The Last Outrage!

The suffering or the Jews and others during the Holocaust is a horror which weirdly fascinates and repels at the same time. The intense practiced cruel cold-blooded murder and torture inflicted on men women and children over the course of years is difficult to fathom, and so some will say it never happened. They prefer a world in which such evil didn't exist or they would like that the hate they themselves feel were more justifiable and the Holocaust makes that impossible. And some just never seem to get it, to understand that such evil is fundamentally different, yet still a part of man. The desire to expunge the "other" is all too commonplace, even in our "enlightened" modern day. 

In the story "The Last Outrage" which perhaps inspired this collection, we are introduced to Dina Babbitt, a survivor of Auschwitz who had made a successful career in animation in the years after the liberation of the camp and the end of the war. She worked on cartoons as varied as Wile Coyote, Daffy Duck and Captain Crunch. But her story begins here with Snow White, which she painted as a mural on a wall in Auschwitz to help lift the veil of suffering from the children trapped there. No less than the "Angel of Death" the sadistic Dr. Joseph Mengele took notice and wished to use her talents to help him record some of his heinous experiments. She painted many portraits of people for the purpose of recording (in Mengele's eyes) their various deficiencies particularly in respect to skin tone. After the camps were freed she left this work and never thought of it more until she learned that a museum in Poland was displaying her works. She wanted them back and the museum shockingly failed to comply. And as a result a long effort, ultimately unsuccessful was waged to get back work produced under such vile circumstances and held with egregious contempt. 

"The Last Outrage" was first published in the Marvel comic X-Men: Magneto - Testament. The writer of this story and the essays in this collection Rachel Medoff  and the artist of this story Neal Adams worked to help Babbitt, but to no avail and she passed away some years ago. Not only did the Holocaust happen, but thanks to the small-minded greed of people like the museum directors in Poland, the suffering it caused continues.

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Thou Shalt Not Kill!

Weird War Tales was one of the Bronze Age's strangest titles. It blended the DC mystery mag with the DC war comic and gave us a stiff tea that sometimes was a bit too much to drink.  Not so the story "Thou Shalt Not Kill"  from the eighth issue which features the Jewish legend of the Golem. As you can see, the Golem is powerful and mighty, even more mighty than the logo it looms above. Great Neal Adams cover.

In the article which comes with this story his other cover, the one rejected ultimately for his X-Men run featuring the Living Monolith is mentioned and Adams even suggested if they'd let him do that it might've save the comic. Really? Still it's a doozy.

Now the story itself is drawn by Steve Harper one of the myriad students in the Neal Adams umbrella and his work has heavy doses of Adams inks pulling it together in places. The writer is not known and Adams takes no credit in his discussion of the story. We have German soldiers going about their work of killing Jews and they come afoul of the statue of the Golem which of course they consider a myth until it rises up and crushes them. One soldier is left alive to tell the tale. It's not the strongest story by any means in the collection, but it does have a whopper of a cover. 

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Night Of The Reaper!

It is an absolute mystery to me why the Rutland, Vermont Halloween stories have never been collected in a single volume. (I'm talking to you Craig Yoe.) They are delightful artifacts from a bygone time when comics was a small world and dominated by two largish companies who had not yet been swallowed up by corporations and who treated their fans by inviting them into the story. Now these weren't exactly fans, but creators such as Marv Wolfman, Len Wein, Berni Wrightson and Steve Englehart among others who participated, but the sheer fun of the fourth-wall busting events brought absolute glee to this fanboy's heart.

"Night of the Reaper" is arguably the best of the Rutland stories, perhaps simply by dint of the art from superstar Neal Adams. The story weaves in and out and around the parade and the follow-up party hosted by Tom Fagan. During this dark and sometimes gruesome tale we learn that Nazis prowl the darkness and that one in particular, a former commandant of a death camp has found a hiding place in the isolated quiet of Vermont. Batman tries to track down the deadly "Grim Reaper" who seems to be appearing and killing off folks. 

While Batman gets to the bottom of the mystery and as we all know bring some level of justice to the proceedings, comic book pros find all sorts of tomfoolery to engage in, some of it even beneficial to the case.

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The Rock And The Bold!

I dearly miss the "Haneyverse". For those who might not know, the "Haneyverse" was the loving nickname fanboys gave to the work of Bob Haney, especially his work in The Brave and the Bold starring Batman and others. Those others could pop up from anywhere and sometimes any when and not always or even usually was much effort to maintain any connection to continuity in the guest's world. One of the regular visitors in the "Haneyverse" was Sgt.Rock.

There was very little communication generally between DC's war comics and its superhero comics, mostly I guess due to the difference in tone in the two genres and at DC anyway, the manner in which comics were arranged into fiefdoms with lots of editors running villages of comics. But in the "Haneyverse" it was all on the table and so we get Sgt. Rock teaming up with Batman both in the "modern" world and in the past of World War II. The time since WWII was still just close enough that Rock being a viable assist and vice versa was still possible.

In their first meeting Bruce Wayne is called upon during wartime to become a secret agent behind the lines and is assisted by Rock and Easy Company to forestall a deadly Nazi scheme to use poison gas. In the second we shift to the here and now and both Batman and Bruce Wayne are required to act as agents of the government when an ambassador is kidnapped and Rock is the primary suspect. Neal Adams drew the first with gusto and Nick Cardy was on hand to add his creamy goodness to the second.

(Reprint of Brave and Bold #108)

In their their team-up things get a little more fluid as we meet Rock as an older soldier who has been tracking the same man for many years, a man he believes to be Hitler. At the same time this man might or might not be the mysterious fellow who saves Batman from a well and then says the hero must do evil. It's a Faustian whodunnit of the first stripe. This is the first of three drawn by Jim Aparo.

When next they meet, it's Rock who's in big trouble with the ghost of a man he shot for cowardice long ago still haunts him. It's a weird tale with lots of convolutions but in the end as you already know Batman and Rock win the day.

But perhaps the weirdest of the Batman-Rock team-ups happened in issue #124 when both Rock and Batman are saved from certain death by the people who are in the best position to do so, artist Jim Aparo, writer Bob Haney and editor Murray Boltinoff.

As they are chased by the same terrorists in the story both Aparo and Haney use their wits to keep the story rolling and so keep Batman an Rock on the trail. The fourth wall is blasted to smithereens in this delightful comic book.

Batman and Sgt.Rock have a much ore regular adventure when they fight together in the heat of World War II against a deadly Nazi leader. The Batman here is Batman-2, and so this adventure is on Earth-2 where the Justice Society of America handles most of the superheroics. Finally continuity seems to have washed up on the shores of the exciting and unpredictable "Haneyverse".

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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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Speak-Out Series - Spirit World!

Spirit World is one of the two Speak-Out Series magazines which actually got published. It was part of the revolution that Jack Kirby hoped to spark in the comic book world when he took his talents to the house of  Superman and Batman, DC Comics. But sadly the book was not allowed to be all it could be for lack of support and understanding from the powers-that-were at DC at the time. But some years ago, they made up for it (a little) by reprinting the stories produced for the title and putting them neatly between two hard covers.


The story of how this collection of supernatural comic stories, fumetti, and collages eventually reached the newsstands (or more correctly didn't) is well documented by Mark Evanier in one of his typically revealing essays. The stories themselves are truly peculiar, introduced by Dr. Leopold Maas they were a bit darker in tone than the usual mystery mag stuff then available in most comics.


The cover was redrawn by Neal Adams over work already done by Kirby. I've not seen the Kirby original, so sadly I fear it must be lost. The Adams cover is provocative but doesn't really do justice to the bizarre material inside. The companion mag In the Days of the Mob did hit the stands, as I have a specific memory of seeing it in a drugstore, high up on a shelf well out of the reach of my young arms. I didn't dare ask for such an item for fear my curiosity might get back to my parents. One had to be careful when choosing reading material, as going a bit too far might close all sorts of doors. Vampirella for instance got me into some trouble with a friend's parents.

The magazines lasted one issue each. DC with its typical acumen cancelled them before sales figures could even be calculated, so it was a general fear of the material which must've done them in. Despite wooing Kirby from Marvel, clearly the DC folks didn't know what to do with the powerhouse talent they'd signed up. The bean counters were terrified of this visionary.


This later ad makes it sound like the mags sold out due to overwhelming fan interest, and not that they were unavailable because of publisher incompetence and distribution confusion.

The stories created for the second issue of Spirit World were divvied up and printed in color in various DC comics. See below for the covers under which these Kirby gems hide. These stories have been included in this reprint volume, for the first time seeing publication in a format similar to the original intent.





The price is a bit steep, but for Kirby buffs this one is a true gem. If you haven't gotten one already, I highly recommend it.

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