The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 711: Beetle Bailey #80, March 1971

In a very similar way to Archie comics, I find Beetle Bailey to be one of those relatively reliable comics. It's only very occasionally, if ever, going to be a revelatory experience to read, but most of the time it's funny, well rendered, and worth 20 - 30 minutes of your time. This was the reaction I had to today's comic.

Until I got to a text feature just before the final story, entitled "The UFF." I had a quick look through, and it turned out to be a small manifesto for the "Union of Fighting Forces," an attempt to unionize the American military. At first, understandably, I thought it was a joke. But it turns out that in the late 60s and early 70s, there were a number of people agitating for exactly this in the military. And why not, I suppose? It's a job, just like any other, so if those doing the job feel like they're being treated unfairly, of course they should unionize. It does seem to go directly against everything I know about how a military organization works, but that doesn't mean it can't work.

I found a few references to various attempts at this, and there was apparently an unrecognized (at least by the superiors) union in the army in the period this comic came out. They published their own newspaper, and were involved in some demonstrations for fair treatment of soldiers.

Who knew?

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 436: Haunted Tank #5, June 2009 (War Week, Day 7)

War Week ends on a sort of confusing note. This is the last issue in a Vertigo limited series reimagining the Haunted Tank in one of the ludicrous conflicts in the contemporary Middle East. It's hard to gauge the tone of the comic - I don't really know the characters or their situation, and this issue is definitely some kind of denouement to a much longer story.

But there's some glimmers of thinking through the nature of global conflict, of the ramifications of the imperial projects of both the British and the United States. And the art is pretty great.

Without the first four issues, though, I can't say whether this was a good comic or a bad one. It was part of a story. That's about all I've got.

(But then I've also really hurt my back - again - and I don't want to type much.)

Not sure where we're heading tomorrow. Maybe back to Bionicle, but maybe on to something completely different. See you then.

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 434: All-Out War #1, October 1979 (War Week, Day 5)

This comic marks the first appearance, one of the few, of the Viking Commando, a viking warrior transported accidentally through time to the Second World War, and watched over by a Valkyrie maiden who wishes he was dead so she could carry him away for all eternity. After reading Robert Kanigher's fairly nuanced treatment of PTSD in Sgt. Rock yesterday, this odd little tale made for an interesting juxtaposition. Let's mix a war comic with vikings and see what happens. Very odd.

And then there's the story "Brother with Wings," about an African-American fighter pilot who has a couple of fortuitous interactions with the Haunted Tank - a tank that flies a Confederate flag all the time. While I appreciate the attempt at some subversion in this story, Lt. Bannister's quip that, having been rescued by the Haunted Tank, he's been "freed a second time" is just uncomfortable. Couple this with the depictions of Japanese soldiers in the comic, and all of a sudden it becomes starkly clear how far we've come in just under 40 years. The stories in this issue, were they conceived today, would communicate in a very different tenor, one hopes.

Unlike my foray into romance comics, I haven't found something that's really spoken to me yet. Yesterday's Sgt. Rock was pretty well done, but Rock's personality reminds me too much of Frank Miller's Dark Knight, and though the attitude may have been somewhat revolutionary in the 80s, it's cliche now.

Tomorrow we move on to another of the giant-size war comics DC put out in the 70s, and then we'll finish the week with a Vertigo re-think of the Haunted Tank. I'll be interested to see if there's any acknowledgment of the problematic celebration of the Confederacy that is all-but absent from these older comics. 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.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 430: Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos #136, October 1976 (War Week, Day 3)

As with last week's Marvel Ai, I just can't leave my beloved superheroes alone for too, too long, though today's issue is only sort of related. Well, that's not true - given that it's an origin story for Nick Fury, it's a pretty fundamental part of Marvel U history, even it it's been retconned out of existence.

The story's not great, but also not terrible, telling the origin of the Howling Commandos, replete with racial epithets that are, at least, appropriate to the time period, and with bullets-flying-everywhere battle scenes. One interesting thing is that though there are indeed a number of problematic racial constructions of both Japanese and German people, the Commandos themselves are also racial stereotypes, so at least in their essentializing, Marvel were somewhat equal opportunity.

I've not much else to say about this comic. It was good, but that's all. The art and writing were competent, but the story was middling.

Tomorrow I'll be at the Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo, giving a paper at 12:30, and wandering about for most of the rest of the day. Not sure when I'll get a chance to post tomorrow, and depending on my haul of goodies, we may take a brief break from "War Week," just so I can show off my finds from the con. Onward!

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 429: The 'Nam #1, December 1986 (War Week, Day 2)

As someone who isn't American, I have a hard time figuring out why the war in Vietnam (sorry, "police action") exerted so much influence on the nation's imagination. Likely it's because it was one of the first wars in the US's history that was actually seen by the citizens of the nation, spurring vast protests but also placing into the cultural consciousness clear pictures of what war looks like. Add this to the fact that the US "lost" the war (I know, I know, an arguable point depending on your beliefs), and it's really no wonder this particular conflict becomes so important in the cultural imaginary.

Private Ed Marks' first day in the 'Nam. The text piece in the back of the comic claims that it will be presenting these stories, based on actual events, in a manner as close as possible to the way things were, given the Comics Code restrictions. I can't speak to the accuracy of the actual events, but the way the narrative unfolds is probably pretty indicative. Events flash by, a confusing array of barked orders, sly smiles, misunderstood, or uncomprehended, language and terms, punctuated by moments that really are the sort that would stick out amidst the chaos of the first day. The first fire fight. The first dead enemy soldiers. The realization that one is in a completely different place. Not the World, but the 'Nam.

The 'Nam is written and edited by two Vietnam veterans, so it's verisimilitude factor is going to be high, even with Michael Golden's stylized, though still highly effective, art style. It does what it sets out to do, and that is to communicate the alienness of war to a reading public. The series lasted 84 issues, and one hopes it didn't end up getting too glorified. The balance in the first issue is a nice one, and it's a testament to the experiences of the creators that this is a comic that seems to have been premiered with the voice it usually takes a series a year or two to find already intact.

Onward!

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 428: Weird War Tales #85, March 1980 (War Week, Day 1)

From Love to War - it's not always a long way to go.

This week I'll be looking at another of the minor genres in my collection, the war comic. I've always been disinclined to read war comics as I find the idea of recollecting in fiction the horror such occurrences wreak to be a bit repugnant. I've always felt the same about fictions about organized crime - hence my never having watched The Sopranos (I know, I know, it's soooo good).

But moving out of one's comfort zone is important, so here we are. And I'm easing myself into it gently with a bit of science-fiction-y strangeness from the pen of J.M. DeMatteis. DeMatteis wrote one of the few graphic novels I was able to put on my candidacy exam, the absolutely wonderful Brooklyn Dreams, and though he's not a writer I follow by any means, every time I read a comic he's written, I'm impressed. And he writes in so many genres with such ease. I often make note that I should make a concerted effort to read more of his runs on comics, but there's only so much time in a day, and that note has yet to be prioritized.

This comic is weird, is full of blatant criticism of American Imperialism, and moves along like the best of the Twilight Zone episodes that it resembles. I have to say, on the side of the art in the comic, there's some really dodgy caricatures of Japanese soldiers by artist Tenny Hanson. I was shocked to see such things in a comic from a more "enlightened" time, and the optimist in me noted that the Americans in the comic are also highly stylized and caricatured. If that's intentional, it goes some way to assuaging the treatment of the Japanese in the comic, but not far. When at artistic form has such a long history of utter mean-spiritedness, I think it's best to lay to rest and leave it at rest, rather than resurrecting it as this comic does.

I'm going to stick with my optimistic reading.

One of my favourite things about this comic is that it's got a very carefully hand-written name above the title on my copy. I kind of love this, that "Darryl Hogenoon" felt so strongly about this comic that he had to make sure people knew it was his. Darryl, if you're out there and ever read this, know that the comic has found its way into a collection where it will be loved for as long as I'm able.

So, more War comics tomorrow. I'm not sure this is a great genre to be reading while I'm marking undergraduate exams and looking for a job. Then again, maybe it is. Onward.