I've been reading Unknown Soldier #264-267.

All the Soldier stories (Haney with Ayers and Talaoc) were entertaining if nothing else. The major one being a two-parter where the Soldier is sent to North Africa to investigate a tank squad (nicknamed the Marauders) whose commanding general has been murdered. In the midst of discovering the killer, Soldier and the squad must also contend with an imminent assault by Rommel. A new plan after learning of Rommel's new battle tactics along with a quirk of European writing help save the day (which of course immediately brought to mind one of George C Scott's more famous lines from Patton: "Rommel... you magnificent bas****, I read your book!!")

However what really caught my attention were the back-up stories featuring characters whom I've never encountered before now.

First up is Steve Savage, the Balloon Buster. #264 had the last part of an arc with Savage (Kanigher with Speigle) while #265-267 had an Enemy Ace arc (Kanigher with Severin) that ended with the inevitable duel between Savage and Von Hammer. Savage appears to be the American ace counterpart to Von Hammer, the quintessential American cowboy who flies instead of riding a mustang horse. He has the skill, talent and nerve to fly as an ace while also understanding  the code of the killing fields of the skies. He's also about freedom and doing what's right even if goes against command's orders/decisions.

The perceptions of the two aces couldn't be any opposite though. Von Hammer comes from a distinguished family line of warriors while Savage continually displays his skills in hopes of proving himself to be more than just " po' white trash". Even Savage's commander refers to him as such to Von Hammer when Hammer had been captured momentarily.  Such a description and character motivation caught me off guard at first but the Enemy Ace arc displayed these similarities and differences between the two ace pilots rather well, I grew to like Savage. Their duel was great, starting in the sky and ending with a pistol duel at ten paces. Von Hammer was wounded but Savage's fate was left rather ambiguous. I hoped he survived to fly again.

Next up was the Viking Commando, featured here in a two-parter by Kanigher and George Evans. Okay, so let me see if I get this straight: Valoric, a Viking, is apparently killed in the 12th century. His love, Fey, a Valkyrie maiden, is eager to take him to Valhalla where they can spend eternity together. Only he's not truly dead at that moment...so Odin blows her off course from Valhalla through a cosmic black hole to land in the 20th century wherein Valoric becomes a commando in the war.

Even typing all of that makes it sounds like a crazy concept.  Yet Kanigher mines this for some good drama along with some good battle action. A female photojournalist has fallen for Valoric which incenses Fey who is still waiting for Valoric to die the honorable warrior death so they can be off to Valhalla. It's kind of a tragic love triangle to a degree. Here, some of the top brass don't believe Valoric's claims of being a Viking despite his successes on the battle fields. At one point, he's charged with a Section 8 and dragged away only to become embroiled in stopping a Nazi scientist's new doomsday weapon. It all sounds loony but somehow it works rather well.

I have to ask though, I have just gotten some new back issues of Sgt. Rock Classic, the first issue of which reprints the team-up between Rock and the Viking Prince. Though I have yet to read it and I don't know which came first, still I have to wonder if this team-up may have helped inspire Kanigher for this particular character.

 

I hesitate to correct you, cody, as one of the most literate and best informed of our community, but Steve Savage was a mid-60s guy who appeared as the cover feature in four of the final six issues of All-American Men of War (112-114, 116). 

AAMW, the first of DC's "Big Five" war titles to give up the ghost, had been an air war-related title since the introduction of Johnny Cloud in #82 in 1960. I'm guessing that he was failing to draw a big following, as he was not always the cover star. I think Savage, who was based on American flier Frank Luke, was introduced to try to save AAMW from cancellation. Kanigher may have been trying to capitalize on the recent popularity of Enemy Ace, who had been given his own slot in Showcase earlier in 1965.

Luke was America's second-ranking ace in World War One. His specialty was taking on German observation balloons, which were heavily guarded, dangerous targets.

In September, 1918, Luke flew ten missions in nine days and shot down fourteen enemy balloons and four planes. Before September ended, Luke was shot down and killed on the ground by German machine gunners. Reports said that he died firing his pistol at the Germans. A worthy model for Kanigher to use.

Savage's four adventures were visual treats, with three of them (and one cover) drawn by Russ Heath and one story and the other three covers by Joe Kubert. 



 

Dogs of War
Sheila Keenan (writer) and Nathan Fox (artist), 2013


Even when I first started out in comics, I was never much of a war comics reader, and I only go back to that well if the topic interests me (like the post on the preceding page about Garth Ennis' Soviet airwomen series); in this case, I like dogs, so I checked this one out of the library as soon as I saw it on the shelf (yeah, like I don't have enough books at home waiting to be read).
Dogs of War is meant for younger readers (it was published by a division of Scholastic), so there's - thankfully - not a lot of graphic depictions of the horrors of war. Keenan nevertheless made an effort not to romanticize warfare, although I'm not sure she entirely succeeded.

As shown on the back cover blurb, the book is divided into three sections about three different service dogs in three different wars (the stories are all fictional, by the way). The first one, starring Boots, takes place in the trenches in France during World War II. Boots is a mercy dog, i.e., one who finds still living wounded among the bodies in the field after major battles so the medics can treat them. Her handler is basically a young boy, barely 17, who assists a military physician in the British Army. I know it's hard to do a story about trench warfare and still keep it kid friendly, but I found the contrived kind-of, sort-of happy ending to this section a bit, hm, odd - esp. since it's set right at the end of 1914, so you know there's a few more years of horrifying slaughter to come. It is interesting, however, that part of the story covers the Christmas truce of 1914, a very bittersweet event when German and British soldiers crawled out of the trenches and chatted, sang Christmas carols and even played soccer - only to go back to the senseless killing not long afterward.

The second bit, featuring a sled-dog named Loki, takes place in Greenland in early 1942, a little known arena of WW2, where the US Army Air Force had an airbase that was a refueling stop for Allied planes and a vital weather station. The main part of the story involves two US soldiers going out to rescue the pilot of a downed plane. Once they find the wounded pilot, they split up because the semi-delirious pilot tells them they have to go back to the plane and destroy some sensitive equipment on it so it doesn't fall into enemy hands. Loki and his human go back to the plane, and after they destroy said equipment they spot a squad of Nazis who probably snuck onto Greenland via U-boat. A bit of a cat-and-mouse chase under Arctic conditions follows. Again, not a bad story as such, but like the preceding one, it sort of falls into the trap of being something of a 'cute dog' story.

The last section, Sheba, is by far the strongest. It takes place in the late summer of 1968, and is mainly set in a trailer park in North Carolina. A young boy named Henry gets a puppy from his mom to keep him from getting bored all day while she's at work - he's the only kid in the park, and they don't even have a TV set. He eventually meets one of the neighbors, a very recently decommissioned, rather surly vet who just calls himself Lanford. He likes Henry's dog, Bouncer, because it turns out he was a scout in Vietnam who worked with a service dog named Sheba. As the two get to know each other, Lanford opens up a bit about his experiences and we get glimpses of his time in the war in flashbacks. And Lanford is shown as dealing with PTSD, as he occasionally has intense flashbacks and nightmares.

Both Keenan and Fox very effectively depicted various aspects of the Vietnam war in a way that packs some gut punches but still doesn't traumatize kids. One thing that really put a lump in my throat is the fact that service dogs in Vietnam were apparently classified as a 'equipment,' so they were left behind if and when their handlers, with whom they'd bonded, were sent back home after their tours.
The art throughout by Nathan Fox is quite good and well-suited to these stories. Even with the caveats I mentioned above, you'll probably like these if you like war comics, and dogs.

Blood & Iron was typical of Chaykin, of the period:  cynical, hero with feet of clay, loud, interesting visuals.  Chaykin knows how to do iconic visuals and I used to own the poster for the mini, which had a great patriotic cover look, with the red and white stripes of the American flag streaming from behind the Blackhawks' Grumman XF-5 Skyrockets.

The story?  Well, if you were expecting classic Blackhawk adventure, ala the Quality Comics series or the Mark Evanier and Dan Spiegle revival, you wee in for a sad disappointment.  Chaykin has always said that Blackhawk was the first comic he stole and referred to them as "Fascists for our side!"  In their uniforms, you could say that, as they were very Germanic in style.  However, the style of the comics was swashbuckling adventure, ala the classic comic strip Terry & the Pirates.  Instead, Chaykin gives us a darker tale of the Blackhawks as outsiders, especially Blackhawk, himself.  He retconed him into Polish flier Janos Prohaska, who fought in the International Brigade, in the Spanish Civil War, and was a devout Communist.  the mini-series finds him under Congressional attack because of this, which ends up being very confusing, as this is set during the war, before HUAC and the Red Scare (though there was some of that in the 30s).  The Blackhawks end up in the USSR, being sponsored by Stalin, with new planes built for them, and serving with actress turned heroine Natalie Reed, a Communist pin-up girl, who becomes the new Lady Blackhawk.  They end up fighting a British fascist(one of Mosley's mob), who is a propaganda tool of the Nazis.  Like I said, dark and cynical.

The mini-series got a big push; but, the first issue seemed to quelch the enthusiasm for it and the other two issues came out to decreasing sales (a typical pattern; but, I believe they were significantly lower).  There was a Blackhawk series, with Rick Burchett doing his best Chayin art imitation, and Marty Pasko aping the writing style, which featured the posy-war Blackhawks working for the CIA.  It delved into the dirty wars and operations of the CIA, of that era, such as interfering in the Italian elections, to defeat the Communist Party, the Chinese Civil War, more HUAC stuff, an attempt to replace the team, and so on.  It was interesting; but kind of depressing and dark.  It was the "grim & gritty" Blackhawk.  There was an annual and a special.

The Evanier & Spiegle run, starting with issue #251, was far closer to the classic and much more fun.  To my knowledge (unless done recently) it has not been collected.  Also superior, to my mind, was the Blackhawk serial in Action Comics Weekly, written by Mike Grell.  This was also post-war; but, used the other Milton Caniff classic, Steve Canyon, as the template for Blackhawk.  They have a charter air service, which acts as a sort of front for mercenary adventure.  they go on a treasure hunt and run into a woman who is basically the daughter of Pat Ryan and the Dragon Lady, from Terry & the Pirates (if you know the strip and pay close attention).  There was a follow-up story to it, but, not by Grell (as I recall).  I much preferred that.

If you want the style of Blackhawk, with a more modern take, and some actual history, without Chaykin's brand of cynicism (but with enough to seem realistic) try the Sky Wolf back-up stories from the Eclipse Comics run of Airboy.  Airboy, itself, was great adventure, from Tim Truman, Stan Woch and Chuck Dixon (who helped build a name here, that led to DC).  Sky Wolf, like Airboy, was a Hillman character, from Airfighters Comics.  It was a trio of flyers, the leader being Sky Wolf, who wore a wolf's pelt over his head.  He is reintroduced as an older man, in Airboy.  the back-ups explore his adventures (and some of the ther Airfighters) in the post-War era, including in Guatemala, during the CA-backed coup, in Korea, flying for Hollywood, his father's exploits with Pancho Villa, and in Vietnam, during the lead up to the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu.  Dixon wrote most, if not all of that, with a host of artists, including a rookie Tom Lyle (who did the Vietnam story), just before he did Starman, at DC.

I used to own America at War (and Mystery in Space) and it is a fine collection of DC war stories, with the Jackie Johnson boxing story, from Sgt Rock, an early (if not the first) Haunted Tank story, the Blackhawk origin (I think, not sure on that one) and a couple of others.  Not bad, but only scratched the surface.  I can't recall, but there may have been an Enemy Ace story in there.  There was a ton of great material in the DC war comics; but, that book is a good sampler.  Wish they had done more (either through Fireside or a DC trade).  They did a few Showcase Presents B&W volumes; but, I would like to see color collections.  Alas, the market isn't there, even among collectors.  The Showcase volumes go for high prices, now.  Luckily, I have digital of the classic stuff, as well as Sgt Fury, the EC war books, Charlton's Lonely War of Capt Willy Schultz, the Dell Combat series, and a good chunk of the Charlton Fightin' Army, Navy, etc series. 

I just wish DC would reprint more classic Blackhawk; but, that isn't likely.  They did one Archive book, which hadn't gotten to the Reed Crandall stuff (I think, though I'd have to check) and a Showcase, which covered when DC continued the series, which was hardly the classic material, but before they tried to make them superheroes.