Star Spangled DC War Stories Part 18: November 1960

The DC War Comics 1959-1976
by Corporals Enfantino and Seabrook

Joe Kubert/Jack Adler

G.I. Combat 84

"Dog Company is Holding"
Story by Robert Kanigher
Art by Ross Andru and Mike Esposito

"Skipper of the Doomed Duck!"
Story by Bob Haney
Art by Jack Abel

"The Third One is Fatal!"
Story by Bob Haney
Art by Jack Abel

Peter: Dog company has taken major hits and the only souls left are Big Al, Little Al, and Charlie Cigar (aka The TNT Trio) along with their shell-shocked lieutenant, but "Dog Company is Holding." Word comes over the radio that the higher-ups want Dog to stop an oncoming battalion of Japanese soldiers while the allies clean wounded off the beach. With a little ingenuity and some explosives, the trio manage to hold off the coming troops and save the day. What might have been an interesting and dramatic story is reduced to yet another Jerry Lewis laff-fest, with the three amigos constantly asking each other the same banal questions. Though I know the reputation of Robert Kanigher is built on decades of work, I'm still not seeing the kind of quality I'd heard whispered in convention halls throughout the years. Pooch and TNT Trio and Gunner and Sarge. Not the greatest storytelling. Wouldn't you say so, Jack? The art's dreadful as well. Wouldn't you say so, Jack? Time to move on. Wouldn't you say so, Jack?

The incomparable Ross Andru and Mike Esposito, ladies and gentlemen

Jack: Gosh, Peter, stop talkin' to me as if I'm deaf! Don'tcha know I can hear ya' just fine, Peter? What do you think, Big Al? In a nutshell, this is the biggest problem with this story--the relentless repeating of the characters' names, over and over and over. It's as if Kanigher wanted to imprint them on the readers' minds by incessant repetition. The cover of this issue says that the TNT Trio is "back by popular request," though it says "popular demand" on the splash page. Which is it? The trouble is that there is the germ of a good story here, under the terrible dialogue and Andru-Esposito art. The Trio are all that's left of Dog Company as the Japanese army approaches, and their leader is a shell-shocked lieutenant who thinks all of his men are still alive and kicking. This could have been better.

"Skipper of the Doomed Duck!"

Peter: Coming from a lineage that does not lose ships at sea in war, David Cameron is faced with a tough decision when his commanders order him to scuttle his own ship in order to block a harbor in "Skipper of the Doomed Duck." Fortunately for Cameron, the enemy doesn't make it easy for him but, in the end, the order is carried out and the day is saved. It's an intriguing situation that David is forced into, one most heroes don't have to face: destroy your own ship for the good of your comrades. I was intrigued by the scenario and thought Bob Haney did a good job getting across what a tough situation Cameron was put in. Thank goodness Haney decided to avoid the obligatory "we're on a doomed duck" mantra and concentrate on the story.

Jack: I was feeling sorry for young Davy as his Dad paraded him around the family home showing him framed portraits of one heroic ancestor after another. Who could live up to that? Fortunately, Davy did not have to do much and his Dad let him off the hook with a supportive letter.

"The Third One is Fatal!"

Peter: A World War One pilot's superstition is that the first two kills are easy but "The Third One is Fatal." Our hero, Jimmy Lake, is finding that to be the case when an enemy pilot makes Lake his primary target. A decent enough time waster but really not enough pages to tell a proper story and a bit confusing at times. I couldn't tell who was No. 3 and who was No. 4 after a while. Nice Russ Heath-esque art by chameleon Jack Abel.

Jack: And here I was thinking, "Too bad Russ Heath didn't draw this one"! I'm happy to see some WWI flying ace action with biplanes but Abel doesn't do much to generate suspense. I kept wondering about the math in this story. If the third plane you fight is fatal, how can the pilot here shoot down number four but still be concerned with number three? Doesn't number four become number three when he realizes that number three was OK? He shot down three planes, just not in order. Kind of fuzzy math, if you ask me.

Joe Kubert

Our Army at War 100

"No Exit for Easy"
Story by Robert Kanigher
Art by Joe Kubert

"Baby-Sitter in the Sky"
Story by Hank Chapman
Art by Jack Abel

"Four-Legged Tank!"
Story by Bob Haney
Art by Mort Drucker

Jack: Manny West, the newest member of Easy Co., thinks he can't handle it and tells Sgt. Rock and the other men every chance he gets. Manny is such a downer that Rock knows he has to change the way the soldier thinks before the negative chatter poisons the rest of the men. Rock thinks that there's "No Exit for Easy" from Manny's relentless doubts and complaints, but eventually our favorite sergeant's heroics and self-sacrifice effect a change in the new man and Easy Co. has its newest combat happy Joe.

Kubert. Nirvana.

Peter: Yep, we all know exactly where this one will go. We've seen it a dozen times already: the new recruit (introducing Manny West) who's having a hard time adjusting to life during wartime and is taken under-wing by the grizzled Sgt. Rock but who manages to redeem himself in battle by the end of the allotted space. How our hero Rock doesn't gun down Manny after his fifteenth wail about how he's "never going to change and will always be a loser" is beyond me. Ignore the cliches and you'll see that what makes this one different is Kanigher's mature dialogue (in particular, Rock's exchange with Manny, reproduced at left) and a near-obsessive compulsive disorder in the writer to get all the details right! That "disorder" is to our advantage as readers. The walk through the mine field segment should be taught in comic classes as an example of sustaining suspense with very few words and just a lot of little pictures. And, is it just me, but while Jack Abel is nearing Kubert levels (see "Desert Mosquito" below), is Kubert reaching the tier occupied by only a few (Frazetta, Eisner, Raymond, Williamson, etc.) and refining his work even more? The evidence here would point to that. Jack and I really should keep anatomy charts on our walls cataloguing Rock's various bullet wounds and flak scars. The shower scene got me to thinking: have we ever seen Rock without his "steel pot"?

"Baby-Sitter in the Sky"

Jack: We have seen him bareheaded and it's always a surprise to see his red hair. In "Baby-Sitter in the Sky," Conrad is a jet pilot in Korea who is tired of flying wingman and who wants to be the ace for a change. He gets his chance when two enemy jets come after him and he manages to shoot them both down. In a twist ending, we learn that the other pilot is his younger brother Pete, for whom he has been baby-sitting since they were kids.

"Four-Legged Tank!"

Peter: I'm not sure what this one teaches us. Whiney cry babies become heroes some day, too? You have to laugh at the very notion that Pete becomes a man the minute he gets recognition in the climax. His retort to his sister-in-law when she asks him to babysit his nephew ("Okay, Margie, okay! Hurry back! I've already spent the best years of my life baby-sitting for Pete!") only makes the reader wish Pete would be shot down in a blaze of embarrassment.

Jack: American soldier Hank is assigned to test out the newest weapon in 1918 France--a tank! He drives it to the farm of an old French soldier, who insists on attacking the enemy on horseback. When the old man is shot, Hank moves in but loses his machine and has to mount the old man's "Four-Legged Tank" to take back the occupied farmhouse. Mort Drucker's art is solid and he is quickly becoming one of my favorites in the DC war stable.

Peter: Sometimes I think Bob Kanigher should have introduced a fifth title in the early 1960s called Super-Intelligent War Animals. This tale includes a horse named Napoleon who can kick aside potato mashers and read its rider's thoughts. The Drucker art is nice but this is not my cup of tea.

Andru/Esposito

Star Spangled War Stories 93

"Goliath of the Western Front!"
Story by Robert Kanigher
Art by Ross Andru and Mike Esposito

"The Bridge That Couldn't Be Bombed"
Story by Hank Chapman
Art by Mort Drucker

"Desert Mosquito"
Story by Bob Haney
Art by Jack Abel

"Goliath of the Western Front"

Peter: The men of King Company love to tease "little Davy," the smallest man in the troop, until Davy shows his comrades how to topple a force bigger than him. The Nazis have been experimenting with giant robot soldiers and their initial test is stomping across King Company until little Davy finds the Achilles heel of the "Goliath of the Western Front" and brings the gargantuan goose-stepper to his steel knees. I'm not a fan of the science fiction-war crossovers perpetrated by Robert Kanigher and this one is certainly no exception. It's a silly, almost embarrassing waste of paper, and the paper-thin plotline's already been done by Kanigher ("The Biggest Target in the World" in Our Fighting Forces #52, December 1959). No help from Andru and Esposito, who contribute more of their unfortunate Archie Andrews art of the 1960s. Someone please get Russ Heath on the phone.

Jack: The drawings of the giant Nazi robot are pretty cool and this story lumbers along well enough until the inevitable conclusion. The jazzy retelling by a soldier of the David & Goliath story from the Bible segues nicely into the modern-day tale of little Davy the G.I. defeating his own version of the big guy. There is even a rare cameo by Adolph Hitler himself! Fortunately, the story did not turn into another catch-phrase repeater, though Davy gets in the habit of yelling "Get off my back!" over and over as the giant approaches.

"The Bridge That Couldn't Be Bombed"

Peter: Best story of the month (and perhaps the year) award goes to "The Bridge That Couldn't Be Bombed," a nail-biter about a Korean pilot who must use all the tricks in his book to destroy a key enemy bridge. Our hero dodges all manner of mischief and danger, reminding me of the best elements of Indiana Jones and James Bond. Hank Chapman manages to squeeze a very enthralling narrative into five and a half pages and Mort Drucker perfectly captures the claustrophobia of the jet cockpit and the terror of the brush. Perhaps Chapman drew a little inspiration for his explosive finale from Clouzot's Wages of Fear, but that's just spec on my part.

Jack: I'll agree that Drucker's art is top notch, but the writing isn't--"This is a TNT truck I'm piloting--and it's loaded with boom stuff!" is my favorite line. By the way, I Googled the heck out of "Huwang" but couldn't find a location in Korea to match. The most interesting thing in this issue (so far) to me was in one of the one-page fillers, where I learned that the first U.S. Army offensive in WWII was on Oct. 13, 1942, at Guadalcanal. I had been wondering how long it took to get going after Pearl Harbor and now I know--10 months.

Jack Abel? Yep!

Peter: The remains of "Baseball Patrol," a group of American recon GIs decimated by battle, face the insurmountable task of destroying an approaching tank, when they're helped out by two species of "Desert Mosquito": the insect and the Air Force bomber. If you can get past the silliness of the marauding insect, there's a very good, exciting tale being told here from both sides of the war. Jack Abel must have taken a couple weeks off work in the summer of 1960 and took some of Joe Kubert's art classes as Abel's work is being magically transformed from illegible and forgettable to near-dynamic. I'm keen to see just how much improvement we're yet to see. The Rock story, taken together with the final two-thirds of this issue, equal a very good month for DC War.

Jack: This was not bad! The annoying mosquito in the Nazi tank was a little bit much, since the Nazis couldn't seem to find their aim every time its bite stung "like a hot nail," but I liked the fighter jet flying low and spraying bullets into the view slit of the tank. For a six-pager by Haney and Abel in the back of the book, this is above average.

Financing the blog finally forces Jack and Peter to look for alternate housing!

Just imagine if you paid a dime
for this and kept it safe for 50 years!