Star Spangled DC War Stories Part 22: March 1961

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

Russ Heath and Jack Adler

G.I. Combat 86

"Secret of the Fort Which Did Not Return"
Story by Robert Kanigher
Art by Russ Heath

"Soldier in the Dark!"
Story by Bob Haney
Art by Jack Abel

"Battle Parrot"
Story by Bob Haney
Art by Joe Kubert

Peter: A bomber continues on its course despite losing most of its crew. Who steers the giant fortress? As unlikely as the concept might be, "Secret of the Fort Which Did Not Return" is about as exciting a war story as we've encountered yet. Very much like a 1950s war movie, very grim in its systematic elimination of its cast, leaving only our mourning narrator. Heath's art, as always, is majestic.

"Secret of the Fort Which Did Not Return"

Jack: Peter, I have to disagree with something you've been saying recently--I think Kubert is better than Heath. With that said, though, "Secret" is a powerful story, and I think most of its power comes from the clean, simple way Heath tells the story in pictures. The constant repetition of "Mother Hen" is annoying but Heath's sincere faces and exciting plane action keep the story from sinking beneath Kanigher's tired repetition. The panel where the bombardier parachutes alone out of the empty plane is rather moving.

"Soldier in the Dark"

Peter: PVT Blake is steamed at his sergeant for making him feel like a "Soldier in the Dark." His C.O. won't let him know what his assignment is, so pissing and moaning is the order of the day. Why Stallone or Schwarzenegger didn't latch onto this heaping helping of machismo, I'll never know. How many more stories of under appreciated soldiers who are illuminated before their six pages are up (usually the whiny mope has an ear-to-ear in the final panel)?

Jack: Jack Abel continues his revival in this action-packed 6-pager. There's a very nice splash page and a cool, wordless panel of two Nazis smiling after they fire a mortar shell. We all know where the story is going from page one but it held my interest.

Peter: The Perch and its crew disappear without a trace, leaving only a life raft holding the submarine's mascot, a "Battle Parrot" named Scuttlebutt. Now the crew of the Kingfish search low and high for clues. Looks like animals at war was the big thing in 1961 and Bob Haney wanted to slice off a piece of the pie usually reserved for Bob Kanigher. So far, neither can convince me a war story populated by intelligent livestock is anything more than a gimmick. Kubert's art, always good, is the only thing worth turning the pages for. Supremely silly stuff. Ack!

Jack: Not Kubert's best, but still great--even the parrot is bearable. The panel that shows the submarine cruising by moonlight is a beauty. Do you think a sub could really bob up and fire as quickly as the one does in this story? I was an English major so I don't know a thing about physics, but it seems like it would have to settle a little longer than a split second before it could fire torpedoes with accuracy. By the way, the circulation figures this issue show that G.I. Combat was selling 182,000 copies a month. At 10 cents a copy, that's a gross of $18,200. Yes, $18,200 in dimes!

Joe Kubert

Our Army at War 104

"A New Kind of War!"
Story by Robert Kanigher
Art by Joe Kubert

"My Rival, the Jet!"
Story by Bob Haney
Art by Irv Novick

"Combat Racket!"
Story by Hank Chapman
Art by Russ Heath

Jack: In "A New Kind of War!" Sgt. Rock chides the combat happy Joes of Easy Company for spending too much time thinking about their girls back home. The grizzled veteran insists that this will take their minds off battle and put them at risk of harm. When Rock is injured by an explosion, he wakes to find himself in the care of pretty Nurse Honey, who insists that he stay put. But you can't keep the leader of Easy Co. down for long, and soon Rock is back on the street, with the nurse trailing along, trying to get him back to his hospital bed. As in "Battle Parrot" in this month's G.I. Combat, Kubert's art is not at its best here, and the story lacks the suspense and depth of the best Rock tales.

"A New Kind of War!"

Peter: I wasn’t that crazy about this one, essentially a solo Rock story. It drags where a Rock tale usually roars but that look on Rock’s face when Nurse Honey (really?) finally gets to plant one on the Sarge’s half-shaved cheek is priceless.

Jack: Jet pilot Bill Gage has a new gal--Suzie the jet plane! And boy is Army Nurse Sally Bell jealous! She wishes that the jet would crash and burn and stop being "My Rival, the Jet!" But when Bill gets into trouble on a mission, Sally starts hoping the new gal hangs on and brings her man home safely! If I were a 10 year old boy in 1961, I'd be going "yuck!" at this issue of Our Army At War! Two stories involving GIRLS!

"My Rival, the Jet!"

Peter: In both art and story, this is one of the worst war tales we’ve run across yet. It’s soap opera tripe that should have been relegated to one of DC’s romance titles. A woman jealous of a jet is almost an embarrassing concept.

Jack: When a rookie soldier goes nuts from all of the "Combat Racket!" his sergeant explains that every sound he hears conveys important information. He goes on patrol with the sergeant and learns to pick up sounds, sounds that save both of their lives. Well, Peter, I think Russ Heath wins the art war for this issue. This is a very well-illustrated six-page story. The only problem is that I think Chapman's script called for potato mashers but Russ drew pineapples!

Peter: Its giant red title letters and multi-panel pages reminded me a lot of the EC war comics but its incessant joy in bringing the action to a halt (in order to lecture us about the sounds of war) dampened my eventual rating. Russ Heath's glorious art is almost John Severin-ish here, also an EC reminder.

Potato mashers?

Andru/Esposito

Star Spangled War Stories 95

"Guinea Pig Patrol!"
Story by Robert Kanigher
Art by Ross Andru and Mike Esposito

"The Human Torpedo!"
Story by Bob Haney
Art by Jack Abel

"Gunner From the Past!"
Story by Bob Haney
Art by Russ Heath

The impossibly large protagonist
of "Guinea Pig Patrol!"

Peter: When missing paratrooper Hank Howard, gone for 33 days, is found floating in the Pacific, a "Guinea Pig Patrol!" is quickly dispatched to find out what went wrong and where the other members of Howard's patrol got to. What the men find is a nightmare from the dinosaur age, water monsters who strand the trio on a small island until reinforcements arrive and save the day. I'm assuming Bob Kanigher didn't bank on the same readers showing up every other month to read SSWS as there's no continuity whatsoever to this series (of course, one could argue there's none in the other war series either). Either we're dealing with parallel universes (not an impossibility with DC) or the Army has a lousy communication system. Surely, some of the soldiers from the previous adventures survived and radioed they'd encountered "nightmares of the dinosaur age" (and how is it these unrelated platoons use that same weird phrase?). That pterodactyl, by the way, is insanely out of scale, dwarfing that jet it holds like a toy in its talons.

John: Private Scoleri, reporting for duty! After what seems like ages, the dinosaurs have returned to SSWS (and with them, me, for a few pithy comments). I'll forgive the artists the ever changing scale of the dinos to best fit their needs, as a plane vs. a normal-sized pterodactyl. But again I find it amusing that a) the soldiers adjust all-too-quickly, not just to one dinosaur that knocks them out of the sky, but to the tag-team of dinosaurs that they come across, one after another. And worst of all, once rescued, they don't even mention the dinosaurs. They just have a brief chuckle to themselves. I'm hoping that future installments of TWTTF will return to some level of continuity from tale to tale. While I like seeing soldiers go up against dinosaurs as much (or perhaps more) than the next guy, the formula they're relying on is going to get stale pretty quick.

Jack: The initial pages featuring the haunted paratrooper get things off to a good start, but then we're right back to the same old story about finding dinosaurs and blowing the heck out of them. I appreciated the giant pterodactyl's "Skree!" as a precursor to Man-Bat, who favored the same expression, as I recall. I would say that this series catered more to kids than the usual DC war comic book, but then I'd have to accept that Gunner, Sarge and Pooch were meant for more adult readers or, god forbid, that the same could be said about the T.N.T. Trio. Sometimes it seems like we're hanging on to Kubert and Heath and holding on till Enemy Ace and Unknown Soldier get going.

"The Human Torpedo!"

Peter: In "The Human Torpedo," something goes terribly wrong when the submarine Cobia fires two torpedoes and they both come back at her. One detonates, crippling her, while the other continually bumps against her hull. Knowing the missile will eventually find its target, torpedo man Nick uses his frogman skills to ride the torpedo like a prize bull right into a Japanese battleship. Banzai! Again, I'm no expert at this war business (though I did have one of those nifty subs that would sink and rise in the tub) but I have to believe a guy riding a toro into a war ship would make a Vet laugh out loud.

Jack: You have to admit it was pretty cool, though! Sometimes these heroic soldiers seem to get a little too close to the explosions they set off, making me think that at least their eyebrows must get singed, if nothing else. It's kind of like Rock shooting down a plane and the plane landing in a convenient tree right in front of him, or those omnipresent tanks blowing up with soldiers sitting on top of them.

Heath!

Peter: Ol' Pop gets a right 'ol riding from his skipper, absorbing abuse about his age and usefulness to his WWII comrades until the entire crew aboard his war plane is shot up and Pop has to draw on his WWI experience to bring the men to safety. Once the crew disembark, we discover that Pop, the "Gunner from the Past,"  is actually the skipper's father. I could see the "twist" coming from very early and had any of you been in the room with me, you'd have heard an audible groan rise up when I was proven correct. Too many close-ups stifle Russ Heath's art, giving it a Jack Davis look. He should be allowed to "breathe."

Jack: I did not see the twist coming, but it was pretty corny. I liked Heath's art in this one, especially the air action. By the way, this issue has the sales figures--169,000 per month sold!

"Gunner from the Past"

Hawkman returns for the Silver Age!

DC's main competitor, Dell, had
raised prices to 15 cents with issues
cover-dated February 1961.