Tuesday, December 01, 2020

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 NiƱo.
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.



1 comment:

Mr. Morbid's House Of Fun said...

Like the meme says, concerning whether or not conscience or coincidence fits here...why not both?