"The Trench!" - a Review from Blazing Combat 4

Blazing Combat #4 (July 1966)
"The Trench!"
Archie Goodwin-John Severin

Back in September I featured a retrospective of Marie Severin's work, capped by a superior piece of King Kull art she drew in collaboration with her older brother John. This day you are treated to a beautifully-rendered tale from the Blazing Combat anthology, with John Severin flying solo on the art chores. I've said it before and I'll say it again - if you can get your mitts on the Fantagraphic Books hardcover collection of the four issues of Blazing Combat, do it! Cover to cover, it might be the finest book I own in terms of the quality of the interior art.

As was typical of Archie Goodwin's Blazing Combat stories, he wove tales of morality and of the horrors of war. This one - one of the shortest at only six pages - is well done and power-packed. Let's check out a brief overview:

100-Word Review:

World War I is winding down in spring of 1918 - still several months of bloody combat remain. In an Allied trench on the Western Front, men contemplate their lot - muddy, wet, the smell of death all around. The trench is hopeless, a virtual prison where death seems the only escape. Comrades leap to the top of the wall in a suicide bid; freedom comes only in covert missions under cover of night. One mission found a grizzled veteran crossing No Man’s Land with two of his commanding officers. The mission turned bad, and our soldier found himself sprinting for his life, to the safety of his… trench.

The Good: I love this book, and I love this story - and it's fitting given that today is Veterans Day (formerly known in the States as Armistice Day). Thirteen years before the Hallmark Hall of Fame presented the Richard Thomas/Ernest Borgnine version of All Quiet on the Western Front, Archie Goodwin and John Severin spun a vignette that could easily have been a included in that television film. Here is a clip from the opening scenes, which I feel dovetails nicely with today's review:

Even in Goodwin's opening statement, we're dropped into the horrors that were the seemingly unending life of the trench soldier. I could get a feel for the perpetual dampness, and just a few panels in Severin showed us a panel with "corpse rats", creatures so foul they lived among the soldiers as vultures, waiting for an opportunity to scavenge. The ceaseless threat to life, and the omnipresence of death, were on display as our protagonist's friend committed suicide simply by scaling the trench wall and making himself visible to enemy sharpshooters. While all these things should perhaps dwell in my "The Bad" section of this review, how well done these events are portrayed puts them squarely in the kudos portion of my writing.

John Severin offers a real depth to his characters. His use of shadows and varying lightsource angles offers an almost 3-dimensional feel, particularly on facial closeups. The trench is a character itself, and Severin uses it to create fear and death, but in the concluding panels warmth and safety. In Severin's telling, we experience fear, hopelessness, separation, loss, and after all that, a love for the familiar... and comfort from the very things only moments before had stimulated so many negative emotions.

The Bad: So much loss of life. In the introduction to the Blazing Combat collected edition, editor J. Michael Catron explains that several entities conspired to get the magazine canceled back in the mid-1960s - the United States military, the American Legion, and magazine wholesalers. As the Vietnam war escalated, the magazine was forced to cease publication. That was bad news, as the entire contents of the magazine served not necessarily as negative propaganda, but of the human realities of war. For that, Archie Goodwin and James Warren should be applauded, and it's a real shame there wasn't more.

The Ugly: War is Hell. And John Severin showed us. Nuff said.

"Thermopylae!" - a Review from Blazing Combat 4

Blazing Combat #4 (July 1966)
"Thermopylae!"
Archie Goodwin-Reed Crandall

Have you read Frank Miller's 300? Seen the film of the same name? Strike me down and call me stupid, but I've not encountered either. Oh, I obviously know what they are - just never got round to it. So I was a little surprised as I was reading through the Blazing Combat hardcover collection to see today's story. It started off as a feature that was apparently going to be about a couple of British soldiers, but then a page turn and WOW! Let's check it out...

100-Word Review:

Two British soldiers await their next orders, having become part of an attachment hoping to delay the Wehrmacht’s capture of Athens in 1941. One of the men decides to give his comrade a history lesson, a lesson of that time in history when 300 Spartans held off the far-superior invading forces of Xerxes the Great of Persia. The battle was fought hard, and Xerxes was frustrated. In the end, the Persian king was victorious, but not before those 300 Spartans became the stuff of legend. But what of the resistance to Hitler’s Wehrmacht? How would they fare?

The Good: Score one for History, because it obviously gave the creators an outstanding story to adapt. That being said, Archie Goodwin and Reed Crandall knock it out of the park. I've said it here in the past, but I feel like I've missed a major boat in my comics-reading career that I haven't encountered Reed Crandall's work until recently. That man is a talent among talents! To turn this story from page 1 to page 2 is to almost step back in time a few thousand years. Crandall's depictions of the various parties in allegiance to Xerxes is just stellar. And Goodwin's script is just as good as anything else he wrote in Blazing Combat. I have to give Goodwin a lot of credit, as he worked with over a dozen artists during the 4-issue run of this magazine, and he meshed with each of them. His work is to be commended as much as any of the artists.

As to the actual story, I enjoyed the framing sequences. Obviously we know how the story turned out for the Greeks and the Persians, and we know how it went with the Germans and their victory over the Allies. The two period stories dovetail nicely.

The Bad: Nothing at all to say here today.

The Ugly: Likewise, not a single aspect of this story to dislike. It's all positive feedback on this Monday!

Reed Crandall - Master Draftsman

You're in for a treat in about a month. Not that there won't be good things happening in this space until then, of course. But a month from now we'll get a look at my first review featuring the work of Reed Crandall. Crandall's an artist with whose name I've long been familiar, but my lack of experience with comics from the 1950s-'60s that lay outside the Marvel and DC Universes hampered my full appreciation for the man and his work. That was all somewhat rectified back in July when I purchased a copy of Fantagraphics Books phenomenal reprint of the Blazing Combat series. To say my eyes about bugged out of my head would be an understatement.

What it really did was spur me to dig a little deeper into Crandall's career. The guy was all over cool characters, from Flash Gordon to John Carter to Blackhawk. Mix in some work at EC and Warren Publishing, and the amount of content one could attempt to obtain seems like a mountain. Nice problem to have, and I hope the images I've chosen today truly celebrate the man's work. As always, my gratitude to the folks around the World Wide Web who retain ownership of these images, yet share them with the masses.

"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