The Pages Of War!

"War,uh yeah! What is it good for? Absolutely nothing!"

Edwin Starr was right of course, but let's look at it another way. What is war good for? It made for some damn fine comic books over the decades. March derives its very name from the ancient god of war "Mars", so it's fitting that this month at the Dojo we look at some finest war comics from across the broad spectrum of what the genre has produced. 

At the center will be the best YOe Book yet -- We Spoke Out - Comic Books and the Holocaust. This is a fascinating overview of how the horrific event that transformed the latter half of the twentieth century was seen in comics. There are stories here from the 50's through the modern age, and reflect a broad spectrum of how an attempted genocide created heroes and villains and more. I'll be taking a comic by comic look (as does the book itself) and that means comics from Marvel, EC, DC, Warren, and more. Expect the expected and the unexpected as well as we have classic war yarns and superhero jaunts and other stories besides. 

This seemed also a grand time to fish out that copy of Yossel, April 19, 1943 by Joe Kubert that's been nestled in my collection for years waiting its turn on the night table. This is a highly personal story by perhaps the finest war artist of all time. There are some other Kubert stories I'd like to get as well, to but time will tell.

The Unknown Anti-War Comics features comic books from the defunct and fondly remembered Charlton Comics. The stories might not be as heavy as those in the tomes above, but maybe they are of value nonetheless.

Another weird one is Nuke' Em Classic Cold War Comics Celebrating the End of the World from Hermes Press. This one reprints just two vintage early 50's series - Atomic War and World War III from the little comic house Ace. If these comics are right, we're lucky to be here.

The weekend tent pole reviews will be a of Warren Magazines critically acclaimed Blazing Combat. War comics were once big business, but only if you could get them into military base PX's and this is one comic book magazine that raised the ire of the military brass when they caught wind of its less than gung-ho attitudes about the Vietnam War, then blazing at full tilt on the Asian continent and in the politics of the United States. There are some of the finest war stories ever in these pages and I'm eager to read them all over again.

So that's it (and maybe a few other things as time permits and circumstances demand but it's a packed house), war, war and more war. But tales of war are rarely about war, but about the peace which always seems to brief and so fragile. Join me.

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