comics &

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J. Michael Catron. Used by permission. Story & art © Don Lomax.

J. Michael Catron. Used by permission. Story & art © Don Lomax.

Lomax also wrote a number of stories for Marvel’s The ‘Nam series, from #70 right up to the final issue, #84.

Many of Lomax’s ‘Nam tales were illustrated by Wayne Vansant.

Following the demise of Apple Comics, Lomax took his Vietnam Journal tales to other places, including the adult magazine Gallery. His work can now be found on his own website. Transfuzion Publishing has reprinted many of the stories originally published by Apple Comics. In addition, many of those stories have returned to print in collections

by Caliber Comics.

Lomax’s tales follow in the line from Kurtzman to Glanzman, although perhaps with more brutal honesty and with none of the restraints that other writers and artists 

Fig. 147: High Shining Brass #1 (Nov. 1990) This is a true story related by Robert Durand as told to Don Lomax, art by Lomax. It’s a journey into the shadow world of an American CIA spy dealing with the secret side of the Vietnam War. © Apple Comics &

had to deal with working in the more mainstream comic companies.

Lomax had a connection to the Vietnam conflict because of his service to our country. He had the right chemistry with both his words and his empathy for the characters, whether they were characters he created himself or inherited from other writers. Lomax’s stories don’t tend to spend a lot of time in officer’s country. It was the regular foot soldiers he wanted to write about. The ‘Nam may be a bit more tame than his own Vietnam Journal, but his stories for the former title still deliver a great impact on the reader.

Lomax also revisited the Vietnam with one of Marvel’s action heroes, the Punisher, with The Punisher Invades The 

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Fig. 148: Vietnam Journal: Tet ‘68 (Mar. 1992) Story and art by Don Lomax. This time ‘Journal’ Neithammer is caught up in the Tet Offensive of 1968. © Apple Comics & J. Michael Catron.

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Used by permission.

Fig. 149: Vietnam Journal, Series Two: Incursion (2017) Story and art by Don Lomax. ‘Journal’ Neithammer’s story in Vietnam is continued in this YOU ENJOYED collection of the first IF five issues of THIS PREVIEW, CLICK THE LINK TO ORDER THIS the new series. ©Caliber Comics.

ISSUE IN PRINT OR DIGITAL FORMAT!

his way through the Viet Cong and a sadistic doctor who is experimenting on the prisoners. The story widens the background on the events that would eventually shape Frank Castle as the Punisher in the 1970s.

Both Lomax and Vansant contributed to the shortlived Dark Horse Publications’ Harvey Kurtzman’s The New Two-Fisted Tales. Lomax did two stories for the first issue: ‘Dustoff’ and ‘Zippo’. For issue #2, Lomax contributed OUR ARTISTS AT WAR ‘Queen of Chu Chi’.

Examines War comic books published in the US: EC Comics (Two-Fisted Tales, Combat), with DC Comics (Enemy In recent years Vietnam JournalFrontline returned Ace, All American Men of War, G.I. Combat, Our Fighting Neithammer in new stories from Caliber Comics.

Forces, Our Army at War, Star-Spangled WarThree Stories), Warren Publishing (Blazing Combat), Charlton (Willy Schultz and the volumes have appeared—entitled Incursion, into Iron Corporal) and more! FeaturingJourney KURTZMAN, SEVERIN, DAVIS, WOOD,#1-15.

KUBERT, GLANZMAN, KIRBY, and more!

Hell and Ripcord, which collected All of the stories (160-page FULL-COLOR TPB) $27.95 are top-notch, but several of them are stand-outs.

Issues (Digital Edition) $14.99

‘Nam: Final Invasion. This was actually a trade paperback novel that appeared in 1994. The Punisher (aka Frank Castle) had actually appeared, chronologically before he became the Punisher, in The ‘Nam #52-53 and #6769, which had been written by other writers. Lomax was handed the assignment to explore more of the history of Frank Castle—whose original last name was Castiglione— before he became the Punisher. This stand-alone TPB was published after the demise of The ‘Nam. The book features some great chapter introduction art by Joe Kubert, which may have originally been intended for the covers, if the book had been published as intended as The ‘Nam #84-86.

The story has Castle deep in the jungle fighting to rescue some downed American airmen. He must fight

ISBN: 978-1-60549-108-0

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