Blazing Combat Three!

Blazing Combat was already a casualty of the war on truth telling when the third issue hit the stands. Despite the fact its commercial fate was sealed by the decision of many in the military and in its periphery organizations to not stock the title and present it for sale. But that didn't make the stories written by editor Archie Goodwin any less good.

This issue features the "Combat Quiz", a regular feature in all four issues of the magazine on the inside front cover. This installment was drawn by Angelo Torres.

"Special Forces" leads off the issue and is drawn by Joe Orlando, though I see the influence if not hand of Jerry Grandenetti in this one. It's a tale of Vietnam and how the war was fought tooth and nail in the rice paddies by specially trained troops against a deadly enemy.

"Scavengers" is a tale of Sherman's infamous "March to the Sea" and shows how soldiers become pillagers and looters and what they do to save their honor. 

"U-Boat" is a story drawn by Gene Colan and takes us to World War II and the Atlantic Ocean prowled by deadly "Underseaboats" better known as "U-Boats". These Nazi craft tear up the seas with their stealthy attacks and in this instance one man falls prey to a admiration for professionalism which is deadly to his allies.

"Survival" is one of the strangest stories in Blazing Combat as it showcases a world of the future battles, or at least the aftermath of same. We meet a man who works and fights diligently to survive, but who perhaps forgets why his survival matters. It's an Alex Toth masterpiece.

The great  Wally Wood joins the rosters of fine artists in the magazine when he contributes "The Battle of Britain" about the Royal Air Force's desperate struggle in the skies to forestall a Nazi invasion. Victory is counted in many ways we learn in this story.

"Water Hole" is a Goodwin story set in the American west with cavalry troops trying to corral a crafty Native American enemy. Our focus is on one young man who finds himself in a confrontation he never anticipated. This story is exquisitely drawn by Gray Morrow.

And finally "Souvenirs" masterfully drawn by John Severin finishes up the issue. This is a tale of a soldier who forgets his main mission, but somehow ends up doing the right thing anyway. Or at least his colleagues think so.

There is only one more issue of Blazing Combat to go and that's next week.

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Blazing Combat Two!

Blazing Combat has always been considered a critical success and with the talent involved it's hard to see how it couldn't be. These are legendary artists assembled to put together both grand and small tales of war and service and bravery and other things too. Archie Goodwin gives us a broad spectrum of man at war with stories ranging from the American Revolution to the then current struggle in Vietnam. And it's that latter story in the second issue set in the land that America chose to stand up to worldwide Communism that the trouble for Blazing Combat really began. 

"Landscape" with art by Joe Orlando tales the story of war from the perspective of a villager caught between the armies that seek to slay one another in the name of their respective ideologies. And from where that old farmer sits the destruction that comes from the infiltration of the Vietcong or the flames of the American troops that come to seek them out is not really any different. It's this story which maybe suggests that American troops might've burned out a native village that put the American Legion and the U.S. Military on notice that Blazing Combat was not a magazine that was reliably tooting the patriotic trumpet.

On the opposite end of things is the second story featuring lush art by Reed Crandall which takes us to the American Revolution and shows how soldiers were unhappy with the classic style of war fought in Europe and instead embraced a new more aggressive approach led by the most surprising of war heroes.

"MIG Alley" tells us the story of fighter pilots trying to keep their nerve as they face down their Korean counterparts in an air war that is faster and more deadly than any to that point. One man is supremely confident and he is justified in that confidence until he's not. It's a dandy tale by Goodwin and Al McWilliams on the art chores.

Joe Orlando is up again drawing a Goodwin story about the Spanish-American War and the raw nature of combat and how fighting it "Face to Face" can change the way one sees the enterprise. The glamour of war fades when fear and death are looked square in the eye.

Al Williamson and Angelo Torres draw a handsome tale about brutal tank warfare which puts the reader in the seat of a tank which runs into the Panzers of Rommel in the deserts of North Africa. It's a sobering encounter as tables turn and then turn again.

Alex Toth is generally given a co-writing credit with Archie Goodwin on "Lone Hawk", a story of World War I flying aces which celebrates the ebullient bravery of one Billy Bishop as he strikes deadly streaks across the skies of Europe and all the while heroes die. Nifty twist in this one indeed.

The "Combat Quiz" in this issue was illustrated by Angel Torres.

"Holding Action" is a tale drawn by John Severin set in the Korean War and as Blazing Combat tales do so very very well puts the reader into the trench alongside the soldier. This time a soldier must confront his fear and what that transforms him into is scarier still. 

Archie Goodwin's tales in Blazing Combat seem to have a common bond and that is that war is fought by and around real human beings who are changed by the experience. Goodwin and his excellent cadre of artists make us experience those changes, make us feel, if only for a moment and in the most ephemeral of ways, the costs of waging war. It's no wonder the war makers of this country were bothered by this little comic book magazine. The powers that were started to boycott the magazine, in hopes of choking it out of existence, but not before two more issues were created. 

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Experiment In Fear!

Eerie  was James Warren's second magazine dedicated to horror in the classic EC vein and in its ninth issue there's a story titled "Experiment in Fear!". This is a tale drawn written by Archie Goodwin and drawn by Gene Colan which takes place in a concentration camp. The experiments in question here are actually mild compared to some of the dastardly and grotesque "experiments" conducted by the Nazis on those they considered less than human.

We have a Nazi doctor here who wants to prove Aryan superiority by proving that the emotion of fear itself is a trait limited to the lesser varieties of peoples of the Earth, those selected by the Nazis for extermination in their death camps. It's an elaborate laboratory arrangement to induce fear, so much fear that the subject or better said, the victim always dies. When the tables are turned on the Doctor himself of course, we learn what we always knew, that fear is common to all men and women and rising above it is realizing that, as a wise man once said, we have nothing to fear but fear itself.

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Blazing Combat One!

James Warren had a surprise hit when he joined forces with Forry Ackerman and created Famous Monsters of Filmland. That success led Warren to see if he might not be able to recreate some of the great success of EC Comics which had been driven from the newsstands many years before because of general outrage at their most extreme content with little regard for their more literary aspects. He copied their horror format with Creepy and kept it free of the Comics Code by making it a true-blue magazine, albeit black and white. 

Creepy was also a success and that meant more needed to be done perhaps. And Warren liked EC's Frontline Combat and Two-Fisted Tales, two war comics edited by Harvey Kurtzman with a degree of sophistication above the normal ultra-patriotic blather of other war mags. So came into being Blazing Combat, a magazine about war but with a more nuanced story. That story would be written almost exclusively by the late great Archie Goodwin. Due to circumstances beyond the control of Warren and his company the magazine was not a financial success, but it has always been deemed a critical one. On Saturdays in March the Dojo will be taking an issue by issue look at the four mags which comprise the full run. Today we begin with the debut issue.

Beneath a highly energetic Frank Frazetta cover, the first story drawn by Joe Orlando in the mag was titled "Viet-Cong!" and immediately we see that the stories here will be more timely and more suspect of all aspects of waging war. We meet an American soldier who is assigned to advise a South Vietnamese troop as they enter the villages of the country and ferret out the Viet-Cong. Their methods are brutal and the American has reservations about what the United States might be doing. Radical stuff in the mid-60's!

The second story is titled "Aftermath" and was drawn by Angelo Torres. This set more safely in the past of the American Civil War and shows two soldiers from both sides demonstrating humanity and savagery as the war demands.

The third story is titled "Flying Tigers" and is drawn by veteran war artist George Evans and tells how this famous entourage made their bones and became a legit force under General Claire Chenault.

"Long View" is beautifully illustrated by Gray Morrow and takes us to World War II in the Pacific Theater and shows the strain and stress of one squad as they have to perform a deadly mission for the good of the overall effort. This one is rife with emotion and speaks to the brutal nature of warfare.

"Cantigny" drawn by Reed Crandall is set in World War I and features a soldier who is going home but who is a little disappointed he's not even seen the enemy. Of course during the story he does just that.

There's a one-page "Combat Quiz" drawn by Alex Toth followed by the American Revolutionary yarn about the unpredictable battlefield success of "Mad" Anthony Wayne. This one was drawn by Tex Blaisdell with help from others.

The mag closes out with another WWII story drawn by John Severin, an artist who aside from DC's Joe Kubert is likely more associated with the genre than any other. In this story of a Sergeant who tackles battle with a brutality which is perhaps unjustified in the end.

War is not some happy-go-lucky lark as seen in Marvel's Sgt.Fury comics or even dark fables of humanity as seen sometimes in DC's later war books, but here we bet a sense of the immediacy of war and the fragmenting of the human spirit it causes. There's a sense of reality here that is not evident from others, and that reality makes the stories more powerful.

More Blazing Combat next week.

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