The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1853: Fantastic Worlds #2, November 1995

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I rather enjoy the tradition through the 80s and 90s (and, honestly, to the present day) of doing comics in a flashback style. I was first introduced to the idea by Alan Moore's absolutely brilliant Supreme, followed by the old-timey stylings of Big Bang Comics. I think I appreciate them because they add a much more modern sensibility to the less-refined social mores of bygone eras.

Today's issue was pretty good, balancing between caveman, space patrol, and mystery man genres. The opening piece, by Sam Glanzman, is very well done, reminiscent of the various caveman series, mostly from DC, I think, that were prevalent in the 70s. The mystery man story, starring Red Vengeance, reminded me of Sandman Mystery Theatre, which was being published around the same time. But where SMT updates both aesthetic and social cues in from the Golden Age, "Red Vengeance" manages to keep the visual look of the older comics while, as I note above, adding something of a modern (or modernish, given the comics 25 years of age) feel to the action and narrative.

This is only one of 5 issues the publisher managed to get out in the mid-90s, which I can't imagine was a great time for nostalgia, not at the height of the Image revolution. As with so many anthology series, it's highly likely that none of these stories were continued, leaving poor Attu the caveman facing a giant Apatosaurus. But, as with anything from a smaller publisher, it gives us a brief glimpse into the passion that is associated with the medium of comics.

More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 435: G.I. Combat #222, October 1980 (War Week, Day 6)

I think it's a good thing I'm getting to the end of "War Week," as I'm finding war comics to be remarkably depressing. Which, I guess, makes sense. I understand the impetus to tell such stories - the same impetus spurs Remembrance Day every November - and these later titles and issues do their best to delve into the effects upon soldiers of their experiences. There's also the moments of humanity amidst something that I, at least, find to be one of our most inhuman behaviours. There are those, I suppose, who might disagree with me and look to war as the most human of behaviours. We have, after all, been doing it for a very long time. Call me an optimist.

There's an interesting juxtaposition of art and words in this issue that struck me. I've noted the cariacatures of Japanese and german soldiers in previous war comics, and it becomes more complicated in this issue. In both "Ice Soldiers" and "Angels of Death," we see representations, respectively, of North Korean and Japanese soldiers. Visually, these representations depart markedly from the caricatures of earlier comics, and present a visual representation in keeping with physical aspects of someone from those parts of the world. In this, I mean that we don't get the pronounced lips and buck teeth one might see in the old Fleischer Superman cartoons. The representations of East Asian peoples in this comic are every bit as stylized, but balanced, as the depictions of Caucasian peoples. However, the text accompanying these depictions drips with the worst Orientalism I've yet encountered in comics. Drawing on constructions of the East as meditative, stolid, descriptions of an idol-like patience offer a stark contrast to the terror inscribed in each American soldier. This dehumanizing in text is off-putting, for sure, especially in contrast with artists who seem to recognize that there's a difference in art between stylizing and caricaturing.

Last day of War Week tomorrow. Today's issue featured a number of "Haunted Tank" stories, and tomorrow we'll look at a Vertigo re-imagining of that feature. Onward.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 433: Sgt. Rock #421, April 1988 (War Week, Day 4)

Aaaannd we're back.

I first met Sgt. Rock and Easy Company when they were confronted by one of the Monitor's giant dimensional tuning forks in the early issues of Crisis on Infinite Earths. As with most DC characters, I'd seen the comics on the racks, but to that point had not read any of them. Which means, to this day, I'd simply assumed that they were a Howling Commandos knock-off, and had paid them very little heed.

I was wrong.

For a Code-approved comic, this issue gets away with some fairly subversive thinking about war, and offers some early, though unstated, thinking through PTSD and what effect the act of warring has on those who are forced to do it. This is not a comic that, in any way, glorifies war. A bloodly close-quarters battle ends with Easy Co. victorious, but, aside from Rock, each member has slumped to the ground, stunned and horrified by the brutality of what they've just done. As was I. This comic doesn't pull punches. It never lets you forget that it's about thinking, feeling human beings forced into a situation in which they have to kill one another. And regardless of the kind of propaganda that might have painted the Nazi ranks as unfeeling genocidal maniacs, Kanigher and company never take that easy way out, and remind us that, by and large, those that fight wars are not the ones who start them.

I'm glad to have read this comic. It touched me.

Onward.