Walls Of Blood!
Blitzkrieg was a different comic book, one which focused on World War II through the lens of the Nazis themselves. The goal was not to be sympathetic to the Reich, but to find new angles to tell stories which had been told in one form or another for decades. In the second issues the focus was on the Warsaw ghetto uprising when the Jewish population which was persistently being shipped to death camps rose up and waged guerilla war for some weeks against the might of the Nazi war machine.
What I found most striking about this story written by Robert Kanigher and drawn by Ric Estrada is how much the story reminded me of the later Joe Kubert masterpiece Yossel, a work which I will get to here in due course. There are a number of structural similarities including most interestingly an escapee who describes for the Jews of the ghetto the horrors of the death camps. Also the hero here is a young boy. Kubert drew a magnificent cover which captures the tension of any uprising of just how it's best to used violence effectively.
I only managed to pick up one issue of Blitzkrieg but thought it was a brave move to tell stories from the German/Nazi side. Great art as well from the wonderful Mr Estrada
ReplyDeleteAlways thought this series was Kanigher's attempt to replay Enemy Ace in a WWII setting, but he probably was also aware of the Sven Hassel books about a Dirty Dozen-style German World War II "penal regiment" that was a bunch of screw-ups and scoundrels, each with a distinctive profile like Doc Savage's crew and analogous to Kanigher's way of reducing his cast to simple traits (like "this guy is fat and always looking for pastries"). Of course the books were not Comics Code approved, were a lot more violent and depraved (from what I've read about them) and were hugely popular with UK boys starting in the 50's with "Legion of the Damned". Been meaning to check these out. Is anyone familiar with them?
ReplyDeleteI remember some school pals reading the Sven Hassel books in the mid 70s but war stories were never really my thing. I've seen a lot of these book in Charity shops over the years and they still seem popular in the UK at least. Comic wise back in the 60s and 70s war comics were everywhere especially in digest format covering Air Force, Army , Navy, Commandos etc in fact Commando comics (a series of monthly digest comics by D C Thomson Ltd) still sell very well covering all aspects of war from all eras.
ReplyDeleteThanks, McScotty. That pretty much squares with what I've heard. I'm going to have to find some of these things myself.
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