The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 2410: Two-Fisted Tales #7, April 1994

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Publisher: Russ Cochran

Writer: Harvey Kurtzman & Ed Rock

Artists: Harvey Kurtzman, Jack Davis, Wally Wood, Johnny Craig, John Severin

We're coming up to the end of Year 7, and, as I noted in the last post, this year has been difficult. Hell, the last couple of years have been difficult, but that's the same story that everyone has right now, so at least I'm not alone. But I've quit my delivery job, I'm having a go at writing full time, and I love it, and I want to get the project up and running again.

I don't read, or generally consume, media that has to do with war or crime. They're two human activities that I am pretty much against hallowing through art. Unless, that is, the art is decrying the darker natures that lead us to these pursuits. While I acknowledge that they're fertile places for stories to be told, the sometimes celebratory atmosphere of such tales makes me uncomfortable. But when Mike at the Purple Gorilla suggests something to me, I'd be a fool not to listen. And, of course, the tales in this comic don't celebrate war - they decry it and point to the horrible inequities and violence that grow from it.

That said, as much as the stories and art were fucking brilliant, it didn't resonate with me as much as the horror and sci-fi titles coming out of the company at the same time. I have a much easier time finding my metaphors in things that I can fully divorce from reality. In stories that take place in less-stylized settings, I sometimes have a hard time finding the piece of the tale that resonates with me. Perhaps that's something to keep in mind as I move on.

Onward.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - The Bi-Weekly Graphic Novel Number 78 - Weird Fantasy Annual #1, 1994

Oh my goodness! What have I been thinking all these years avoiding reading these incredible comics?

All I can think is that I somehow needed to be in this particular place in my life in order to appreciate them fully (not sure what that means, but let's run with it).

These are gorgeous, amazing, thrilling stories. They raise genuine goose flesh occasionally, they entertain, every story, to a fault. The draughtsmanship from Feldstein, Kamen, Kurtzman, and Wood (primarily) is simply wonderful, in all it's catastrophic detail (that cover up there isn't the only story in the book in which the Earth gets destroyed. But it is the best one!)

I have had a few reprint comics in my collection for a while now, though some are mysteriously missing at the moment, but I've not really given them much thought. As I noted in my last look at a graphic novel, the Harvey Horrors book, I've quite taken to these pre-Code stories. The writers are telling really, really interesting tales. Though they may seem like run-of-the-mill twist-ending tales (and let's not forget that these were the comics that popularised that narrative structure), the endings are always either really well renedered, so as to be truly shocking, or are completely not what you expected, which I find is rare in a comic.

(And I'm having deja vu right now about having typed that sentence before.)

I've picked up a couple more of these reprint collections, so I'll make my way through them for a bit. But I definitely think that one of the expensive comics I'm going to have to put on the "One Day" list is an old, pre-Code EC horror comic. That would be a very cool thing to own.

Onward...