The United States' involvement in Vietnam lasted  anywhere from 20 to nearly 30 years, depending on how you measure it and define "involvement."  It was the war of the Baby Boom Generation and it proved to be one of the most divisive episodes in US history, outside of the Civil War.  This thread is not about the right or wrong of the war; war is a failure of humanity, regardless of the causes and outcomes.  Instead, this thread seeks to show how the depiction of the war, through comics evolved, just as the political and social landscape evolved.  Comics tended to use current events as launching points for stories; but, as comics were seen as material for children, publishers and editors tried to avoid anything too controversial, especially after the witch hunts of the 1950s, which led to the creation of the Comics Code Authority.  However, that did not stop such things as war comics and Westerns from continuing to present stories, much as they always had, with levels of violence and even institutionalized racism, but little blood.

I do not intend to cover how superhero comics depicted things, as most stayed away from it, for similar reasons as to why Superman wasn't fighting in Europe or the Pacific, in WW2....you can only suspend fantasy so much and best to leave that drama to "real people."  Marvel dabbled in it, especially when Stan wasn't working with his stronger self-plotting artists.  Even those collaborators touched a little, though mostly in the early 60s.  Captain America fought against a North Vietnamese champion, to rescue a downed airman.  Tony Stark got himself blown up in Vietnam, leading to becoming Iron Man.  However, Marvel has since retconned that away, replacing the controversy of setting stories in or around the Vietnam War, sanitizing them and placing them in a fiction Sian Cong War.  Didn't do much to eliminate much of the racism, though.  At least they didn't give them buck teeth and glasses, like they did the Japanese.  Small comfort, though, with stereotyped Asian villains and the institutionalized superiority of the American Fighting Man.

Those faults lie within the war comics, to, in many cases, including the first major published comic to touch upon the war, Dell's Jungle War Stories.




First, a little background.  Although there were stories involving soldiers, in the Golden Age, most comics didn't regularly deal with the fighting of the war.  You had adventure heroes, like Airboy, fighting Nazi villains and femme fatales, like The Valkyrie or groups of Foreign Legion of The Blackhawks, featuring characters from the Occupied Countries, battling against Axis forces and their super-weapons.  Those had more in common with pulp adventure stories than they did with war movies or military fiction.  War comics, as a genre, were born during the Korean War.  Korea brought the nation, just settling back down after the end of WW2 and the return of its sons and daughters, back into war, but a war in which the rules were vastly different.  The battle was a proxy fight, using a regional conflict to act as stand-ins for the major powers.  The UN-backed (read Western Europe, the US, and the former British colony nations) South fought the Communist-backed North, in a war that largely ended in a stalemate, politically.  At the start of the war, Americans who had become used to the US Army advancing towards Berlin and Japan suddenly found themselves reading headlines about retreats and encirclements, especially after the Chinese entered the war.  Names like Chosin and Inchon entered the American vocabulary.  Public support was largely with the government and the UN and publishers jumped on the events to publish a whole batch of comics about brave soldiers fighting against large armies of Asian enemies, while also recounting those valiant men who fought to liberate Europe and the Pacific.  For comics, the situation made for great dramatic stories of heroism and fighting against overwhelming odds.  It coincided with similar men's magazines, devoted to heroic stories of soldiers and adventurers, most often in wartime settings.

Vietnam was a little more problematic.  Korea had a UN mandate and was fought by an Allied army, which, on the surface, made it seem like WW2, even if events didn't live up to that concept.  Vietnam didn't have a UN mandate, as such.  What it had, was a long history of outside invaders, a population of several different ethnic groups, with hostilities towards one another, and a lack of actual democracy.  To make matters worse, while the UN was fighting to a stalemate in Korea, the French were losing the fight against the Viet Minh.  After WW2, the French government sent its military might to retake Indochina.  The Japanese had taken control of much of it, during the war, with mostly guerrilla forces standing in their way, such as the troops of Ho Chi Minh.  The US actually provided OSS advisors to the Viet Minh, who were greatly impressed by their willingness to fight and their ability to keep the Japanese off balance.  Ho Chi Minh actually likened their struggle to the American Revolution.  However, once Japan surrendered, the US government gave its support to the French, rather than the Vietnamese.  Military and logistical aid was provided to the French throughout their fight to retake the country, culminating in their bitter defeat, at Dien Bien Phu.  It is there that the US involvement begins.  After the French withdraw, the US first carries out covert operations, aimed at bolstering the South, as a barrier against the Communist influence in Southeast Asia, which slowly involves more and more into a military training mission and then into outright combat between US military formations and the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army.

So, this first entry is right in the early days of US military involvement, as the Military Assistance and Advisory Group sends in training teams to build up South Vietnam's military forces.  These include US Army Special Forces teams, which teach counter-insurgency tactics, and the US Air Force, who train pilots to fly close air support missions, in prop aircraft.  It is fitting, then, that this first Vietnam War comic should revolve around a training team.

The opening story is uncredited, in the usual Dell manner.  It is published in April of 1962, just after the establishment of the Military Assistance Command-Vietnam, (MAC-V), which would become synonymous with the conduct of the war.

The opening story is "Requiem for a Red."  It starts with the arrival of a trio of Korean Conflict (as it was generally called) veterans: Capt. Duke Larsen, Sgt Cactus Kane and Mike Williams, who isn't given a rank, in the opening narration, just that he is a GI.  Williams is especially disparaging of the South Vietnamese and their inability to beat a bunch of Reds, despite the UN forces failing to do the same in Korea (or, at least, decisively, as in WW2).  Cactus gives them the benefit of the doubt, as they just lack experience.  They are taken by helicopter to their new assignment, to train ARVN Rangers.  They are briefed on Viet Cong activity, including the slaughter of 40 villagers, while their "defenders" were missing.  The officer in charge of the defenders is their opposite number, in charge of the ranger platoon.



The trio carries out the hard training regimen of the Ranger program, while Williams and Kane continue to debate the merits of Lt Lo Chuong, the Vietnamese platoon commander.  While conducting a rope crossing exercise, Lo Chuong loses his footing and is barely hanging on, with his hands.  Cactus orders the others across, then cuts one of the support ropes and swings out, like Tarzan, grasping Lo Chuong along the way and directing his fall to a deep water area, which they both survive.  Lo Chuong's vows to repay the debt he owes Kane.

The Rangers are taken out on a patrol, to locate the VC and hear more horror stories, from a mama-san on a sampan, which was attacked by the VC.  The Rangers head in the direction she indicated, but soon find themselves ambushed.  Williams opens fire and Cactus ends up engaged in hand-to-hand combat with a VC, who tries to bayonet him.  Cactus breaks his leg in the fight, but manages to kill the VC.  He calls out to Lo Chuong to aid him or be branded a coward by his ancestors.  The VC converge on the American, as he is considered a more valuable target than the Rangers.  Lo Chuong leads the Rangers in defending Cactus and they decimate the VC attackers and the survivors flee into the jungle.  Lo Chuong has now proven himself to Williams and justified Cactus' faith in him and the eyes of his ancestor.

This story gets into the basics of the US military training mission, as they advise and train troops, while they are banned from leading them on combat missions.  However, there were creative ways around the restrictions on the team and US advisors were usually in command in the field.  Training pilots would carry Vietnamese co-pilots, while they carried out air strikes on VC and NVA positions.  It also gets into a common attitude, that the ARVN were not good fighters.  The ARVN had the same problem that many armies, including the US, at times, had:  poor leadership.  The South Vietnamese government was riddled with corruption and it extended into the army.  Memoirs of soldiers who trained Vietnamese forces often remarked that they were good fighters, when they had good leaders, which is true of any military.  Leadership brings individuals together and directs their efforts towards a common goal:  the defeat of an enemy.  The ARVN officers lacked experience, as most of the experienced Viet Minh guerrillas, who fought the Japanese, were on the North Vietnamese side.  Good officers, given proper training and encouragement, proved effective leaders.  Lo Chuong embodies that, as he is inexperienced and timid, at the start, yet proves a capable fighter, after going through training and receiving encouragement from Cactus.

The story is very much of the standard war comic template, of individual heroics and timid soldiers proving themselves brave, on the battlefield and winning the respect of their critics.  You find this kind of story in just about every war comic, from Frontline Combat to Our Army At War.  The added wrinkle is that the timid soldier is an Asian, who has to learn the ways of the West, to win.

The writing in this is very much of the time, with the paternal quality you would see in depictions of Asia and Africa, as backwards societies in need of Western guidance.  It also has the same troubling reduction of the fighting as the South is Good and the North is Evil, except both, just a few years before, had been united in driving out the French, once and for all.  What's worse, it uses a racial slur (the "G Word"), at one point, when referring to the VC attackers.

A second story, "Vietnam Vengeance," finds the Rangers in the village of Chai Nhim, where the VC have attacked, killing the leader of the village and desecrating a shrine to the Buddha.  They demand rice in tribute and will return for it.  The villagers are hostile to the Rangers and yell for them to go.    One of the Rangers remarks to Cactus that the people are scared of the VC.  They move on, but a young woman finds them and tells them what happened, proving not all of the villagers are scared.    Cactus sets out to teach the villagers that the VC can be defeated and they go hunting them.  They discover them moving supplies along the river, in sampans and stage an ambush.  They then drive the survivors back towards the village, where they come running for sanctuary.  The villagers treat them to a just reward.




Once again, the Vietnamese have to be shown by the West that they can stand up to Communist Evil.  The basic plot is pretty much taken from the Seven Samurai; or Magnificent Seven, if you prefer, with bandits attacking the village for food, and the villagers cow-towing to them, despite superior numbers.  Then, outsiders teach them to fight back and they defeat the bandits.

Both of these depict the fighting as little more than bandit attacks, ignoring that it was a modern military force that defeated the French at Dien Bien Phu, complete with artillery and other modern weapons, while the French had technological superiority, with air support and resupply.  What they lacked was the same desire to fight.  The French soldiers fought to hold onto conquered territory, while the Vietnamese fought for their right to freedom from the outsiders.  People will fight to the death to earn freedom from an oppressor, while occupying soldiers will fight for friends, but are motivated more by a desire to get back home.  The Vietnamese were fighting for their homes.  After that, it returned to old squabbles about North and South, with words like "communist" and "democratic" being used to cover what was a much older rivalry.

The rest of the comic is filled with two stories, set in the Congo, during the Katanga Secession.  After independence from Belgium, Patrice Lumuba, a socialist, became the leader of the Congo.  The mineral rich province of Katanga, under the leadership of Moise Tshombe, and with the backing of the Belgian and French governments and European mining companies, seceded from the Union of the Congo.  They declared themselves an independent state and fighting erupted between forces loyal to Katanga and those of the Congolese government, under Lumuba.  Lumumba appealed to the United Nations and peacekeepers were sent in.  Tshombe appealed to the French and Belgian governments and the French detached a large contingent of Foreign Legion Paratroops, under leadership of Roger Faulgues, a Legion officer who was put on detached service, allowing him to appear as a mercenary soldier, leading a mercenary army, paid by the Katanga government (financially backed by the mining companies and the French, Belgian and US governments).  The UN actually went on offensive operations, leading to battles between UN forces and the Katangan gendarmery and the mercenaries.  Most of the peacekeepers came from nations like Ireland and Sweden, who had remained neutral, in WW2.  An Irish unit held off against a much larger Katangan and mercenary force, at Jadotville, until their ammunition ran out and they were forced to surrender, but after inflicting heavy casualties on the other side.

The stories depicted the UN forces as if they are the Allies, in WW2, but fighting within the jungles of the Congo.  Mercenary forces are named, but the background is not explored.

There are information pieces on the inside covers and rear cover, relating to the stories within, though they are rather simplified and nuanced, in their description of the history of the regions....



The last story in the book revolves around the Indian invasion of the former Portuguese island colony of Goa, in 1961.  After gaining independence from the United Kingdom, India demanded the return of island colonies held by the Portuguese, including Goa.  Portugal refused and maintained its hold on its colonies.  In December 1961, India launched Operation Vijay, to take the colonies by force of arms, which succeeded, making Goa a state of India.  In India, it was referred to as the Liberation of Goa; in the West is was called the "annexation" of Goa.  The story revolves around a young lieutenant, drafted into the army of India, and a pair of European soldiers, fighting the invasion.  In both cases, the soldiers meet tragic ends, though they inflict heavy losses on the other side.  The interior cover peace suggests Goa was completely peaceful, until India attacked, ignoring the fact that Portugal held the island via force of arms.

Dell wasn't a huge publisher of war comics; but, they had some success with Combat, a series that focused mainly on WW2 stories, including accounts of the attack on Pearl Harbor, the operation to sink the battleship Bismark, and John F Kennedy's PT-109.  Artist Sam Glanzman did extensive work for them, on that book.  He is not present here.  GCD credits the first Vietnam story to Bill Fraccio and Tony Tallarico, on art.  No credit is given for the writing.  Dell was a rather conservative publisher, in terms of how they ran their business and pretty much reflected the general conservative atmosphere of the period, in terms of geopolitics in its comics.  This is just before the split between Dell and Western.  The pair first teamed up in 1938, with Western handling the production of the comics and Dell the financing and distribution.  Western hired all of the writers, artists and production staff and secured licenses for properties, like Looney Tunes and Disney.  When the companies split, between the May and June publications, Western took the bulk of the creative staff and most of the licenses, leaving Dell to scramble to produce its own comics.  Jungle War Stories continues under them, for a total of 11 issues.  Subsequent issues focus on the Vietnam stories, rather than the Kongo or other tales of jungle fighting.

Glancing across the first few issues, it is clear that the idea of the fighting there is the general idea that US advisors are teaching the Vietnamese to defeat bandits and that the governments are a mess, but could be sorted out by the West, if they had a free hand.  The stories themselves portray the VC as bandits, attacking civilians and terrorizing the country, rather than peasant guerrillas who might actually support the North, as they have been treated pretty badly by the South.  It ignores ethic divisions, such as the "montagnards," the indigenous people of the mountain regions, who were considered inferior, by the Vietnamese, North or South, and were abused and exploited by the Vietnamese, historically.  They proved to be tough fighters by US Army Special forces and regular army advisors, who hated the Vietnamese, without geographic or political distinction.  To them, all Vietnamese were their oppressors and they were happy to attack the NVA, the VC or the ARVN, with equal gusto and the advisors had a hard time keeping them from attacking other forces friendly to their mission.  We see none of that in these early stories.  This is Vietnam seen through the Western lens of WW2 and the idea that they are helping them fight off an invading oppressor, rather than the more complex tale of oppression and violence on both sides, with lots of innocent people caught in the middle, who just wanted to carry out their daily lives, in peace.

This is early days material, as the US was not actively involved in combat operations and the US military presence is relatively small, though growing.  The country is not yet in the grips of violent anti-war and pro-war clashes, no draft card burnings, no major editorials questioning the conduct of the war.  It's pretty much the standard template that the US and the West are the Good Guys, the Communists and the East are the Bad Guys and brave American soldiers are heroes and we always win our wars (Korea was a "conflict," not a war and doesn't count....or so the story often went).  Wives and children are not huddled around the CBS Evening News, listening to Walter Cronkite detail the day's activities in the war, wondering if their spouse/father is among the casualties.  Only a select few worried about their loved ones, serving someplace they had never heard of, before they shipped out.

This isn't exactly "pro-war," but, it definitely isn't the "Make War No More" sentiment of Joe Kubert's war comics (as editor), at DC.  War is still excitement and drama, more than human tragedy, with stories often written by people who didn't live through combat (although some of the artists had, like Jack Kirby, Sam Glanzman, and Nick Cardy).

Next up, a Vietnam War comic that teams up a hit songwriter and arguably the best artist to depict war stories.