"Aftermath!" - a Review from Blazing Combat 1

Blazing Combat #1 (October 1965)
"Aftermath!"
Archie Goodwin-Angelo Torres

I don't often grab a book right from the shelf and buy it. While I can be an impulsive shopper, I tend to be patient with books. Call me a slave to online discounts, but I get butt-pains in the wallet area when I think of paying full price for books. I know, I know - when the brick-n-mortar stores are dead and gone, I'll have that blood on my hands. I know. But hey - not only did I snag the Fantagraphics Books totally-awesome hardcover collection Blazing Combat while I was in Washington, DC last month, I also purchased George Takei's autobiography They Called Us Enemy (I have a review of this scheduled later in the fall) at cover price. Maybe I'm turning over a new leaf.

Blazing Combat lasted a mere four issues back in 1965-66. In the introduction to the hardcover collection, editor Michael Catron tells that the series was scuttled by the United States military, comics wholesalers, and the American Legion. As Archie Goodwin's tales took a sympathetic bent toward soldiers as people - as moral agents, and definitely toward "war is hell", some of the powers-that-be felt that it was unpatriotic. At a time when US involvement in the Vietnam War was escalating, the book was certainly politically charged. And apparently too hot to handle. But what Warren wrought in those four issues is a feast for the eyes, with talent like Frank Frazetta, Wally Wood, Gene Colan, John Severin, Russ Heath, Redd Crandall, Alex Toth, and many others providing the art. The collected edition is absolutely beautiful - one of the best looking reprints of black-and-white comics that I own. Catron writes that Fantagraphics used the original printer's films "for the finest quality possible". He ain't lyin'.

Let's do our thing. Today I've chosen the second story in the book, a troubling examination of themes from America's Civil War.

100-Word Review:

Set in 1863, we’re dropped into a scene of standoff. The Union forces have scattered the Confederates, save one Rebel who has a bead on two Union men. Getting off a clean shot, the Rebel drops one of the men in blue. Forced to find cover, his partner can’t move. But as the shot man cries out and it’s obvious that his death will not be immediate, the Rebel calls to his enemy to assist his friend. The Rebel goes so far as to call a truce and assist in helping his victim. What happens when enemies come face-to-face? 

The Good: Angelo Torres's art is superb, as your own eyeballs can attest. I did not mention Torres above when I rattled off the hall-of-fame caliber participants in this series. But I'm telling you, the man can hold his own against any and all comers. Wow. If I'm not mistaken (and at this writing I am not terribly far into the book), in each story the artist worked alone. So you're getting the whole Angelo Torres enchilada. And it's beautiful.

The Civil War is often described as brother against brother, and the common threads that bind these enemies together - duty, honor, self-preservation - may as well make them brothers. When the survivors meet in their mythical no-man's land, they share jerky and tobacco and a common hatred for the wild hogs that they know will eat the dead warrior. But as they sit down, perhaps to further explore their similarities, one sentence blows it all up. Perceptions, history, political affiliation, and the banners we wave all congeal to immediately end the ceasefire. The end is swift, painful, and Archie Goodwin leaves us with the question of whether or not it was inevitable. I paused upon completion and wondered if we aren't traveling along that same path in our times. It's scary... perhaps we are.

The black-and-white mags are heavily populated with short stories, and Blazing Combat has only that - six to eight page tales. The creators largely knock it out of the park despite the confined space. Lots of plot as well as character reveal in these six pages.

 

The Bad: Archie Goodwin did that thing for which Chris Claremont has been maligned, and that's attempting to write characters with accents. Works well (generally) in film, not so much in literature. In film, we can largely tell what the character is saying despite changes in tone or inflection; on the printed page, however, it can get a little wonky. Admittedly, on my reread for this review I did not find it as much a distraction on my first tour. Goodwin does it again in the very next story, which was set in the late 1930s.

The thought of the hogs feasting on dead soldiers and/or civilians is a stomach-turner.

The Ugly: War sucks. People suck. Hatred sucks. Those seem constants in life that I'd love to see broken during my lifetime. I hold on to optimism, that some day we'll figure it out. Each semester in the introduction to my Social Injustice class we analyze the lyrics to Sly & the Family Stone's Everyday People. It remains pertinent learning.

Sometimes I'm right and I can be wrong
My own beliefs are in my song
The butcher, the banker, the drummer and then
Makes no difference what group I'm in

I am everyday people, yeah yeah

There is a blue one who can't accept the green one
For living with a fat one trying to be a skinny one
And different strokes for different folks
And so on and so on and scooby dooby doo

Oh sha sha we got to live together

I am no better and neither are you
We are the same whatever we do
You love me you hate me you know me and then
You can't figure out the bag I'm in

I am everyday people, yeah yeah

There is a long hair that doesn't like the short hair
For bein' such a rich one that will not help the poor one
And different strokes for different folks
And so on and so on and scooby dooby doo

Oh sha sha we got to live together

There is a yellow one that won't accept the black one
That won't accept the red one that won't accept the white one
And different strokes for different folks
And so on and so on and scooby dooby doo

I am everyday people

Guest Writer - A MAD Magazine Retrospective, with Redartz

Doug: I hope February finds you a happy camper. Here in the Midwest, many of us mark this month as sort of the "dog days" of winter. The month generally begins cold, with plenty of possibilities yet for wintry precipitation. Long about the third week of the month, it's likely we'll see a day or two in the high 60s; we used to just hate it back when I was coaching track & field... The weather during the indoor season could often be nicer than when we began our outdoor meets in mid-March. But I digress...

I am thrilled today to host the musings of a longtime friend and collaborator. Way back in the BAB's heyday, at times my partner Karen and I would face lapses in post ideas or even hear the knock of the Dreaded Deadline Doom. We were fortunate to be able to enlist the aid of two wonderful collaborators who helped us shoulder the load in the last two years of the BAB's run. Those lads then went on to provide two more years of fun in their own space, Back in the Bronze Age. It's a blog that remains open each Tuesday as a forum, but please do check out their backlog of posts - you'll be amazed at the level of creativity and the wonderful community of readers.

Most of my experience with today's topics and artists comes only through paperback reprints of Don Martin's cartoons, or Spy vs. Spy. I was never a regular reader of MAD, or Crazy, or Cracked... So without further rambling from me, allow me to step offstage so that you can enjoy a romp through MAD Magazine, with today's driver, Redartz.

MAD Magazine 147 (December 1971)

MAD Magazine 184 (July 1976)

Redartz: Greetings, everyone. Our illustrious host Doug has graciously offered me a chance to spout off a few MAD words. MAD magazine, that is...

 

MAD magazine nowadays is almost a cultural institution. But back in the days when I read it, away from the disapproving eyes of my Mom, it still had a rather subversive feel. Unlike the comic books I usually read, MAD told its tales in glorious black and white. That alone made it seem more 'adult', somehow. And when you opened the pages of the 40 cent (cheap; it said so right on the cover) mag, you encountered humor much juicier than that found in Archie, Gold Key or Harvey productions.

 

MAD cast its sardonic eye upon all the nuttiness in this crazy world. Politics, movies, TV, sex, espionage, and all the tribulations of everyday life: literally everything was fair game. No wonder my parents frowned upon my reading it. But to my view, it opened up a wide vista of previously verboten subject matter (still a few years before I discovered underground comix). Mad's “usual gang of idiots” presented their iconoclastic humor with wit and a “nudge, nudge, wink, wink” sensibility. Which is only to be expected from an all-star group of creators, many of them veterans of the classic EC comics of the 1950s. Of course, at that point I'd never heard of EC; I just knew I liked Jack Davis's funny drawings...

 

And that seems a perfect spot to segue into a look at some of those creators' work. Oh, be sure to watch within the examples for the almost ubiquitous border scribblings of Sergio Aragones. “They're everywhere, they're everywhere”...

 

To start, here's a bit of fun from the above-mentioned Mr. Davis. This particular example doesn't really highlight Davis' wacky, gawky, exaggerated figurative humor, but does show his penchant for cramming details into a panel, page or cover. The magazine illustrated here pokes some fun at the then-current 'disaster movie' craze.

 

 

Next up is a page from Al Jaffee. Al works in a more "cartoony" style, but one which very effectively gets the joke across to the viewer. Two things I found noteworthy of this page were the lack of panel borders, and the nice contrast between Jaffee's rendering of daytime and nighttime.

 

 

Now here's Dave Berg. A name and artist familiar to anyone who ever read many MAD issues. Berg both wrote and drew his features. Using a rather unflattering, mundane depiction for his cast of ordinary folks, Berg skewered the everyday challenges and frustrations of 20^th century life.

 

Another MAD favorite was Don Martin. Martin's slapstick humor and histrionic styling brings to my mind the work of Gary Larson in “The Far Side”. This sample shows a bit of his lighthearted dementia...

 

 

An artist perhaps less familiar by name is Paul Coker, Jr. Coker's almost 'greeting card humor' approach visually may be more recognizable than his name. And you may also recognize his work in the character designs from the animated “Frosty the Snowman” TV special. Coker could hide some rather adult themes within his friendly, appealing drawings...

 

The man behind “Spy vs. Spy” was Antonio Prohias. Clean, angular, purely visual humor that perfectly told the innumerable conflicts of those two antagonistic agents...

 

 

Finally we have Mort Drucker and Angelo Torres. Both of these artists were adept at caricaturing the famous and not-so-famous faces of popular culture. Many of MAD's movie and TV parodies featured the byline of Drucker or Torres. Here's some 70s vintage material from each of them...

 

 

 

Going back into these magazines after so many years away from them was both fun and educational. As a 21st century adult, I still found the humor amusing. Some of the features don't age as well as others, some references are clearly dated. And to be honest, some things found in those vintage issues are rather cringeworthy in today's more politically-correct world. Personally, I found the jokes that held up best were the less topical ones, such as “Spy vs. Spy” and much of Don Martin's drollery. Regardless, reading those magazines now becomes very much a 'time capsule' experience, totally capturing the feel of those heady days of the 70s. Kind of makes me feel the desire to hide them under the bed before my Mom walks in...