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?
For me, this further illustrates why Cockrum doesn't get the praise he deserves for how well he drew planes. I mean we got that during his X-Men run, but I imagine stories like this, depending on how many war stories he drew, really showcased how well he drew planes.
ReplyDeleteHaversham definitely seems like the type to be into some kinky sex shit.
The last one seems like a war version of Old Yeller. Sad.
Weird War Tales did get a Showcase volume- it was the first 20 issues though, and the recurring features didn't show up until around 50. A bunch of the Day After Tomorrow stories ended up in the Great Disaster Showcase as well (great volume all around that one, by the way- long but a lot of 70's and 80's stuff that's never been reprinted elsewhere). Only other thing I can think of that's gotten reprinted from there was Creature Commandos, though it's not terribly hard to find the back half in dollar bins. I'd definitely recommend picking up whatever you can from that era.
ReplyDelete@H: Good to hear on that front, shame those kinds of anthology series(series i?) don't get enough love and stay in a reprint/collected edition rotation enough.
ReplyDeleteI'd like to think DC would be on the ball about putting out new Showcase or multiple trades of the Creature Commandos given the new movie material Gunn's putting out soon about them.
They did put out a new edition of the Creature Commandos trade a few months ago, but it was the same stuff as the one from about 10 years ago. I don't know if they've collected anything from their later appearances. Also, I don't think there's been a new Showcase since 2016- both DC and Marvel seem to be focusing on full color collections in the $30-50 range.
ReplyDelete