Back Issue #37 by TwoMorrows Publishing

THIS ISSUE: COMICS GO TO WAR!

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SECRETS OF THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER

WONDER WONDER WOMAN’S WOMAN’S RETURN RETURN TO TO WWII WWII

THE INVADERS, WWII’s HEROES

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PLUS A HISTORY OF THE JOE KUBERT SCHOOL!

PLUS: BLACKHAWK • ENEMY ACE • COMBAT KELLY • VIETNAM JOURNAL WITH: EVANIER • PRATT • SINNOTT • SPIEGLE • AND GERRY TALAOC RETURNS!

THE

BATCAVE C O M P A N I O N NOW SHIPPING! Batman. Is he the campy Caped Crusader? Or the grim Gotham Guardian? Both, as The Batcave Companion reveals. On the brink of cancellation in 1963, Batman was rescued by DC Comics editor Julius Schwartz, who, abetted by several talented writers and artists, gave the hero a much-needed “New Look” which soon catapulted Batman to multimedia stardom. In the next decade, when Batman required another fresh start, Schwartz once again led a team of creators that returned the hero to his “creature of the night” roots. Writers Michael Eury (The Krypton Companion, The Justice League Companion) and Michael Kronenberg (Spies, Vixens, and Masters of Kung Fu: The Art of Paul Gulacy) unearth the stories behind the stories of both Batman’s “New Look” and Bronze Age (1970s) comic-book eras through incisive essays, invaluable issue-by-issue indexes, and insightful commentary from many of the visionaries responsible for and inspired by Batman’s 1960s and 1970s adventures: Neal Adams, Michael Allred, Terry Austin, Mike W. Barr, Steve Englehart, Mike Friedrich, Mike Grell, Carmine Infantino, Joe Giella, Adam Hughes, Sheldon Moldoff, Will Murray, Dennis O’Neil, Bob Rozakis, Mark Waid, Len Wein, and Bernie Wrightson. Featuring 240 art- and info-packed pages, The Batcave Companion is a must-have examination of two of the most influential periods in Batman’s 70-year history.

Written by Back Issue’s

MICHAEL EURY & MICHAEL KRONENBERG ISBN 978-1-893905-78-8 $26.95 in the U.S. plus shipping Batman, Robin, and all related characters and indicia are TM & © DC Comics. All Rights Reserved. Used with permission.

TwoMorrows. Celebrating The Art & History Of Comics. TwoMorrows • 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 USA • 919-449-0344 • FAX: 919-449-0327 • E-mail: twomorrow@aol.com • www.twomorrows.com

Volume 1, Number 37 December 2009 Celebrating the Best Comics of the '70s, '80s, '90s, and Today!

The Retro Comics Experience!

EDITOR Michael Eury PUBLISHER John Morrow DESIGNER Rich J. Fowlks

BACK SEAT DRIVER: Editorial by Michael Eury. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 FLASHBACK: Sgt. Rock of Easy Company in “The Longer Shadow” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 How the controversies of the Vietnam War shaped the adventures of DC’s Top Sergeant

COVER ARTIST Joe Kubert

INTERVIEW: Comics 101: Joe Kubert and His School of Cartoon and Graphic Art. . . . 9 The master illustrator/teacher/editor in an exclusive interview

COVER COLORISTS Glenn Whitmore and Jason Geyer

GREATEST STORIES NEVER TOLD: Stan Lee’s “Kubert School”? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Didja know that Marvel once considered opening its own comics school? OFF MY CHEST: In Search of “True Bios” of Comic-Book Creators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 In a guest editorial, Man of Rock’s Bill Schelly discusses what makes a “true” biography

PROOFREADERS John Morrow and Eric Nolen-Weathington SPECIAL THANKS G. K. Abraham Mark Arnold Michael Aushenker Dick Ayers Jerry Boyd Alan Brennert Pete Carlsson Catholic Digest Gerry Conway DC Comics Tony DeZuniga Mark DiFruscio Bill DuBay Michael Dunne Mark Evanier Gary Friedrich Father Roy Gasnick Don Glut Grand Comic-Book Database Larry Hama Jack C. Harris Heritage Comics Auctions Ice Cream Soldier Carmine Infantino Dan Johnson Dave Karlen

Jim Kingman Joe Kubert Don Lomax David Michelinie Ian Millsted The National Archives Nightscream Martin Pasko George Pratt John Romita, Sr. Alan Rutledge Bill Schelly Joe Sinnott Mark Sinnott Anthony Snyder Dan Spiegle Gerry Talaoc Roy Thomas John Wells

PRO2PRO: Mark Evanier and Dan Spiegle Fly with Blackhawk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 The unbeatable writer/artist duo look back at their fondly remembered Blackhawk collaboration GREATEST STORIES NEVER TOLD: Blackhawk Declassified: The Story of the Lost Miniseries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Bill DuBay and Carmine Infantino’s unpublished series, with never-before-seen art FLASHBACK: Stop a Bullet Cold, Make the Axis Fold . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 Wonder Woman went back to the ’40s in the ’70s, thanks to the popular TV show BEYOND CAPES: Kiss Me “Deadly”: Combat Kelly and the Deadly Dozen. . . . . . . . . . 34 Despite its brutally short run, this comic-book casualty breathed fresh life into the war genre BEYOND CAPES: From Parts “Unknown”!: The Unknown Soldier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 Joe Kubert’s other World War II hero battled Axis forces for a dozen years INTERVIEW: Soaring to New Heights: George Pratt’s Enemy Ace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 An art-loaded look at the master painter’s War Idyll graphic novel FLASHBACK: The Invaders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 Marvel Comics’ Golden Age heroes in their Bronze Age series WHAT THE--?!: Saints and Superheroes: The Brief Union of Marvel Comics and the Catholic Church . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 When Saint Francis of Assisi, Pope John Paul II, and Mother Teresa blessed the House of Ideas FLASHBACK: The Annotated Vietnam Journal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 A review of Don Lomax’s seminal work INTERVIEW: Don Lomax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 The writer/artist of Vietnam Journal takes us into the trenches FLASHBACK: Sad Sack During the Bronze Age . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 War isn’t always hell, at least not in this funny favorite BACK TALK. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 Reader feedback on “Villains” issue #35 BACK ISSUE™ is published bimonthly by TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614. Michael Eury, Editor. John Morrow, Publisher. Editorial Office: BACK ISSUE, c/o Michael Eury, Editor, 118 Edgewood Avenue NE, Concord, NC 28025. Email: euryman@gmail.com. Six-issue subscriptions: $44 Standard US, $60 First Class US, $70 Canada, $105 First Class Mail International, $115 Priority Mail International. Please send subscription orders and funds to TwoMorrows, NOT to the editorial office. Cover art by Joe Kubert. Sgt. Rock TM & © DC Comics. All Rights Reserved. All characters are © their respective companies. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter © 2009 Michael Eury and TwoMorrows Publishing. BACK ISSUE is a TM of TwoMorrows Publishing. ISSN 1932-6904. Printed in Canada. FIRST PRINTING. Comics Go to War Issue

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A 2005 Sgt. Rock watercolored sketch by Russ Heath, from the collection of Jerry Boyd. TM & © DC Comics.

COVER DESIGNER Michael Kronenberg

As a child during the Vietnam War era, I was taught to be a pacifist through media exposure. Between television’s and Life magazine’s horrific depictions of the wounded and dead to music artists decrying the conflict—plus those seductive (to this kid, at least) hippies protesting Vietnam making the nightly news—I joined a chorus of Americans who agreed with singer Edwin Starr’s assertion that war was good for absolutely nothin’. With the enlightenment that accompanies aging, I later grew to venerate our dedicated military and acknowledge their sacrifices and commitment. Yet because of my early disdain of all things pertaining to war, during my youth I did not develop anything beyond a cursory awareness of the art of Joe Kubert, indisputably the war-comics artist of the Silver and Bronze Ages, until he revitalized Tarzan at DC Comics in the 1970s. (I was too young to have read Kubert’s Hawkman in The Brave and the Bold— Dick Dillin was the Hawkman artist by the time I discovered that book in the late ’60s.) Later, as a comics professional and historian, I nurtured a tremendous respect for Joe Kubert’s artistry—as well as his unparalleled tenure in the business and his reputation as its premier educator—but not having emotionally connected with Kubert’s work as a lad I simply couldn’t call myself a “Joe Kubert fan.” Until now. And I have Bill Schelly to thank for my conversion. Bill Schelly, as you’re probably aware, is one of comics’ most notable historians. His remarkable, intimate book, Man of Rock: A Biography of Joe Kubert (Fantagraphics Books, 2008), is responsible for my newfound appreciation of the talented Mr. Kubert. Joe Kubert’s saga is so richly colorful, were Man of Rock not an impeccably researched biography one might suspect that it was fiction. A Polish immigrant who started his career in comics as a pre-teen, Kubert (generally pronounced koo’-bert, as the first chapter reveals, although the more commonly spoken kyoo’-bert is accepted) spent his early days in poverty,

while his parents struggled to assimilate in a culture they didn’t quite understand. Kubert’s emerging journey through life and into comic books is in itself fascinating, yet in Schelly’s capable hands his story becomes even more engrossing. As a biographer, Schelly digs deep, through interviews new and old, thoroughly exploring his subject’s triumphs and tribulations and bringing each and every member of the Joe Kubert “supporting cast” fully to life. Like a good film director, Schelly the biographer instinctively knows just how long to carry a “scene,” or in this case, a biographical sequence. No question is left unasked, yet never once does Schelly cross the line into exploitation or overexposure. Schelly’s presentation of Kubert’s life makes Man of Rock a true page-turner. You owe it to yourself to read this important—and entertaining—book. And thus it’s an honor for ye editor to showcase the art of Joe Kubert on this issue’s cover, and to feature his recollections regarding two characters he’s associated with, Sgt. Rock and the Unknown Soldier. Jim Kingman’s captivating lead article explores how the controversial Vietnam War reshaped DC Comics’ depiction of World War II, while Michael Aushenker unravels the history of the master-of-disguise Unknown Soldier—and manages to score a jaw-dropping Unknown Soldier portrait by the talented Gerry Talaoc, produced exclusively for BACK ISSUE! (We would’ve liked to feature Mr. Talaoc’s painting on a BI cover, but it gets the nextbest treatment as one-half of this issue’s centerspread.) Additionally, Dan Johnson’s exclusive interview with Joe Kubert offers insight into our cover star’s groundbreaking School of Cartoon and Graphic Art. Also lining up for inspection in this issue are Blackhawk, Combat Kelly, Enemy Ace, Vietnam Journal, and Sad Sack, while Wonder Woman and the Invaders are enlisted to keep the superhero crowd smiling. And writer Mark DiFruscio takes a look at a different side of war through the lens of Marvel Comics’ unorthodox trio of one-shots starring three revered Catholic heroes. This issue has something for everyone, and it’s our hope that even those of you who don’t like war comics will find its topics tantalizing.

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Michael Eury

Jim Kingman

“I think there is such a small audience to Vietnam fighting, because even if it is current, and the most important at this writing, the war essentially, on the ground, is small and large scale guerrilla action, and the action does not lend itself to continuous illustrating. Just as the majority of the air actions are against ground targets, and not against other aircraft. Despite the dead and wounded which are very real and very tragic, Vietnam is not a picture war. Just compare the photos and drawings coming out of Vietnam today, with those of World Wars I and II.” The above reply by writer/editor Robert Kanigher to letter writer John Schlafer’s request for a Green Beret series set during the Vietnam War was published in the Oct. 1967 issue of DC’s Our Army at War (#185), featuring Sgt. Rock and Easy Company. In less than a year, Vietnam would very much become a “picture war,” its horrors shown in daily newspapers and broadcast on the nightly news. The devastating effects of this escalating and controversial conflict on the American consciousness would be explored in the Sgt. Rock series for two decades, albeit indirectly, as opposed to other forms of entertainment such as cinema and television. While Sgt. Rock and the combat-happy Joes of Easy Company underwent the early throes of character development in the pages of DC’s Our Army at War beginning in 1959, half a world away in Vietnam, the United States initially maintained advisory status to aid the Republic of (South) Vietnam in the growing conflict for Vietnamese independence. Less than ten years later, the Vietnam War raged between American and South Vietnamese forces and the Viet Cong (Vietnamese communists) and would become the longest war in US history, with US troop strength peaking at 542,000. The war had become a controversial, polarizing military engagement that had no end in sight and was swiftly becoming America’s first “television war.”

A Not-So-Combat Happy Joe Despite a divide of over two decades, DC’s World War II-based Sgt. Rock stories published during the Vietnam War began to echo Americans’ attitudes over that latter conflict. Art by Joe Kubert. TM & © DC Comics.

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“NO MORE KILLIN’…” From 1959 to 1967, Sgt. Rock and Easy Company’s monthly comicbook exploits, which started in Our Army at War #81 (Apr. 1959), were essentially battle-action adventures for boys depicted in a WWII setting. While Easy’s missions were more realistically chronicled by Kanigher and illustrated by Joe Kubert and Russ Heath than concurrent superhero tales published in most DC and Marvel comics, they were still marketed to eight- to 12-year-olds, and had to adhere to the strict regulations of the Comics Code Authority. “The stories that we had done up to that time,” explains Joe Kubert, “were ones where we felt that we were trying to show realistically as possible within the context of a comic book that war is not a great thing, that you don’t run around with a cigar in your face and run over and kill people. What we tried to do was to show that people are in the Army and people do what they have to do as required of them and that it is actually a buddy-to-buddy kind of situation, watching out for the guy next to you; where you are in a position in wartime where you can get killed in order to defend yourself very often, and the fact is that you feel [you] are doing the right thing but not for the glory of it and not for the killing of it.” In a decade already besieged by social unrest and great historical significance, 1968 was one of the most volatile years in our nation’s existence. War protests were escalating. The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. and Senator Robert Kennedy were assassinated. Riots were occurring all across the country. And in the pages of Our Army at War #196’s “Stop the War—I Want to Get Off!,” published in June and written, illustrated, and edited by Kubert, who had taken over as editor of the book with Our Army at War

#193, the attitude of the “Sgt. Rock” series shifted dramatically. Rock reacted to the perceived deaths of four new replacements in Easy Company as he never had before in the fields of war— with despair. As the story opened, Rock had had enough of war. He stood alone in a field of battle, smoke all around him. A toppled tank turret rested near him. Four soldiers lay in the rubble before him, apparently dead. Rock felt great anguish. This dramatic scene then shifted to a few hours before. An exhausted Rock reported to his superior officer. Rock was heading out on patrol again, but the C.O. said no, Rock needed his rest. Weary, but determined, Rock refused to let the new replacements go out alone. The four soldiers marched out with Rock point on probe for the fourth straight night. The soldiers drew close to enemy lines. Rock spotted an enemy bunker up ahead. One soldier believed it was an empty tank turret. But inside the turret, a Nazi prepared to fire. Explosives suddenly ignited the sky. The replacements panicked, despite Rock’s orders for them to stay down. The smoke singed Rock’s eyes. Tears swelled up, and he snapped, pleading with himself for an answer to why they wouldn’t listen. He shouted in despair, “Yeah … it’s funny! Four young guys whose names I didn’t even know! Gone!,” and charged the tank turret, while 88mm blasts cut the dirt around him. Rock climbed onto the tank turret, shoving grenades into the view slits. The turret exploded, and the story had reached the moment after the opening sequence. Succumbing to despair, Rock cried, “Enough! No more killin’ … no more blood … no more war!” The story then took on a surreal nature, as a mysterious US soldier suddenly appeared before Rock. The soldier worked to get Rock out of his funk by telling him tales of mankind’s many struggles to overcome adversity in the midst of war. When the soldier addressed the threat of Hitler and the evil Hitler had cast over the world, including the concentration camps, Rock snapped out of it. The soldier disappeared, and Rock discovered that the replacements survived. After a long string of Rock teaming up with Unit 13, a gang of kid resistance fighters, “Stop the War—I Want to Get off!” was clearly a different kind of Rock story.

Anti-Vietnam Demonstration (below) Anti-Vietnam demonstrator offers a flower to a miltary police. Arlington, Virginia, October 21, 1967. By S. Sgt. Albert Simpson. Courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration. (left) Kubert’s war-weary Rock, on the cover of Our Army at War (OAaW) #196 (Aug. 1968). Sgt. Rock TM & © DC Comics.

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It took a few issues for an increasing anti-war tone to settle into the series. By the early 1970s, Rock and Easy Company (Bulldozer, Ice Cream Soldier, Little Sure Shot, Four-Eyes, Jackie Johnson, Wildman, Zack, and Canary) were no longer a company of combat-happy Joes; they were growing war-weary, emotionally spent, at times scared, in some instances unstable. (The gripping farmhouse sequence in “The Firing Squad,” published in Our Army at War #248, Aug. 1972, may be the only time all of Easy Company showed confusion, fear, and panic while under siege.) Even Rock’s nightmares were becoming more intense, driven by fatigue and an uncertainty of the war ever ending. This in no way diminished the action—there were always bridges and hills to take, villages and towns to liberate, replacements to assimilate— but the action was now seeped in horror—the horrors of war— and thus the stakes more personal.

Captured Viet Cong (left) A youthful hardcore Viet Cong, heavily guarded, awaits interrogation following capture in the attacks on the capital city during the festive Tet holiday period, 1968. From the National Archives and Records Administration. (below) The My Lai massacre-inspired OAaW #233’s troubling tale,

“MAKE WAR NO MORE!” With the loosening of regulations in the Comics Code Authority in 1971, war stories could be told a little more realistically. Soldier and civilian casualties carried more emotional weight. The horrors and atrocities of war, though not graphically depicted, were allowed heavier implications. And the grim realities of the Vietnam War were no longer kept at a distance. Beginning brutally with “Head-Count” in Our Army at War #233 (June 1971), Kanigher and Kubert’s reaction to Vietnam was incorporated into an Easy Company story. The front cover of the New York Times Magazine for March 2, 1971 reproduced Kubert’s searing cover. “It was the teaser for an article about comic books becoming relevant,” Kanigher noted in the “Take Ten” letters column of Sgt. Rock #414 (Mar. 1978). The story centered on Johnny Doe, Easy’s new replacement, but there was nothing green about him. Doe was on a mission, to kill as many German soldiers as possible, not giving any— even those who had surrendered—the chance to kill him. He had no issue with taking point-on-probe routinely, cutting down Nazis dressed as civilians, or playing possum to draw them closer for an always-accurate kill. The men of Easy coddled him, but Rock felt Doe was a loose cannon on a personal crusade. Doe explained to Rock his troubled childhood, but Rock wasn’t fazed. In time, Easy entered the occupied town of Alimy. (“Alimy” is an anagram of “My Lai,” a Vietnamese hamlet where on March 16, 1968, American troops under the command of Lt. William J. Calley, Jr. gathered more than 300 men, women, and children together and shot them down, an atrocity of war that the US military unsuccessfully attempted to cover up.) Easy’s orders were to take the town. The outfit was fired on heavily. In the midst of the intense skirmish, Doe took to the rooftops, hoping to get the drop on the Germans from above. Scared cries from a second-floor window drew Rock’s attention. A woman screamed that the Germans were holding women and children and threatened to kill them all. Doe reached the building and prepared to drop a live grenade down its chimney. Rock called him off, making it clear they would not jeopardize civilians. Doe refused to back down, shouting to Rock that he was going to kill them all. The grenade exploded in Doe’s hand as Rock fired at the crazed soldier. Doe was killed. Easy took the town, with no civilian casualties. Was it the grenade that killed Doe, or Rock’s shot? Later, Army brass bestowed on Doe a medal for outstanding heroism. Rock and Easy attended the service of last respects. Rock addressed the reader: “Was Johnny Doe a murderer—or a hero? That’s one question each of you will have to decide for yourselves!” (Johnny Doe would be one of many memorable replacements to join up with Easy over the years. A book could be written on the many unique characters Kanigher created, including Heavy, the Dummy, Jigsaw, and Worry-Wart).

“Head-Count.” TM & © DC Comics.

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Bodies of Viet Cong (left) With fear and apprehension showing on their faces, and at the urging of South Vietnamese troops, women and children loaded down with salvaged possessions scurry past the bodies of three Viet Cong killed in the fighting. May 1968. From the National Archives and Records Administration. (below) Rock’s M.I.A. buddies become K.I.A. Cover to Sgt. Rock #418 (Oct. 1987). Art by Joe Kubert. TM & © DC Comics.

“THE SONS OF EASY” Sgt. Rock #418 (Oct. 1987) featured “The Sons of Easy,” by Kanigher and Andy Kubert, and brought the Vietnam War full circle in Rock’s history, with Rock dreaming of Vietnam, and Kanigher looking back at the sons of Easy participating in it. It was a history lesson that still hit close to home, allowing Kanigher to depict Easy’s final fate without it even occurring during World War II. (Kanigher always maintained that Rock and Easy would not survive WWII, and he claimed to have that story in his mind’s vault, but he never wrote that actual tale.) In a foxhole along battle lines, Rock slept and dreamed of a future where Easy had survived World War II. They married, served in Korea, raised children, and, in 1968, said goodbye to their sons and daughter who left by jet to serve one year in the Vietnam War. None would return alive. While on a mission to locate and retrieve three soldiers missing in action, the sons of Easy were systematically picked off by the Viet Cong until only Rock and Bulldozer remained, seated back to back in an open area, grenades drawn, as the Viet Cong prepared to emerge from the jungle and gun them down. The grenades detonated, and with a bright orange flash Rock awoke in the foxhole. Slowly, the dream receded from memory, and Rock returned to the World War at hand. Shortly after this story was published, in April of 1988, Sgt. Rock was canceled with #422. The character has remained an enduring legend in comics. As powerful and relevant as these Vietnam-inspired stories were and remain, none of them were created at the expense of quality entertainment. Kanigher was too good of a storyteller for that and Kubert too conscientious an editor, and they both gave their best to Sgt. Rock, as did the artists who served him. Rock would always speak volumes about the horrors of war in a single thought, whether expressed before the sudden, brutal death of a new replacement; when catching the shell-shocked gaze of civilians who had lost their families, homes, and towns; or at the sight of bodies, both Allied and the enemy, strewn across farm fields and low hills like thrashed, discarded animals. It was neither poetic nor inspiring, be it the World War the company fought in or during the controversial war that raged as their missions were being published. Rock and Easy found no glory in either one. JIM KINGMAN purchased his first comic book, DC’s World’s Finest Comics #211, on a family road trip in March of 1972, and has been reading and collecting comic books ever since (with no end in sight). He has been writing about comics since 1993, and currently edits and publishes Comic Effect, a small press fanzine emphasizing the fun in reading comics.

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Dan Johnson

conducted June 1, 2009

A lot of people have dreams of working in the comics industry. To make it in the business, you need a number of things going for you, including talent, determination, and a love for the art form. What really helps, though, is having someone who has already made a name for themselves in comics recognize the potential in you and offer their wisdom and guidance. Comics legend Joe Kubert knows that the latter is essential to artists who want to break into the highly competitive field of comics. Indeed, having the right people see the raw ability in a young artist and encourage them is just as important today as it was when Kubert himself was first breaking into the business at the dawn of the Golden Age of Comics. That was why he founded the Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art in Dover, New Jersey, in 1976. This institution has played a major role in shaping the world of comics since the early 1980s and has turned out some of the best artists working today in comics and other areas of the commercial arts. – Dan Johnson DAN JOHNSON: How did you come up with the idea for the school? JOE KUBERT: It was a thought I had for many years. Ours is a very unique area in the commercial-arts field and my experience has been that very few people outside of the field really know what the demands are in order to be able to get into it. I was lucky because I talked to different publishers while I was looking for jobs when I was a kid, and the guys I met were really terrific. The artists, the editors, and the publishers would talk to me and explain things to me. I would have an art director or an editor that would refer me to an artist who was doing work and these artists would then explain to me the tools they used and how the work had to be done and so on. Little by little, I was able to garner enough information to get into the business. If a person doesn’t, through his own efforts, find out exactly what the demands are, it is very difficult to get into the business. In the back of my head, [I thought,] “I was able to gather all this information. Wouldn’t it be great if there was a place, a school, where somebody who was really committed and wanting to do this work could get all this information fed to them?” Instead of taking the ten or 15 years it took me to absorb all the things that were necessary to

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STAN LEE’S KUBERT SCHOOL? by Michael Aushenker As told to me on August 30, 2007 by John Romita, Sr., Marvel Comics’ master artist and former art director, on the making of How to Draw the Marvel Way: “I can’t believe no one’s ever asked me about this before… [Stan Lee’s] original plan was a very far-reaching plan. John Buscema and I were going to make a series of instruction books. Stan was going to do all the text, and John and I were going to do the artwork. Stan would immediately start throwing stuff at me but I was doing covers, I was drawing [Amazing] Spider-Man, I was drawing Captain America, and I was teaching other artists, so I bowed out. Stan had the idea for these books because he wanted to open a school. I thought to myself, this is going to be great, these books are going to be great, they’re going to open up a school and I’m going to be left out.

(above) Mike Chen (student) and unidentified, early 1980s. (right) Timothy Truman (student) and Irwin Hasen (instructor), early 1980s. Special thanks to Pete Carlsson for providing these photos.

“Even Stan, with all of his great ambitions, didn’t have time. What you saw with that one book was the distillation of a magnificent plan that never got off the ground. He originally said he wanted ten volumes. John had done it in his spare time. “Stan was actually scouting a location for a building. That’s how far-fetched his plan was. But the three of us were working ’round the clock. Even Stan was writing, editing, traveling. [No one had the time to dedicate to this project.] It was a big disappointment for all of us. It was going to be like [Joe] Kubert’s School. “The thing is, it would’ve worked if John and I could take a six-month sabbatical. Even a four-month sabbatical. But I don’t think that Stan could justify that. He needed us working on what we were doing.”

KUBERT: I never reached out to anybody. People started coming to us because they started to recognize the caliber of people that were coming out of the school. For instance, today up at DC, they must have at least ten or 15 of our graduates working there in production. The person who is in charge of production up there is a graduate of the school. There are also a lot of people up at Marvel, too. It might be interesting to know that we have an advisory board here at the school that is composed of about a half a dozen people, including Paul Levitz, Joe Quesada, Victor Gorelick from Archie Comics, and several other notable people. The reason we have this advisory board is to get the best information that we can based on what is currently happening in the business. This way we can prepare the students to go out and get jobs. DC now has a $5,000 scholarship a year for students who attend this school. We have about five or six such scholarships, and none of this was solicited. I don't reach out to any companies; they have come looking to us for the people that they need.

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JOHNSON: I think that pretty much says it all. I have always believed that your school was one of the factors that has most impacted modern comics. I really don’t think the industry from the mid-1980s up until today would have been the same had the school not been in existence. KUBERT: I appreciate that. And as I have said before, I’m proud of everyone who has come through the school. We still keep in touch with many of them, and that is really a joy. DAN JOHNSON is a frequent BACK ISSUE contributor whose writing credits include Herc & Thor for Antarctic Press and occasional gags for the daily and Sunday Dennis the Menace comic strip.

Bill Schelly

For fans of cinema, there’s a book about the life of just about every movie star and director, often more than one. The superstars—people such as Walt Disney, Charlie Chaplin, Alfred Hitchcock, Humphrey Bogart, Joan Crawford, and John Ford— have been the subjects of weighty, exhaustively researched tomes. Several impressive biographical books on newspaper-strip cartoonists have appeared, but books that can be considered “true biographies” about the creators of comic books have been few. To explain, I consider a “true biography” (“true bio” for short) of a creative individual to be a book that attempts to tell the subject’s life story and describe his/her work with a degree of completeness that most agree doesn’t leave out anything essential. In order to accomplish this in any depth at all, the text of a “true bio” ought to be at least 45,000 to 50,000 words long, which is the standard length of a short novel. In addition, it ought to more or less objective; that is, be willing to discuss the bad with the good, rather than being merely an exercise in adulation. This is based on my belief that no one’s life and work, even the greatest of the great, is wonderful all the time, and a book that doesn’t acknowledge this isn’t capable of giving the reader a complete portrait. I should add before continuing that I know there are numerous books and fanzines with biographical essays, often as an introduction or adjunct to reproductions of the creator’s work. These are fine for what they are, and I’m not disparaging them in any way when I yearn for longer-form, full-bodied— “true”—biographies. What would be an early example of a “true bio” of a comic-book creator? Consider Frank Jacobs’ biography The Mad World of William M. Gaines (1972). As a comic-book editor and publisher, Bill Gaines collaborated with Al Feldstein to create story ideas for the great EC line of horror, science-fiction, suspense, and war comics of the early 1950s. It’s an entertaining book, containing quite a bit about Gaines’ life and work in comic books. However, it was created primarily as an entertainment for a general audience, and as such is quite superficial in terms of what comics aficionados would want from a biography of the man. Moreover, it’s primarily about Gaines in

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Mark Evanier and Dan Spiegle have a partnership that spans almost forty years. In their time together, the writer and artist have collaborated on such properties as Scooby-Doo, Tarzan, New Teen Titans, and their own creations, Crossfire and Hollywood Superstars. In the early 1980s, Evanier and Spiegle worked on a revival of DC Comics’ Blackhawk that took the aerial-ace title character and his high-flying team back to their roots, setting their adventures during World War II. While the book only lasted a couple of years (from issue #250, cover-dated Oct. 1982, to issue #273, cover-dated Nov. 1984), this run is fondly remember by fans as one of the best handlings of the characters ever. – Dan Johnson DAN JOHNSON: How did you two come to work on Blackhawk? MARK EVANIER: DC had this property that had not been published lately, and the last few times they had tried it, it had not sold too well. Then one day, there was suddenly interest in doing a Blackhawk movie. Steven Spielberg was allegedly interested in it and someone had even mentioned that Dan Aykroyd wanted to play the lead. The folks up at DC said, “We ought to preserve the brand name and get this comic book back out on the stands to remind people that it exists. Maybe that would make this movie happen.” The initial plan had been to put it out as a quarterly with a writer-artist team that DC had under contract— two guys they didn’t want to use on the books they cared about. A couple of people in the office, with Len Wein, I believe, as the ringleader, said, “This is too wonderful a property to do that to. Let’s do justice to Blackhawk.” For about a week, it was going to be written by Marv Wolfman and drawn by Dave Cockrum, but there was this feeling at the office that those two guys were too valuable to waste on this book because, by all their projections, it was not going to sell very well. Marv and Dave were convinced to apply their skills to other projects so Len, who’d been assigned to edit Blackhawk, went looking for another creative team. He called me, and asked, “Who would be great for drawing

Blackhawk and Domino Two and a half decades after his memorable Blackhawk stint ended, illustrator Dan Spiegle continues to revisit the Aerial Ace in beautiful watercolor paintings like this one. Courtesy of Dave Karlen. Visit Dave’s site—davekarlenoriginalart.com— for information about purchasing Spiegle Blackhawk (and other) originals. Blackhawk TM & © DC Comics.

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Dan Johnson

conducted April 22, 2009

Blackhawk?” I said, “Dan Spiegle,” Dan being my usual answer to almost any question about who’d be great for any assignment. Len thought this was a brilliant idea, so he called Dan and asked him if he was interested in doing this comic. Dan didn’t even know what Blackhawk was, but he said yes because he heard it had airplanes in it. DAN SPIEGLE: Blackhawk sounded interesting. I liked the World War II theme and it sounded like it would have a lot of action. EVANIER: Lucky for me, Dan asked, “Is there any chance Mark could write it?” Len called me back and said, “Would you like to write it?” I said, “Sure, I’ll write anything Dan draws.” While the book was never a huge seller, it did sell a little better than the company’s projections. Folks in the office also liked it, so for a while there, they let us do the book and DC just left us alone. They changed editors a few times and it didn’t make any difference. I wrote it and Dan drew it. Eventually, they made me editor and again, nothing changed. I just wrote it and sent it to Dan to draw like I always did. Then he sent it back to me and I proofed it and did lettering corrections and such. I always tried to do that on a comic even if I wasn’t the editor. JOHNSON: I was impressed with the various artists who did covers and backup stories on the book [see sidebar for listing of backup stories and artists]. EVANIER: We had Dave Cockrum doing some of the covers, and Howard Chaykin. JOHNSON: Chaykin did those covers at the same time his American Flagg! was a huge hit. How did you come to land him? EVANIER: Chaykin just went to Len one day and said, “I love Blackhawk. If you want me, I’d love to do something on it.” Howard was a huge fan of Dan’s. The first time I took Dan up to the DC offices, Chaykin had just drawn the one backup story he did. I passed Howard in the hallway and I yelled down the hallway, “Hey, Howie! Great job on Blackhawk!” He yelled back, “Hey, Mark! Great script!” I was standing next to Dan, who Howard had never met, and I yelled, “Howie, this is Dan Spiegle!” Chaykin sprinted the length of the hallway to pounce on Dan and gush and tell him how much he loved his artwork. JOHNSON: That same issue also had a backup story by Alex Toth. EVANIER: I was pretty close to Alex at the time. Our friendship went away later, but at the time I was going by to visit him every few weeks. Every time, he’d ask, “Do you have any Spiegle pages with you?” I usually had the original artwork for the latest issue of Blackhawk with me so I’d bring the pages in and Alex would just study them over and over. Alex regarded Dan as a contemporary, not just in age, but also as one who’d worked for a lot of the same companies on the same kind of material, and who had much the same goals. He admired Dan’s work and one day he just asked if he could be part of the book and do one. Dan was our secret weapon. Good artists wanted to be in the same comic. A friend of mine, Ken Steacy, came up to me in San Diego one year and said, “I want to do a Blackhawk story. Dan was telling me about how he had painted insignias on airplanes during the war. Let’s do a story about that.” Well, I know a good idea when I hear it. So I wrote a story, and I don’t think Dan saw it until it was printed, but he was in it, and Ken stuck himself and me in the story as other characters. SPIEGLE: I have the originals of that particular story on the wall. The Navy didn’t allow naked ladies on their planes. We could paint the squadron insignias, which might be like a flying bomb or something like that. I did the squadron insignias for all the squadrons

Beginnings: Cartoon comics scripts for Disney and Gold Key, and an apprenticeship under Jack Kirby (circa 1969–1970)

Milestones: Comics: Kirby’s Fourth World titles (as an assistant) / Welcome Back, Kotter / Groo the Wanderer / Blackhawk / DNAgents / Crossfire / Tarzan / Hollywood Superstars / The Mighty Magnor / Fanboy Animation and Live-Action TV: Welcome Back, Kotter / Garfield and Friends / Plastic Man / Thundarr the Barbarian / Superman / Richie Rich / Dungeons & Dragons / That’s Incredible!

Current Projects: POV Online / more Groo / a new Garfield cartoon series

Cyberspace: www.povonline.com

Mark evanier

Beginnings: Hopalong Cassidy comic strip (1949)

Milestones: Maverick / Space Family Robinson / Magnus: Robot Fighter / Tarzan / Brothers of the Spear / Korak, Son of Tarzan / Scooby-Doo / The Unknown Solider / “Nemesis” (backup in DC’s The Brave and the Bold) / Blackhawk / Crossfire / Hollywood Superstars / Indiana Jones: Thunder in the Orient / Indiana Jones and the Spear of Destiny / Terry and the Pirates comic strip

Works in Progress: Selling original artwork and commissions

Cyberspace: www.davekarlenoriginalart.com

Dan Spiegle

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WWII Guest Stars (left) Winston Churchill and (right) Adolf Hitler appearances added realism to the aborted project. Blackhawk miniseries #2, page 22, and #3, page 21, respectively, by Infantino and Jensen. Courtesy of Mike Dunne. TM & © DC Comics.

who do what they set out to do—end the war in the most direct manner possible: kill Hitler and crush Third Reich morale. Twelve issues. End of story. Comic books’ first year-long graphic epic.” DuBay left Warren in 1983 and approached DC Comics for work. Dick Giordano offered him Thriller and Blackhawk. When he got Blackhawk, DuBay naturally thought of the story that Eisner had told him. “Will’s story stayed with me for years,” says DuBay. “I jumped on his idea. I called him, asked permission to use and embellish [his story], and received his blessing. He also said he was going to be looking over my shoulder every step of the way. And, as if that wasn’t sufficiently intimidating, he told me that I had to make sure that the artists we chose were as passionate about the project as I. In DC’s entire stable of stars, there was only one, I knew, who would give me career-best work while honoring, but not being intimidated by, the characters’ creator. That was Carmine Infantino.” Not too long after going to DC, DuBay worked on the short-lived Red Circle Comics line from Archie Comics. There he worked with Infantino for the first time on a revival of the Comet. The two men clicked immediately. “Carmine, as passionate and respectful of classic comic characters as I, jumped at the chance to work on the Blackhawk project,” says DuBay. “And, as it progressed, you could see that passion in every panel. More, Dennis Jensen captured that flavor with flair in his inks.”

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Infantino was more than happy to sign on for Blackhawk with DuBay. “Bill was the best editor I ever worked with,” says Infantino. “Honest to God, he was my favorite, and he’s a genius as a writer.” So what was it that scuttled the Blackhawk miniseries? Believe it or not, it was the climax that cut the project short after three issues had been completed. “The project wasn’t assigned an editor until the fourth issue. Dick Giordano said that Carmine and I ‘intimidated his editors,’” says DuBay. “He was finally able to find an editor, however, who ‘refused to be intimidated.’ That was Karen Berger. Not only wasn’t she intimidated, but she seemed to have no qualms about voicing her dislike for the story’s ending. I remember her saying that she couldn’t publish the story because ‘everyone knows Hitler didn’t die that way.’ I argued that it was just a comic book, wherein all things are possible. I made a case for the fact that it was Will Eisner’s idea— something he’d originally wanted to do. And I argued that one of Hitler’s many well known doubles could have stepped in and finished the war out in his stead. All beseeching fell on deaf ears, however, and the project was shelved.” “What’s interesting about that is that DC has let so much [expletive material] go through and they wouldn’t let [the killing of Hitler] go through,” says Infantino about the terminated project. “That doesn’t make sense. It’s crazy.”

John Wells

As Bob Rozakis recalls, Denny O’Neil used to joke that there was a sub-imprint called “DC-Misses-the-Boat Comics.” Born in an editorial meeting when DC launched the Richard Dragon, Kung Fu Fighter and Karate Kid titles long after the martial-arts craze had peaked, the phrase took on a life of its own and was invoked many times in the years ahead. Case in point: the Flash TV Special comic that wasn’t published until the series it was based on had been canceled.

JENETTE KAHN TUNES IN When she arrived at DC in early 1976, new publisher Jenette Kahn quickly began to wonder why there was a Super Friends cartoon but no comic book. Or why Shazam!, despite a live-action Saturday morning series of its own, had seen its sales drop to a degree that it was reduced to a quarterly reprint comic. In short order, the groundwork was laid for a line of “DC TV Comics” that included Welcome Back, Kotter; Isis; the Super Friends comic that Kahn had wondered about; and a revamped Shazam! title that creatively mirrored the TV series continuity. And then Kahn turned her attention to Wonder Woman. Quite unexpectedly, the Amazon Princess created by William Moulton Marston in 1941 had become a phenomenon again, thanks in large part to one of the greatest bits of casting in the history of jenette kahn comics-based movies. As Wonder Woman and her bespectacled alter ego Diana Prince, Lynda Carter stood virtually alone amidst a troupe of comedic actors in ABC’s The New Original Wonder Woman TV movie in playing things straight.

Blast From the Past Echoing the success of TV’s World War II-based Wonder Woman series, DC Comics followed suit by having its WW title star its Earth-Two version of the heroine in new Nazi-busting adventures. Cover to Wonder Woman #229 (Mar. 1977) by José Luis García-López and Vince Colletta. TM & © DC Comics.

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Combat Kelly and the Deadly Dozen … more like Combat Kelly and the Deadly Nine. As in “nine issues.” Call it a comic-book casualty of war, but the short-lived Marvel Comics Group World War II feature known as Combat Kelly and the Deadly Dozen (June 1972–Sept. 1973) fought a losing battle for readers before ever reaching the magic number in its title. Combat Kelly may have died a quiet death, and creatively, this series may have been no path of glory for veteran World War II comics writer Gary Friedrich, who helmed Kelly’s entire run with Dick Ayers providing the pencils. And yet, the book is not without its charms. One thing’s for sure: This is one comic book that went out with all guns blazing.

COMICS GO TO WAR By the end of the 1960s, the trend of World War II comics—popular since, oh, World War II?—was finally winding down. Sgt. Fury had traded in his dog tags for secret-agent status and entered the espionage game as a S.H.I.E.L.D. commandant. Revived World War II relic Captain America went urban warrior, taking on Manhattan-based madmen. Over at DC, a few old chestnuts—Sgt. Rock, the Unknown Soldier—lingered into another decade, while Marvel outfitted the Second World War in superhero drag with The Invaders. But by the 1970s, these titles were the exceptions, not the norm. Bridging the chasm in 1972 as if it were the River Kwai was Combat Kelly and the Deadly Dozen. Those nine issues may not have warranted an article were it not for the fact that this otherwise generic-looking combat series took a few daring detours in its brief existence. Among those conceits: some colorful, well-developed characters; crude-looking visuals backboned by structurally solid storytelling; and, most memorably, a brazen, explosive series-ending finale presenting some unvarnished, Comics Code-baiting Nazi brutality that left one character crippled for life, and all of Kelly’s men dead by the end of the last issue.

Stirrin’ Up the Stalag Kelly’s heroes bust free from a concentration camp in this original cover art to Combat Kelly and the Deadly Dozen #2 (Aug. 1972), by the legendary John Severin. Courtesy of Heritage Comics Auctions (www.ha.com). © 2009 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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Michael Aushenker

Combat Kelly’s Talented Two Gary Friedrich (left) and Dick Ayers at the New York Comic-Con in Manhattan, April 20, 2008. Photos courtesy of Nightscream. SILENT BUT DEADLY Now, if you’re thinking right now that Combat Kelly is still not ringing a bell, you are not alone, chief. The series barely registered even with Kelly’s very creative team, headed by the series’ editorial commando Roy Thomas. “I just don’t recall much about that series, having left it to Gary [Friedrich],” Thomas tells BACK ISSUE. “Gary was probably experimenting somewhat to see how far he could go in certain areas.” BACK ISSUE pressed Thomas if Combat Kelly was a warm-up for his writing chores a few years later on another Marvel comic, The Invaders, and his current World War II-drenched superhero endeavor, Anthem (Heroic Publishing). “Can’t say more than that it was a warm-up ... unintended,” responds Thomas. “I was always interested in WWII, but not necessarily writing about it. In fact, when a big Pearl Harbor movie, Tora! Tora! Tora!, opened in the late ’60s, I never got around to walking the block or two to see it before it went off ... but I got more interested in writing a WWII superhero comic as time went on.” Dick Ayers, now 84 with a lengthy résumé behind him that includes myriad war comics, tells BACK ISSUE that he only faintly remembers working on the book. Combat Kelly was not the first military series on which Friedrich and Ayers collaborated. Friedrich relieved his old Missouri pal (and future Invaders creator/scribe) Thomas from writing duty on Sgt. Fury and the Howling Commandos, as Thomas was graduated to editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics following Stan Lee. Friedrich and the art team of Ayers and John Severin produced a World War II series for the Vietnam era, combining militaristic camaraderie and gung-ho humor with a melancholy sense of war as a terrible last resort. Under Friedrich, the series won the Alley Award for “Best War Title” in 1967–1968. Following in the combat-boot prints of Sgt. Fury (not to mention the obvious tip o’ the hat to the 1967 Robert Aldrich film The Dirty Dozen), Combat Kelly milked that award-winning formula, delivering a multiethnic squadron that started at the top with the title Irish-American and worked its way down the chain of command—as did Sgt. Fury’s Howlers, which featured such colorful characters as Private Dino Manelli (inspired by Italian-American crooner Dean Martin), Private Isadore “Izzy” Cohen (the first demonstrably Jewish-American comic-book hero), token Brit Private Percival “Pinky” Pinkerton, and Nazi defector Private Eric Koenig. In Combat Kelly #1, both Manelli and Pinkerton transferred from the Howlers to the Deadly Dozen to help transition readers to the new series. And the Howlers’ “Dum Dum” Dugan ran the show, ticking off the Deadly Dozen roster, until Kelly is brought in to replace him as squadron leader. The formula couldn’t have been more all-American: What better symbol of our country’s diversity and opportunity than portraying men of different ethnicities coming together as one to defeat a common enemy.

The Dirty Deadly Dozen Debut John Severin’s cover to Combat Kelly and the Deadly Dozen #1 (June 1972) promised explosive action, which the series’ writer/artist team of Gary Friedrich and Dick Ayers ably delivered. © 2009 Marvel Characters, Inc.

ROLL CALL! Combat Kelly and the Deadly Dozen began its march to a different war drum with the June 1972 cover-dated issue titled “Stop the Luftwaffe … Win the War!” To put things in context, it was released at the same time Luke Cage, Hero for Hire #1 smashed through brick-and-mortar onto the Marvel scene. Kelly’s creative troops: Friedrich wrote it, Ayers penciled it, and Jim Mooney inked it. In the inaugural issue, a US military captain enlists Sgt. Fury’s howling commando “Dum Dum” Dugan to lead a special battalion to crush a Nazi Luftwaffe jet that will win the war for the Germans. Part and parcel with that objective is a mission to abduct the über-plane’s inventor. Removed from leading the mission, Dugan passes the baton to Michael Lee Kelly, a 6' 1" Bostonian heavyweight boxer doing life in a government prison for killing a man with his bare hands. This fightin’ Irish-American has one chance of redemption and freedom—lead the Deadly Dozen on this suicide mission and help America win the war. No sweat, right?

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They called him “the Immortal Man of War…” From the shores of Iwo Jima to the sewers of Berlin to the beaches of Normandy, this hero— first identified with master cartoonist Joe Kubert— fought the Axis in some of the most harrowing, hair-raising World War II adventures that DC Comics has ever published … the most spectacular of which saw him personally take down Adolf Hitler deep within Der Fuhrer’s bunker. Now, if you’re thinking of Sgt. Rock, guess again, goldbricker! The Unknown Soldier remains an underrated run— even by those who dig Kubert’s beautifully scratchy, shadowy art. Even by creator Kubert himself. There are many interviews scattered like stardust across the Internet in which Kubert discusses Sgt. Rock, Enemy Ace, and Hawkman, but Unknown Soldier talk remains scarce… …until now.

Michael Aushenker

ICONIC AND IRONIC So, who is the Unknown Soldier? Well, we know who the Unknown Soldier isn’t: Captain America. Sgt. Fury. Capt. Savage. Combat Kelly—those were the competition’s World War II characters (many issues of which were drawn by Unknown Soldier artist Dick Ayers). He wasn’t Sgt. Rock, the only other DC World War II hero to surpass the Soldier’s comic-book lifespan. The erstwhile Steve Rogers notwithstanding, none of those WWII books outlasted the Unknown Soldier, star of a solid 1970–1982 run. Contrary to impressions, this character did not debut during the Second World War’s Golden Age but at the dawn of comics’ Bronze Age, first appearing in Star Spangled War Stories #151 (June–July 1970). The Unknown Soldier’s power lies in the character as a compelling visual; the character is the link between the Mummy and the Invisible Man, Sam Raimi’s Darkman, and 100 Bullets. The simplicity of this iconic anti-hero archtype, his face wrapped in bandages, instantly conveys horror, tragedy, mystery. Hero and anti-hero, the Soldier falls in line with a tradition of lean, mean, sleekly designed heroes where their only revelation is all in the eyes—the Human Fly, Union Jack. He dons a hat, trench coat, and shades to conceal himself … and that’s when he’s not in disguise! For in each heart-stopping issue, the Soldier dons at least one latex mask to impersonate and infiltrate Axis circles … and he throws down stealth moves, not always government-issue, to accomplish his mission. In essence, this is “Darkman meets Combat!” or “the Invisible Man goes to war.” Unlike the H. G. Wells character, he is not evil … yet like the scientist Griffin, he is not above killing. This comic book’s concept was simple: the exploits of Arlington National Cemetery’s Unknown Soldier incarnate; the embodiment of every anonymous US soldier who died fighting for this country and its ideals of justice and freedom, from the Revolutionary War through World War II. In 2002, three months before the first Spider-Man movie hit theaters with its unprecedented nine-digit box-office tally, I had the good fortune to interview director Raimi for a local L.A. periodical. Here’s an excerpt from the my article: 40 • BACK ISSUE • Comics Go to War Issue

Face Off The Unknown Soldier shows the true face of war in this detail from the Joe Kubert cover art to Star Spangled War Stories #168 (Mar. 1973), with its original word balloons supplanted by our article’s subtitle. TM & © DC Comics.

The Amazing Spider-Man was Raimi’s favorite title, but he also loved The Shadow. In the 1980s, Raimi lobbied to direct the movie version … to no avail. “When Universal didn’t want me for the job, I said, ‘Well, damn it, I’m going to write my own ‘Shadow,’” recalled Raimi, who conceived his Gothic antihero Darkman in the spirit of the venerable pulp character. I wonder now whether or not Unknown Soldier also factored into Raimi’s Liam Neeson-starring movie, as Darkman—with his identical Gothic gauze garb and constant assumptions of new identities (instead of latex guises, he’s a scientist affixing masks of temporary genetic material onto his disfigured face)—was, in essence, an urban Unknown Soldier.

YOU SAY YOU WANT AN EVOLUTION… When the Unknown Soldier started out in Star Spangled War Stories (SSWS) #151, the nascent concept featured the character as more of the embodiment of an idea rather than a specific person. A typical issue would end with the mysterioso Soldier lost in thought, staring out pensively before the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington. Two issues of SSWS, both drawn by Kubert, proved to be crucial in the evolution of the series. “I’ll Never Die!” (SSWS #154) told the origin of the Unknown Soldier; “Invasion Game” (#155), written by Bob Haney, introduced a significant supporting character to the Soldier mythos: “the most famous French Resistance leader alive,” black jazz player Chat Noir. As the series progresses, the Unknown Soldier evolves from a symbolic character—he could be anyone of us—to a specific character: a master of disguises ready to impersonate and infiltrate at a moment’s notice when London calls. It’s not until #183 (Jan.–Feb. 1975) where we finally see the shadowy Soldier’s horrific, disfigured, skull face, and rather than detract, it only adds new flavor to the feature, as new writer David Michelinie

maximizes the conceit of the unraveled Unknown Soldier to great effect; and Gerry Talaoc becomes the first artist to “expose” him after many issues of the Soldier unmasking in shadows or covering his face with his hands. So here’s the million-dollar Charlie Rose question: The Unknown Soldier:“The Man No One Knows … Yet Is Known By Everyone!” How did he come … to be? “It was during the time I was editing a bunch of war books,” Joe Kubert tells BACK ISSUE. “The Unknown Soldier is a memorial that houses the body of one of the soldiers whose history was unknown. I thought it was a good excuse to get [elements of] mystery, horror, and sci-fi, which we tried to do with all the war books.” Kubert created the Unknown Soldier during his editorial tenure at DC Comics from 1967–1976—a stint during which Kubert launched titles based on such Edgar Rice Burroughs properties Tarzan of the Apes and Korak, Son of Tarzan; and supervised such series as Weird Worlds and, of course, Our Army at War featuring Sgt. Rock. DC veteran scribe Robert Kanigher was key to the Unknown Soldier’s early genesis. “Bob was always a pleasure to work with,” remembers Kubert. “He was very enthusiastic. He had a lot of terrific ideas. Bob had for a long time been the editor on all of the war books. Eventually Bob took ill and couldn’t finish his chores. [Then-DC editorial director] Carmine Infantino, we’ve known each other for years. He felt I would be the right one to handle it. I was the editor, Bob was the writer ... it’s not a situation that a lot of people could take to. Bob was professional enough to know what the situation was.” Visual experimentation on the series was common. One of the visual trademarks—especially in Jack Sparling runs written by Archie Goodwin and Frank Robbins— was a splash page that incorporated photographic elements. SSWS #155, “Invasion Game” by Bob Haney and Kubert, featured a French Resistance montage— beautifully rendered grease pencil on Coquille board— as the center frame, an ink drawing of the Soldier getting his assignment from his superior in Washington, D.C., 1944. “We started out by trying to give as much credibility as possible by cutting out photographs to give an additional credibility to the character,” Kubert says. “I still do. I’ll take the back of a drawing pad or corrugated cardboard and draw on that … something that looks a little different than what’s been done before.” Comics Go to War Issue

Private Eyes The Invisible Man (above) and Darkman (left), tragic “cousins” of the Unknown Soldier. © Universal Pictures.

TM & © DC Comics.

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Writer/artist George Pratt’s Enemy Ace: War Idyll was released by DC Comics in 1990 to great critical acclaim. While the book’s painted artwork set new standards for graphic novels, it is the story’s connection made between Hans von Hammer, Germany’s “Enemy Ace” of World War I, and an American reporter who has recently done a tour in Vietnam that make this book a powerful read. In the course of the story, the two find they aren’t as different as they might think. Both know what it is like to fight in a war and about the horrors a solider encounters in conflict. More importantly, both men know the greatest challenge a man faces because of war: making it out alive when so many others do not, and learning to live with being a survivor. – Dan Johnson DAN JOHNSON: George, please tell the readers how Enemy Ace: War Idyll came about. GEORGE PRATT: As a kid, I was a huge war comics fan. The reason I was a DC guy was because, for one, they had Batman, but second, they had Sgt. Rock and all the war comics. [I liked the] Joe Kubert and Russ Heath material and I was into their interpretation of Sgt. Rock, and I was a big fan of [Robert] Kanigher’s writing as well. After graduation, I was casting about trying to find illustration work and at that time I was helping Jon J Muth on Moonshadow. He would call when he was behind the eight ball and say, “Hey, I’m really late. You want to try to help me finish this issue?” He would give me a train ticket to upstate New York and I would go up to his place and over the weekend we would just crank out one of those issues of Moonshadow in watercolor. JOHNSON: So you got some hands-on training there… PRATT: That really convinced me that I could do the amount of work needed to actually put out a graphic novel. One of the first jobs that I got out of school was working for Eagle, which was Harris Publications’ kind of Solider of Fortune-type magazine. I had gone in trying to get work at Creepy and Eerie, which they had just brought back. Tony Dispoto was heading that up at the time. He wasn’t interested in my comics work, but I had done a painting of an American solider in Vietnam and he liked that a lot. The reason I had done that painting was because I wanted to understand for myself why that war had happened. From 1960 until I was 14 or 15 years old, that war was going on and I never really understood the cause or the whys or the wherefores [of it]. I started reading a lot of books about the war and I got into the visual aspects of it. Tony said, “We don’t have any comics work, but if you like, I can show this to the editor over at Eagle and maybe you can do some war stuff.” So, he showed it to the editor of Eagle, Jim Morris, [who hired me]. The magazine only came out every other month, but he gave me enough work for each month. I kind of became his pet artist. He would give me a painting to do, plus three or four panels that would go with an article. The more I did of that, the more I wanted to try and say something of my own. One day, Morris said, “You should really talk to some of these guys and get their perspectives.” Jim himself was a three-tour Green Beret and wrote a book about it called War Diary, as well as some

Bringing Enemy Ace to Life George Pratt used an aged man named Vincent as the model for his interpretation of WWI flying ace Hans von Hammer. Enemy Ace TM & © DC Comics.

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Dan Johnson

conducted April 23, 2009

science-fiction novels. I see Jim every once in a while on the History Channel. He is one of the guys they call upon as a specialist. He said, “Why don’t you come down to the office and you can use the company phone and I can give you some names and phone numbers of these guys.” JOHNSON: So you started speaking with veterans? PRATT: I did that one day. I made a few phone calls to these people Jim knew and they started telling me what they felt and what they thought about their own experiences in Vietnam. That convinced me more than ever that I really wanted to try and put something together of my own, but I really didn’t know how to approach it. I had read all of the Kanigher and Kubert and Heath and Ric Estrada material, but I didn’t want to do anything that would be construed as a glorification of war. I wanted to try and tackle the war stuff and make it as real as I could. I was digging through my old comics and I came across one of my old “Enemy Ace” books [in DC’s Star Spangled War Stories] and I thought this could be a great counterpoint to the Vietnam War. I had been reading about the guys who had been tunnel rats and thought Enemy Ace would be a nice contrast because here was this guy who was in the air and in the open and these other guys were confined in the tunnels. The more I read on the two wars, the more I saw there were a lot of similarities. In World War I, while there was this great, obvious support for that war, but there were a lot of people who were not behind it. Some of them paid a really heavy price and were executed and others were put in jail for being conscientious objectors. The interesting thing was that when I started reading more about World War I, Vietnam almost took a back seat because the stories I was reading came from a lot of firsthand memoirs, and they were so powerful, and in some ways so understated, that my mind just took off. There was this underlying sense of the writers not being able to grasp the whole thing and not really understanding it, but still being so moved and changed by it. The First World War was always dogging my steps as a kid in a weird way and I never thought about it until I started reading all of this stuff. Looking back, I can see that there was this thread through my life. My grandfather was in World War I, and then my high school English teacher was the model who posed for the Howard Chandler Christy poster of the woman dressed as a sailor with the caption, “Gee!! I wish I was a man, I’d join the Navy!!” The first piano piece I ever learned as a kid was a World War I song, “The Caissons Go Rolling Along.” It was weird, like [these connections with World War I] were always there, but I never really noticed it. The first real artist I ever met, Phyllis Lee, is convinced that I died in the trenches or something like that and I’m slowly starting to remember this past life. JOHNSON: So this made Enemy Ace right up your alley. PRATT: With Enemy Ace, I figured this was a character with whom I could really take my idea and run with, if DC would ever allow it since it seemed that professionals were mostly the fans of that comic. So, I played around with this idea for a number of years and never really believed that DC would allow me to do this thing. It just became this fun little thing for myself. I would pull it out and write on it and sketch on it. I kept two big sketchbooks where I was trying to learn how to draw the First World War and I had been building up a library of World War I reference material. I was living in New York at the time and Scott Hampton would come up and hang out for weeks at a time. One time while he was up he said, “I’m going to be over at Rick Bryant’s in the city. Bring all that Ace stuff

Beginnings: Assisting Jon J Muth on Moonshadow (Marvel, 1987)

Milestones: Enemy Ace: War Idyll / Sgt. Rock Special / Batman: Harvest Breed / Wolverine: Netsuke (2003 Eisner Award winner)/ covers and pinups for numerous series including Akira, Animal Man, Batman, Detective Comics, Marvel Comics Presents, and The Spectre / paintings exhibited in galleries in New York and Houston

Works in Progress: Teaching art students / “Paroles de Poilu” for a French album

Cyberspace: www.georgepratt.com

George Pratt

Trial and Error Page layouts from War Idyll didn’t come easy. “I would do anywhere from five to 10 different versions [of each page] trying to zero in on the best way to tell the story,” says Pratt. Enemy Ace TM & © DC Comics.

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The Man Behind Ace (left) One of George Pratt’s many sketches of Vincent, the visual inspiration for the older von Hammer. Says the artist, “I really enjoyed drawing him so I looked for any excuse to do more of them.” (right) Vincent, as photographed by Pratt. Very special thanks to George Pratt for providing the rare art and photographs for this interview. Enemy Ace TM & © DC Comics.

gestures to communicate with you. We were up in the Catskill Mountains and I had my camera with me [to get some firsthand reference photos]. Herb took off and flew through the mountains and did some power dives and things like that to give me a sense of what flying in a plane like that was really like. It was incredible. Herb said he had a buddy who also had an airplane and that if he was there we could have done some mock dogfights. JOHNSON: Sounds like you snagged some great reference material from that experience. Speaking of which, who were some of the models you used for this project? PRATT: John Van Fleet posed for the young Enemy Ace and Mark Chiarello was the reporter. [When you’re an artist,] all your friends get pulled into service. I don’t think Kent Williams was in there, but he did three pages of sequential painted work on the book based on my layouts and references. The old man who posed for old Ace, I think he died before the book even came out. I was in [Brooklyn’s] Park Slope at the time, and originally I went to several nursing homes in Brooklyn trying to find an interesting, cool old man to play this part. I actually did find someone I was keen on using in my neighborhood, and he was really into it and he liked the idea. It turned out he had been a soldier in World War II and he started to tell me his experiences during the war. When I called back later to get him to do this, the nurse I spoke to said, “He can’t do this. He’s having flashbacks because you brought up all this stuff.” So, I couldn’t use him. [In my neighborhood,] there was this little old man who, whenever I would walk down to a restaurant or go to the bank, was off to the side selling odd bits of junk. I hit him up one day and I said, “Man, I would love for you to pose for this character,” and I explained it to him. He was just this shy, little old guy and he was like, “No, I don’t think so.” But every time I would see him, he would ask, “Did you find anybody?” And I would tell him, “Nope, I’m waiting for you.” Finally he agreed. It was interesting because he was this shy, unassuming guy and yet in the film, when I shot the reference photos, he just assumed this other stature. He just seemed stronger and became this more robust man. It was nothing like what he was in real life. JOHNSON: Enemy Ace: War Idyll was a project that resonated with readers. What kind of feedback have you gotten regarding the book since it was first published? PRATT: The feedback has always been positive and supportive. I got a lot of letters from vets from various wars, but especially the Second World War and Vietnam.

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The book came out right at the start of the first Gulf War and I had a couple of people write me who were helping to design some of the weapons that were being used, like the smart bombs. One wrote, “I wish I could bring in enough copies to hand out to everyone who works here because we get so caught up in building our little toys, we forget what kind of an impact these weapons are going to have on people, and not just the victims, but the people who are using these weapons.” One young guy, and I can’t recall if he was on a battleship or a destroyer, but he was on a ship where a gun turret blew up and killed everybody in it. This guy wrote me that he was supposed to be in that turret, but he had something else he needed to do, so he wasn’t there. All his friends were killed. He told me that the book helped him deal with the grief and the guilt that he felt being the one who survived. JOHNSON: My dad fought in World War II and he was from that generation where men never discussed their feelings, no matter what kind of angst they might be carrying. You can’t go through something where you are fighting for your life and the lives of your friends around you and come out of it the same person you were when you came in. I think a book like yours helps to show survivors that they aren’t alone in dealing with the emotions that come from surviving a war. PRATT: When I started working on Enemy Ace, the first thing I did was ask if I could get Joe Kubert’s phone number. He was one of the gods and I wanted to show him what I was doing and get his blessing for the project and also to pick his brain about his history in comics. One of the things he told me was, “You’re going to run the risk of catching a lot of sh*t for this because you’re not a solider. You’re trying to tell people what a solider feels and thinks, so just be aware and do your homework.” And I did. I read so much and spoke to so many people. It was gratifying to hear from soldiers and they felt like I had tapped into what they were feeling and I had presented it in a faithful way and it wasn’t done in a talking down to or a condescending way, but presented the reality of war. JOHNSON: Tell us about the honor that was bestowed upon the book at West Point. PRATT: At one time it was on their required reading list. I always wondered about that because the book is anti-war, although it isn’t anti-solider. That was really wild. I had a friend who was buddies with one of the professors at West Point, and he asked if he had ever heard of my book. The professor told him about it being on the required reading list. That was pretty cool.

Ian Millsted

In the summer of 1975, Marvel Comics put out two new Giant-Size titles featuring superhero teams. Both were new variations of older series, but while Giant-Size X-Men went on to an ongoing series that eventually topped the sales charts and spun off into multiple titles and media formats, Giant-Size Invaders, despite featuring established characters, launched a title that ran only 41 issues before being canceled. However, the series is still fondly remembered by many. In the letters page—or, more accurately, text page— of that Giant-Size issue, Roy Thomas wrote that he had been waiting thirty years to do the title: “Stan [Lee] invited me to come up with a new title or two I’d like to start, write and edit. I thought about it overnight— and that’s all it took. The idea just fell into place, as if it had been there all along just waiting for me to stumble over it. I’d do the kind of superhero group I’d always wanted to find in those old wartime comics, but rarely did—and I’d do it with (inevitably, unavoidably) a 1970s perspective.”

(NOT SO) STRANGE INVADERS Giant-Size Invaders #1 (June 1975) was written by Roy Thomas with art by the team of Frank Robbins and Vince Colletta, although the cover was inked by John Romita, Sr., over Robbins. The story, naturally, tells how the team of Captain America and Bucky, the Sub-Mariner, and the Human Torch and Toro comes together in December 1941 to fight against the Axis enemy, in the form of new villain Master Man. Frank Robbins’ art, described by Roy Thomas as “slightly offbeat,” and the introductory nature of the script give a reading experience closer in tone to the Captain America stories set in World War II featured in Tales of Suspense in the 1960s than the 1970s’ perspective mentioned above. Two other aspects of the Giant-Size issue which would return in the ongoing series that followed were the use of Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill in cameos and the appearance of reprints from the Golden Age. In this case, the latter is in the form of a “Sub-Mariner” story by Bill Everett.

Axis Smashers Captain America, Sub-Mariner, and the original Human Torch show the Nazis who’s boss on Jazzy Johnny Romita’s original cover artwork to The Invaders #1 (Aug. 1975). Courtesy of Heritage Comics Auctions (www.ha.com). © 2009 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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Sub-Mariner vs. Iron Cross Namor hammers his enemy as teammates Cap, Torch, and the Whizzer symbolically watch. Original cover art to Invaders #36 (Jan. 1979) by Alan Kupperberg and Joe Sinnott. (Kupperberg fans, be sure to join us in two issues as Alan is interviewed in BACK ISSUE #39!) © 2009 Marvel Characters, Inc.

WINNERS AND LOSERS Roy Thomas has frequently stated his love for the All Winners Comics series that teamed up Captain America, the Human Torch, Sub-Mariner, the Whizzer, and Miss America, and the last seven issues of The Invaders mostly used that lineup. The action also returned to the US home front. For Invaders #35 (Dec. 1978), Kupperberg was joined by Don Heck and Rick Hoberg (who lived in California and was a good friend of Don Glut) on art while Roy Thomas returned as writer. The sections of the story drawn by Heck were actually another Liberty Legion feature, probably intended for Marvel Premiere, but used here as the first part of a three-part story featuring new villain Iron Cross. Invaders #36 (Jan. 1979) was Roy Thomas’ last as writer, as his Hollywood career started taking up more time. Invaders #37 (Feb. 1979) rounded off the Liberty Legion/Iron Cross story and saw the return of Don Glut, who was to write the rest of the series. Kupperberg continued as artist, along with Rick Hoberg and inker Chic Stone. On the final page, Glut introduced the villainess who would also continue through the rest of the run—Lady Lotus. The respective artists (obviously) enjoyed drawing Lady Lotus and, says Glut, “I enjoyed writing her. She was a takeoff on the Dragon Lady-type characters so popular in old World War II-type stories. Also, if you read between the lines, you’ll discover that she was a lesbian. Oops! Now the secret’s out … as is Lady Lotus.”

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Over the course of the five-part final story, the clearly non-exclusive Lady Lotus seemed to take a shine to both Golden Girl and the Human Torch. “Another clue is when she comes on to the Torch,” says Glut. “He protests that he’s not really human, or something like that, and she says she’s not really that particular about whom she loves. In other words, she’s not only into both guys and chicks, but androids also. We won’t take that any further.” The Invaders art team of Kupperberg and Stone continued, although there was also art from Don Heck in #38 (Mar. 1979). In this story, a team of returning villains is gradually assembled by Lady Lotus with U-Man, Baron Blood, Master Man, and Warrior Woman all back for a grand final battle before the series completes. Invaders #39 (Apr. 1979) also sees the return of Union Jack and Spitfire. Invaders #40 (May 1979) carried the news of the series’ cancellation. “Not quite enough Marvelites … have shared our fondness for the derring-do and superheroic exploits of World War Two,” wrote editor Roy Thomas on the letters page, which also printed correspondence from reader Kurt Busiek. The final issue was actually a double-sized edition combining what had originally been intended for two regular issues. (As such, #41 was not widely distributed in England for the reasons given above. This one I read years later, after buying a copy at a comics convention in Bristol at which Roy Thomas was a guest of honor.) Don Glut wraps up the story with many of the characters from the previous 40 issues appearing. Declining sales killed the series, though the creators had further plans if cancellation had not occurred. “I’d planned to do a team up of all the WWII and post-war female heroes, a team that might have been called something like the Golden Girls,” Glut reveals. “You know, Golden Girl, Venus, Namora, etc. But it never went beyond just an idea.” Roy Thomas had already extended the Invaders story elsewhere. What If? #4 (Aug. 1977) contained, contrary to the concept of the title, an in-continuity story of the post-war Invaders: “What If the Invaders Had Stayed Together After World War Two?” The story had been created with the art team of Franks Robbins and Springer, before they left the ongoing series. Thomas cleverly weaves together continuity strands from several different series with invention and pathos.

THE INVADERS RETURN The Invaders has been revived several times in different ways. Of most interest to fans of the original series is likely to be the four-part limited series from 1993 which continued directly on from Invaders #41. Its pencils by Dave Hoover, inked by Brian Garvey, are somewhat influenced by the Image style then popular, but the series is fun. Several more old Timely characters are introduced, including the original version of the Vision. More recently there was Giant-Size Invaders #2 (2005), which contained a new story by Thomas and artist Lee Weeks. Also of interest may be the 2008–2009 12-issue Avengers/Invaders series plotted, and with covers, by Alex Ross. With the bulk of Invaders stories being set in late 1941 to mid-1942, there would seem to be scope for further tales to be told during this era. I’d like to think Marvel would give first option to Roy Thomas to do so. Sadly, many of the original Invaders artists are no longer with us, but their work remains. Many thanks to Don Glut for his recollections. Thanks also to Roy Thomas for providing so much firsthand commentary in the original magazines. IAN MILLSTED is a writer & teacher based in Bristol, U.K.

Mark DiFruscio

In a medium where heroism and virtue are so often equated with brute strength and a propensity for violence, the notion of doing a comic book about the life of an elderly Catholic nun might seem like something of an oddity. Yet Marvel Comics produced just such an anomaly when it published Mother Teresa of Calcutta (1984) during the halcyon days of the 1980s, when superhero titles such as Uncanny X-Men and Fantastic Four ruled the comics world. The 48-page one-shot, written by fan-favorite David Michelinie, penciled by the late John Tartaglione, and inked by the legendary Joe Sinnott, also included a story credit attributed to Father Roy Gasnick, a man of the cloth who played an integral role in bringing religion to the House of Ideas. Despite the seemingly incongruous union of comic books and Catholicism, Mother Teresa of Calcutta was in fact the third in a series of religious-themed biographies published by Marvel during the 1980s. The first was an illustrated biography of Saint Francis of Assisi entitled Francis, Brother of the Universe (1980), followed two years later by The Life of Pope John Paul II (1982).

DIVINE IRONY The genesis of these books is detailed in a brief foreword to Francis, Brother of the Universe, which recounts how a Marvel Comics representative in Japan by the name of Gene Pelc was chatting about his work over coffee with Father Campion Lally at the Franciscan Chapel Center. When Fr. Campion asked, “Why don’t you do a book on St. Francis?” Pelc paused, then replied simply, “Why not?” From this inauspicious beginning, Pelc went on to suggest that a Franciscan friar should be brought in to collaborate on the comic book. As a result, Pelc eventually turned to Father Roy Gasnick, who at that time was the Director of the Franciscan Communications Office in New York, and had recently

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“War! What is it good for? Absolutely nothin’! Say it again!” Those lines by the late, great Edwin Starr to the contrary, war remains with us, as an ever-present part of our history, our reality, even our consumerism. Somewhere, as you read this, war is occurring ... the horrors of it. And somewhere, as you read this, revenue is generated from wars past and wars present. But there are also the lessons of war. If it is the hope of horror films—the best of them— to channel away our daily horror; then perhaps it is the hope of the war film, book, comic—the best of them—to channel away our ... easy stumblings into war. The purpose of recounting tales of war, then, is to strip away the lies and the glamour and to unearth the lessons of wars past, that may, if we can listen, guide us away from wars present and wars future. Being a child of the ’70s, my earliest introduction to war comics was with titles such as Sgt. Rock and Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos, books I came across while tagging along with my mom at the local Rite-Aid. Rite-Aid, for those of you who don’t know that particular brand of store, is much like CVS; part pharmacy, part convenience store, and seemingly ever-present. And for me, at least, and I’d wager a generation of youth, the corner pharmacy is where I became acquainted with and hooked (somehow apt, a place where drugs were dispensed, being the source of my “drug” of choice) on this uniquely American genre of the comic.

From the Frontlines Writer/artist Don Lomax’s gritty, personal black-and-white title Vietnam Journal may not be widely known, but those who have discovered it have praised its authenticity and emotional impact. Seen here is the splash page to issue #4 (May 1988). All Vietnam Journal scans courtesy of G. K. Abraham. © 2009 Don Lomax.

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G. K. Abraham

Make War Once More (left) While seeming pro-war in its gung-ho approach, director Ted Kotcheff’s First Blood (1982)— moviegoers’ introduction to macho icon Rambo— was anti-war at heart. (right) Oliver Stone’s Oscar-winning 1986 film Platoon was a thinking man’s war movie and helped create the market climate that gave birth to Don Lomax’s Vietnam Journal. First Blood © 1982 Anabasis N.V. and Elcajo Productions. Platoon © 1986 Hemdale Film.

And along with the corner pharmacy, there were the libraries. Before libraries had graphic-novel sections, before there was such a thing as a graphic novel, our local librarian had a comic box and once a week kids could come in and trade their comics for other comics. This librarian was somehow den mother to this unruly band of preteens—God love her, ’cause my friends and I certainly did. What a nifty and smart thing to do, to lure kids off of the corners and out of brawling and into libraries. There, with peers, friendships were made while trading and talking about that most perfect of mediums, comics. However, not all comics were considered perfect. Invariably some comics, like unpleasant orphans, would stay unchosen. In our librarian’s comic box, you could always be certain to find Archie comics, and the aforementioned war comics, along with titles such as The Unknown Solider and G. I. Combat. These books (which you can clearly go back to and see their strengths: the late Bob Kanigher, who wrote many of these war comics, being a writer whose work I actively seek out now) at the time held very little sway against the four-color wonders of men whose rage turned them green, whose tragedy turned them into bat-costumed avengers, and whose time in prison turned them into bullet-resistant, 300 lb. heroes for hire. Kids of our age back then were looking for larger wonders. Something beyond our experience. In a time not far removed from the shadow of Vietnam, what we weren’t looking for was any repetition of our nightly news. We wanted what all kids want at that age— we wanted to sail the oceans cosmic. So during the ’70s and into the ’80s, superheroes reigned supreme. But by the mid-’80s, the children of the ’70s had grown up and matured, and amazingly, the medium had grown up with them. There was renewed popularity

of the war film in cinema, with films such as Platoon, Rambo, and Full Metal Jacket coming along in time to prep a generation for the Gulf War. The 1980s saw a resurgence in war as fodder for entertainment. To understand the resurgence of the war comic book, and how from it Vietnam Journal was born, it is necessary to understand the resurgence of the war film. Historically, these cycles pop up prior to new periods of armed conflict—in this case the Gulf War, but you’ll generally see this going back as far as the Spanish American War—where entertainment, from cartoons to comics, begins to prime an audience for war. This is largely aimed at youth. So G. I. Joe, Rambo, and Iron Eagle came along at the right time to “prep” my generation for the Gulf War, to glamorize it to some extent, to paint duty and war and killing as patriotic necessities. That’s the way war is historically sold, the fact of it preceded by a mass-media blanketing of the fun of it. Patriotism as product of popcorn, cool special effects, and rousing music scores. Propaganda. However, along with the traditional pro-war movies of the early ’80s, in the latter half of the’80s you began to get a rash of very personal stories from directors, such as Oliver Stone, who had seen this cycle before and decided in their own films to say: “All those John Wayne-type movies are fine and good, but let me show you the other side.” Films like Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket (1987), John Irvin’s Hamburger Hill (1987), Brian De Palma’s Casualties of War (1989), and Stone’s own Platoon (1986) and Born on the Fourth of July (1989) very much sought to show war beyond the simplistic, to speak of war in terms elegiac. Surprisingly enough, First Blood (1982), which introduced Rambo, is a very interesting and significant film in the proliferation of war movies in the ’80s. Sylvester Stallone, as co-writer and uncredited director with Ted Kotcheff, with First Blood launched this genre of Comics Go to War Issue

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In “Back in the World,” the Timeline goes from Saturday, Jan. 6–Tuesday, Jan. 9, 1968. As always it’s an insider’s look at the terminology and the times. That said, there is something unsettling about this issue; it feels slightly conflicted and unsatisfying, but ultimately perhaps that’s a valid end tone for a war that left a nation conflicted and unsatisfied. So, minor qualms aside, it’s a fitting end to what amounts to poundfor-pound the best war comic in the last few decades. Grade: B/B-

THE SPIN-OFFS However, that would not quite be the end. Don Lomax’s 16 issues proper of Vietnam Journal would be followed by various spin-offs of varying degrees of success. In the nine-issue Desert Storm Journal, which ran from 1991 through 1993, there is clearly a tone of vilifying the enemy and justifying the war which is absent in Vietnam Journal. In many ways, Desert Storm Journal is the antithesis of Vietnam Journal and a throwback to the jingoistic fervor of comics of World War II. If Vietnam Journal had been written in the throes of the Vietnam War, it might read very much like Desert Storm Journal. It would seek to make it a simplest common-denominator tale of the righteousness of the US and the unmitigated evil of the North Vietnamese. But thankfully there is a buffer of time there, and Lomax’s Vietnam Journal is a far more reasoned and compelling work because of it. Lomax revisited Vietnam in his series Vietnam Journal: TET ’68. This six-issue series picks up smoothly from the end of Vietnam Journal, with the eponymous Journal in a bar trying to come to terms with demons old and demons new. Lomax brings in the old crew of Clem Robbins as letterer, Hilary Hughes as editor, and Tai Tran as Vietnamese translator (though it appears he doesn’t actually translate this issue) for the first issue, but they begin dropping off as the series progresses. Rose Lomax is a new addition as inker. TET starts off as something of a police procedural with issue #1, where Journal is recruited to help bring down a drug ring, then commits the other five issues to the Tet Offensive. As the series progresses, the art takes a hit though Lomax’s story is as detailed as ever. The Lomaxes no doubt were stretching themselves thin between this series and Desert Storm Journal. Also the concentration on one storyline, as opposed to Vietnam Journal’s done-in-one fluid style, begins to feel bogged down, though it ends strong, with the final

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two issues picking up in terms of quality, particularly in terms of art. Rose Lomax is doing a great job here, adding the blacks and fleshing out the backgrounds that were light in the first couple of issues. Clem Robbins as letterer is very much missed, his impactful and artistic typography glaringly absent in these issues. Vietnam Journal: TET ’68 would be followed by Lomax’s four-issue Vietnam Journal: Bloodbath at Khe Sanh (1992–1993) and the two-issue Vietnam Journal: Valley of Death (1994), but the writing was on the wall for not just Vietnam Journal but also for publisher Apple Comics. The success of the newly created juggernaut Image Comics was triggering the death knell for black-and-white comics. With the Gulf War over, a new president in the White House, and the economics of the day forever altered, the day of the the war comic, the war television show, and the war movie had once again come … to an end. Which is fitting because war-focused items, comics and movies in particular, are much like the myth of Excalibur. They rise only when needed most. The topic of war in any genre has a limited lifespan. It is a dish that of necessity should be hard in the serving. But perhaps because of that brevity, that delicate confluence of incidents that give rise to this most unsettling genre, when a strong entry that deals with our wars and our warriors with something close to parity is created … it is remembered. Kids not born when the films came out can tell you of Platoon, Apocalypse Now, and Full Metal Jacket, because these films go beyond entertainment to say something timeless about who we were in our worst hours and in our best. Vietnam Journal does the same for the comics medium. Forty-plus years after the war it depicts, twenty-plus years after its publication, it continues to say something vital about where we were as a nation, and who we were. It is a cry and a call to never forget. The 16 core issues of Vietnam Journal continue to have the power to enlighten, to enrich, and to eulogize, and stand as a worthy highpoint of a medium too often dismissed. The series is thankfully available on the secondary market and pops up on auction sites on occasion, and there have even been two compilations of the series. But for my money, get the original issues. Go, seek them out ... they are worth discovering. G. K. ABRAHAM blogs about comics and pop culture at HeroicTimes.wordpress.com.

G. K. Abraham conducted in April 2009

It’s worth noting Don Lomax is a humorous and insightful creator, and both traits are in evidence in the informative, free-flowing interview that follows. It veers pretty far afield of comics, but I think in a good way, as it discusses not just a younger America that bore young men who dreamed in four colors, but perhaps says in contrast something about today’s youth. – G. K. Abraham G. K. ABRAHAM: Mr. Lomax, first I want to say that I’m a huge fan of Vietnam Journal. Let’s do a quick synopsis for people who have come late to the party. Vietnam Journal ran 16 acclaimed issues. Its protagonist was a journalist by the name of Scott “Journal” Neithammer, and the story revolved around his battlefield coverage of Vietnam. You were drafted at 21, and shipped overseas to Vietnam in 1966. Tell us a little about yourself, of the young man you were before being drafted. I’m guessing that like many young men, you had plans that did not at the time include an unknown country called Vietnam. DON LOMAX: First of all, I was a little surprised at your request for this interview. Being a senior citizen and a grandfather (I’ll be 65 this September), I am used to [being] patronized and treated like someone on the brink of senility. You know, the knowing smiles, the pats on one’s hand to reassure, and the eyes rolling back when I say something stupid or un-cool. Well, if I say too many things stupid or un-cool just chalk it up to old age (another benefit to getting old— you are seldom taken seriously). I was born September 14, 1944. My mom and dad were poor but we got by. I have two sisters, both older, so that made me the baby of the family. I had a great life growing up. Being a child of the ’50s, everything was black and white, nobody bothered to lock their doors. I don’t think we even had a key to our car. Back then you didn’t need one. Crime was nearly nonexistent. At least in rural Illinois where I grew up.

“…the best war comic book in more than 35 years.” That’s what Don Thompson wrote in The Comics Buyers’ Guide about Don Lomax’s Vietnam Journal. Seen here is detail from Lomax’s cover to Vietnam Journal #1 (Nov. 1987). © 2009 Don Lomax.

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