A true story this issue? At least one, I guess; I can't confirm the rest.

I know I joked "every time Hitler appears somehow, drink!" but none this issue: instead, an actual true story! From 1975, Weird War Tales #40. Cover by Ernie Chan.

The opener, "Back from the Dead," follows a couple G.I.'s during the Battle of the Bulge, as they survive a couple close calls--or do they? Yeah, no. (Story by Jack Oleck, art by Fred Carrillo.) Then, we get another short that was reprinted in Showcase Presents: the Great Disaster, as the last man on earth finds an unbroken plate glass window, in an otherwise demolished city; and contemplates everything that glass probably saw, all that history. Then he smashes it. Well, that was only two pages, I don't know what I expected. (Story by Len Wein, art by Howard Chaykin.)

Then, a Revolutionary War tale, "The Warrior Breed" Written by Jack Oleck, art by Buddy Gernale. It's not entirely historically accurate: Robert Shurteff is nearly turned away from enlisting in the Revolutionary Army as being 'puny,' but was actually tall for the time, like 5-foot-7! Shurteff won the respect of his fellow soldiers, and was wounded twice; yet strangely refused medical treatment, eventually contracting a fever. That would lead to 'his' discharge: 'Robert Shurteff' was actually Deborah Sampson, who passed herself off as a man and served for 17 months! As usual, I'm not up on my history, this was actually the first time I heard of this; so at long last comics are educational!

Finally, the oddball "The Soldier from Space," wherein an alien scout finds earth loaded with the sustenance his people need, if the humans don't wipe each other out first. After he's shot down, the Germans find the scout injured and amnesiac, and try to get him to turn his weapons on the Allies. Another bump on the noggin restores his memory, and he turns on the Germans; all the better to gather the blood his people drank! (Written by George Kashdan, art by Ric Estrada.) Read more!

Aw, man, Death's bookshelves are better organized than mine.

Another batch of shorts today, from 1980, Weird War Tales #91. Cover by Joe Kubert. Intro page by Romeo Tanghal.

"The Fire Down Below" is set a dark period of American history: firebombing Japan towards the end of WW II. (It was arguably excessive: Japan was by and large done by that point, although its leadership might not have thrown in the towel yet.) A gung-ho and unsympathetic pilot butts heads with his pacifist navigator, but both die after they bomb a young Japanese boy, who had survived an earlier firebombing and had developed firestarting powers of his own. (Sunfire?) No one learns anything, and the narrator Death is like, yeah, that'll happen. (Written by J.M. DeMatteis, art by Ernesto Patricio.)

"The Miracle of the Catacombs" is slightly more cheery; as a band of Italian soldiers have about had it with the war and their Nazi "allies." They're about to surrender to the Allies, when the Nazis stop and then turn on them. The Italians escape into the catacombs, with one staying behind to cover their retreat. He looks like a goner, but is saved by the rising Roman skeletons, who slaughter the Nazis, ala Tombs of the Blind Dead, except friendlier and chattier. (Written by Robert Bernstein, art by Dick Ayers and Dan Adkins.)

I had to stick in Wikipedia for this next one, as it's a six-page speedrun of Harold Godwinson, last crowned Anglo-Saxon king of England. Spoiler alert: his reign would not be a long one. ("Conquer or Die!" Written by Bob Haney, art by Tom Sutton.)

The issue closes with a future war story, post-nuclear apocalypse; which felt almost like a fair accompli, a done deal then. In this one, radioactive mutants were "2nd Class Citizens," forced to fight by cruel, Roman-centurion looking thugs. But this batch plots against the overseer, through his unborn son...who's born a mutant, you see it coming, yeah. (Written by Paul Kupperberg, art by Dick Ayers and John Celardo.) Read more!

This comic made me blurt out "What the hell?!" more than once, so by that metric; complete success.

I'm looking forward to this re-read, to see what else we glean from it: from 1980, Weird War Tales #85, "The War on the Edge of Reality!" Written by J.M. DeMatteis, art by Terry Henson.

The cover pitches this as "a bonus-length 22-page thriller!" In other words, a full-length story, instead of two or three shorts: WWT didn't seem to do that often, although we've seen an earlier one, #37. WWT also sometimes exceled at making a bad situation worse: oh, don't like war, huh? I'll give you something to cry about...This issue, a lost PT boat gets attacked by a pterodactyl--an alarmingly common occurrence in the title, I'm sure, but this one had a German uniform and helmet, and cusses them out in Deutsch when shot down. Next, the boat is swarmed by Japanese apes (not those apes...well, maybe) and mythological creatures gone Nazi. What could possibly save those brave American soldiers now?

Oh, come on. The PT boat crew is saved by the sudden arrival of the gold-plated battleship U.S.S. Capitalism. Which appears to be manned by an unsavory and unfriendly looking lot, but it, and the attackers, all disappear. Since in WWII every American grouping of soldiers had at least one guy that read the pulps, whose job it was to process weird crap like this for their C.O. (and the reader!) but he doesn't have long to articulate his multiverse theories, as another ship arrives to board them: another golden 'American' ship, the Master Race. Captured and beaten, the crew also gets their names made fun of as "unAmerican" by their captors, led by Captain Du Pont, who wants to figure out why an American boat, a type he'd never seen before, would have foreigners on it. Reading their documents, Du Pont scoffs at the idea of Pearl Harbor: everyone knows, America started the war! To keep all the inferiors of the world from killing themselves, and maybe getting a little something-something for their trouble--that was, after all the American way! (In Du Pont's telling, the soldiers appear to be pillaging women; in case they weren't scummy enough.)

The PT captain had been going through a crisis before this, and after bottoming out in despair that the rabid Du Pont was seemingly a better commander than he was, has to dig his way out of it. But, Du Pont puts the PT crew in gladiatorial matches against captured Japanese and German troops, who were doubtless a bit keen on revenge, and fight hard. The PT captain rallies them all, against their captors, and kills Du Pont with a spear. Then attacked from within and without, the laser blasters on the Master Race seem to have won the day, but the Japanese had developed the A-bomb before the Americans, and nuke the ship. The PT captain and crew awaken back on their boat, even the guys that had already fallen: the pulp reader theorizes, if they weren't from there, maybe they couldn't die there? The radio man also relays a message that seems like good news, at first: the war was over, after the A-bomb was dropped on Japan, but Roosevelt was making the announcement, and in their reality he had died months prior? Seeing the crew of a nearby ship, they realize, they were no closer to home at all...

Golden warships with horrible, and racist, names? An America that strikes first and seems more concerned with racism and profit? Yeesh, that kinda hit hard the other day, but more so after the weekend. On a more cheerful note, the letters page includes an ad for Warlord #31, an issue I love! Read more!

A safe bet for this title: every time Hitler appears somehow, drink!

I had to go back and add a tag for "Weird War Tales," since we had not only blogged a few of them, but other tags didn't quite cover it. Usually it was a horror book, sure; sometimes it was a fantastic yet somber meditation on the horrors that war could inflict upon the innocent and the guilty alike or the depths either could sink to; and other times it was soldiers vs. dinosaurs. And today, well, let's see! From 1974, Weird War Tales #26, cover by Luis Dominguez.

"The Survivor" opens in World War I, where French soldier Deauville is a cheery, sadistic butcher; but one that seems to get the job done. Sent to take out a machine-gun nest, he is seemingly riddled with bullets, yet still clears the nest. Later though, he uncharacteristically nudges a soldier shooting at a retreating young German soldier, so that he is only wounded instead of killed. Deauville then disappears, seemingly deserting; but one of his comrades wonders if he hadn't been there, for some specific reason, that he had accomplished...like saving a young Hitler! (Written by John Albano, art by Alfredo Alcala.)

"Jump into Hell" follows a band of paratroopers, sent to take a small village, but they find an extra man on the ground; a captain separated from his unit. Unsure if they could trust him, they take him along, but are then taken by seeming ghosts: devil-worshippers from centuries ago! The captain, actually a chaplain, saves them; but the lieutenant still gets chewed out for not taking the village he was supposed to...(Written by Jack Oleck, art by Alfredo Alcala.)

Lastly, "A Time to Die" feels really stolen from a Twilight Zone episode or comic? (Yeah, "King Nine Will Not Return.") A WW II bomber captain had bailed out and saved himself, but the guilt was now killing him, as all he could do was wish he could take it back. And he does, as in his do-over he crash-lands with his men...who are then slaughtered by Nazis anyway, but this time he gets to die with them. Back at the hospital, the doctors figure he died in his hallucination...except, how were his shoes full of sand? (Written by Jack Oleck, art by Ernie Chua, aka Ernie Chan, of about a million Conan comics.) Read more!

How long is Don Quixote; I really should just read that now.

We'll see if this post ends up on Halloween, or something else: I ended up taking some time off, but I have to have my pipes reamed or something...that's not a metaphor, my kitchen sink's been clogged up for days, and drain cleaner has done nothing but fill my house with the refreshing odor of drain cleaner. I feel like I watched a ton of horror movies, but not sure any really knocked my socks off. (So Sweet...So Perverse, When Evil Lurks, and the Night Strangler were probably the last few; although I watched the Puppetman after those, and it wasn't bad!) Is this an appropriately Halloween book? Sure, why not? From 1975, Weird War Tales #37, "The Three Wars of Don Q.!" Written by Arnold Drake, art by Leopoldo Duranona.

Pre-WWII, recently fired war correspondent Nick Taylor discovers German soldiers secretly fighting in the Spanish civil war, which would be the kind of scoop that could get him his job back, if he can avoid getting murdered. Hiding out in a castle's crypt, he meets a strange little man that claims to be Sancho Panza, and he believes Nick to be Don Quixote! (We've mentioned it before here, but I still don't think I've read the actual original.) Sancho has a moment where it seems like he's going to murder the false Don, but shakes it off, since they have to ride against the Moors in the morning. After getting armored up, Nick tries to protest that he wasn't Don Quixote, but Sancho ignores that, and gives him "the talisman of the horned cat!" that Quixote had got when he saved a witch's life. Neat, but can that help him...?

Sancho sees a Moorish "falcon of war" coming for them: it's really a German fighter plane, although Nick even seems to see it as a falcon, when he takes a run to throw a spear at it. And takes it down, which even Nick considers unlikely. He then sees a 'dragon,' that then returns to the form of a German tank, which Nick also takes out; but he and Sancho are then captured. That's no big deal, though, since the talisman can get them out, like it always does--and it does, seemingly teleporting them to freedom, or the local equivalent, in the 15th century...After fighting some Moors, Nick and Sancho are again captured, but the talisman saves them from execution; this time taking them to the future, 3254!

Humanity was long gone by that point; and Nick gets dragged into a war between two groups of apes and such, with a scheme to use an old King Kong display to plead for peace. He realizes the apes weren't trying to bring about peace for its own sake, but so they could rule; and Nick destroys their time scanner and sends himself and Sancho back to 1938. Well, himself, anyway: Sancho and the talisman have seemingly aged to nothingness when he wakes up. He rushes to a phone, to call in his story; only to be told he was too late: it was now 1939, and he had lost an entire year! Nick's old boss as much as calls him a drunk; but that was a pretty loopy story and I can't blame him. 

The blurb on the cover proclaims this issue "Special! An Unusual Full-Length War Novel!" which I don't think the book did often. Which might be just as well, this reads like a fever dream.

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I had to make a quick check, to see if this issue's lead story was in the War That Time Forgot Showcase we mentioned last week. Nope! I also don't know why this series didn't get at least one Showcase collection of its own, either. From 1981, Weird War Tales #99, featuring "A Gauntlet of Giants!" Created and written by Robert Kanigher, pencils by Dave Cockrum, inks by Jerry Ordway! (Is it "Gantlet" or "Gauntlet"? They spell it both ways, between the cover and the lead story.)

A PBY 'flying boat' rescue crew fights hard to save a downed bomber's men, from a familar dinosaur-infested island. We mentioned before, there wasn't really much continuity in the WTTF stories, but a good amount of them ended with the survivors having no proof: in this case, the rescue crew's skipper is Section 8'd out of the service, for telling his superiors he had been fighting dinosaurs; while his crew hem and haw and look at their shoes, afraid of getting the butterfly-net treatment themselves. Thanks heaps, guys!

"A Match Made in Hell!" takes place during the British occupation of Bengal, and a viceroy of the Queen, the extraordinarily-British named "Col. Sir Aubrey Clegg-Haversham" is abusing the hell of out the locals, until he becomes smitten with the lovely Ivira. She claims per the rules of her sect, "only a husband may gaze upon a woman's body!" and I think the key word Aubrey missed in there was "sect." Maybe he misheard. Still, she surprises him by getting a bit handsy on their wedding night...(Written by George Kashdan, art by Ric Estrada.)

In "Man's Best Friend Enemy!" a WWII canine soldier is infected by a biological weapon, and his handler waits too long to put him down. Steve Ditko art, though, on another Kashdan story. "Divine Wind" is a rare story from the Japanese side of the war: a pilot's little brother is selected to be a kamikaze, but when the pilot dies, he still looks out for his brother. (Written by Mike W. Barr, art by Mar Amongo.) There's also the USPS Statement of Ownership, Management and Circulation; actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date, 225,585; and Batman in a Hostess Cup Cakes ad and the subscription ad! What more could anyone want? Read more!

Who wouldn't want their own killer robot sidekick?

I forgot I had blogged the last issue of this series, but this looks like the last story for G.I. Robot, who I thought had been the series lead, or co-lead, for longer. From 1983, Weird War Tales #122, featuring "Robots Don't Dream!" Created and written by Robert Kanigher, pencils by George Tuska, inks by Ernie Colón; "The Hand of Glory" Written by Jack C. Harris, pencils by Topper Helmers, inks by Gary Martin; and "Showing the Flag" Written by Dan Mishkin and Gary Cohn, pencils by Don Newton, inks by Sal Trapani.

Sgt. Coker probably wasn't raised with stories and toys about robots, so getting paired up with G.I. Robot J.A.K.E. II (Jungle Automatic Killer Experimental) maybe wasn't as attractive a prospect as it would be for some. Coker was having nightmares: he felt the robot was "one short--one malfunction" away from turning on him, but the brass isn't hearing it. After a mission goes south, the pair are trapped in a minefield, then faces with a sumo robot; the latest Japanese attempt to match J.A.K.E. (The samurai and geisha versions had come up short!) J.A.K.E. gets torn up, but Coker rallies him to fight like a marine, and he turns it around. Coker may still not be on the same page as his largely silent partner, though.

In "The Hand of Glory," a pilot in 1933 regrets missing the Great War, and the glory that his older brother racked up, that hung over him his whole life. He waits for "the hand of glory to catch (him) in its grasp," but as usual, be careful what you wish for. Still, who attacked New York City in 1933? An unlicensed crossover, that's who!

I thought there was another crossover in "Showing the Flag," as the submarine resembles the Nautilus, but the banner doesn't match Nemo's. An old sailor tells of a battle in 1911, the HMS Relentless versus a mysterious black sub, who may have intended to claim ports by showing the flag...and who may return. Also this issue: Robert Kanigher put together a checklist of "War That Time Forgot" stories, and the next issue was a leftover from the cancelled Mystery in Space, with a Joe Kubert cover. The cover makes it look good, anyway! Read more!

I thought radon was the invisible enemy. Maybe he spends the issue shooting at it.

Although, if radon turned into a tiger before killing you, I guess I can see why I need to put fresh batteries in the detector. From 1974, Weird War Tales #24, featuring "The Invisible Enemy" Written by Jack Oleck, art by Ernie Chua (Chan); and "The Last Battle" Written by Jack Oleck, art by Alex Niño.

The lead story features a Nazi oberlieutnant rescued ten years after the war ended, from being trapped inside a fortified supply depot during the war's final days. The workers that dug him out feel pity for the bedraggled lunatic, but might be less sympathetic if they knew his history: he had committed a ton of atrocities, including the murder of prisoners; one of whom gives him the gypsy curse that "as you kill under the sign of the tiger, so one day a tiger will kill you!" That curse bothers him, so when the German advance finally collapses and he is forced to retreat to Berlin, he's glad to have the job of guarding a supply depot, even when it's bombed and he and his troops are trapped inside: he's got food, water, air vents, he's safer inside! Even if he does have to kill the rest of his men. Still, despite his glee at surviving the war, he still has a freakout and imagines the workmen as tigers. Taking a bad spill at the zoo, he is killed by the statue of a tiger, as the workmen scratch their heads. The narrator Death explains he was killed by "conscience," I misread that first as "coincidence," which kind of makes sense.

The second feature, "The Last Battle" is better: in 2080, having crushed all his enemies, a dictator has the whole planet under his rule, and schemes to keep it. Although he seems to be doing a good job of quashing little revolts when they pop up, he wants the people to want him, and the only way to do that is give them another enemy. Why not Mars? His generals point out it's a dead rock, but that just means it won't fight back! A little propaganda--what we'd now call 'fake news'--and the people are clamoring for the leader to save them from the Martian foe. It goes over great, until it's time to bomb Mars flat, and maybe the leader should've declared war on Venus instead.

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Remember when I said I needed a lower-profile scanner so I could watch TV? Well, we're testing it out here, on the first comic I could grab! From 1981, Weird War Tales #106, featuring "The Dame or the Dinosaur" Created and written by Robert Kanigher, pencils by Joe Staton, inks by Jerry Ordway; "Old Soldiers Never Always Die!" Written by Mike W. Barr, art by E.R. Cruz; "Ambushed by the Dead" Written by Robert Kanigher, pencils by Mark D. Bright, inks by Gerry Talaoc; and "Return Engagement" Written by George Kashdan, art by Steve Ditko.

The lead story was another of Kanigher's semi-regular War That Time Forgot stories, wherein three Navy frogmen are distracted from their mission first by one of them following a girl only he can see, then dinosaurs. The frogmen weren't recurring characters, yet you still get the feeling this happened to them all the time. Next, "Old Soldiers Never Always Die!" is a more grounded and serious story, as an aged World War I veteran suits back up for action, while the rest of his nation celebrates the election of Adolf Hitler!

"Ambushed by the Dead" is a dark two-pager, then "Return Engagement" is a Scottish bit of nonsense with feuding clans, witches, and monsters. Still, not a bad issue!

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Death has five costume changes this issue; total diva.

The cover blurb sounds more suggestive out of context: "What is the fine line...between flesh and fantasy!" Apparently, it's today's book! From 1981, Weird War Tales #95.

Behind a Joe Kubert cover, we get four stories hosted by Death; because I think probably 95% of this title's stories ended with "...and then everyone died!" Death has a cheery little referee hat and whistle for "Come Play War with Me!" (Written by George Kashdan, art by Fred Carrillo.) Set in 1853, a Russian colonel relinquishes command of his battalion (and his hat!) to an alien visitor with fantastic weapons; reasoning he could use them to defeat the Turks. It doesn't occur to him the Turks might have the same weapons, until much too late. The alien visitors are a little disappointed in the earthlings, even if they just murdered a ton of them...

"The Way of the Horse" has a nice twist, but is a slight three pages. (Written by Dan Mishkin and Gary Cohn, art by Nestor Infante.) "The 600 Heads of Death!" has Steve Ditko art that wouldn't have been been out of place in classic Marvel monster titles, except Robert Kanigher's story is a hair more violent. The cover story, "Between Flesh and Fantasy" is about a pair of WWII-era soldiers, Becker and Salgado, on a troopship to Europe. Becker is gung-ho, a fan of Conan-styled pulp barbarian Nokka, and looks down on gypsy Salgado, who doesn't think this 'glorious' war was just to prove Becker's manhood. After a brawl, Salgado decides to use "gypsy magic" to teach Becker a lesson: a lesson Becker might've learned for himself after his first exposure to battle, but he's visited by his idol Nokka. And it's a lesson Salgado maybe should've learned himself...(Written by J.M. DeMatteis, art by Noly Zamora.)
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That's a question for Mythbusters. Or Deadliest Warrior...Both cancelled? Son of a...

I probably haven't read anywhere near as many as were published, but I still feel like I've read a metric ton of DC's army guys vs. dinosaurs comics. (I just had to check my shelf for Showcase Presents: The War That Time Forgot, but didn't see it. Swore I had it somewhere, that would've accounted for a bunch of them...) And I want to say in most, if not all of them, even .50 cal machine gun fire bounces off dinosaurs like water off a duck's back. Like today's book! From 1980, Weird War Tales #94, featuring "The Eye of Hell!" Written by Robert Kanigher, art by Franc Reyes. (And a nice Joe Kubert cover!)

A fairly standard story for the title leads off: in 1943, a US tank crew on a South Pacific island faces off against a tyrannosaurus rex to save a native girl from being sacrificed. And the "50 cal. slugs are bouncin' off its hide like confetti at a Flatbush Ave. parade!" I'm not sure that those bullets wouldn't have torn up the t-rex; but it also picks up the tank for later eatin', so...The soldiers set the tank to blow, and make a run for it; the tank explodes before the dinosaur can throw it at them, and a lava flow opens up for good measure. About as traditional as a Christmas tree!

Also this issue: "Through the Past...Darkly!" A Twilight Zone-style tale from J.M. DeMatteis and Gerald Forton. Businessman Henry Geller, is accused of being Nazi war criminal Heinrich Geisen, by a concentration camp survivor. That night, Geller goes to bed, only to wake up in a WWII camp himself! Panicked, he attempts to flee, but instead dragged to "the showers..."

This isn't the deepest story, but it manages two twists on the last page, so that's something.

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"The End" Week: Weird War Tales #124!

From 1983, Weird War Tales #124, featuring the lead story "Old Enemies Never Die!" Written by Robert Kanigher, pencils by Topper Helmers, inks by Gary Martin.

The lead is a pretty standard piece for the long-running war anthology, as two foes battle over a woman over and over again, reincarnating and battling in different times. But there's a more personal page where longtime WWT stalwarts the Creature Commandos, G.I. Robot, and "R.K." are sentenced to death by General Paul Levitz "for rebelliously displaying signs of humanity." Their sentence is commuted, in that they're launched in an I.C.B.M. at Hitler's bunker, but instead disappear into space. I'm guessing Kanigher wasn't thrilled about the book being cancelled. But I wonder how he would feel knowing DC would to this day still bring them out every now and again, and G.I. Robot and the Creature Commandos would both appear in cartoons like Batman: the Brave and the Bold...I hope he'd approve.


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