By Andrew A. Smith
Tribune Content Agency
“Some of you young men think that war is all glamor and glory, but let me tell you, boys, it is all hell!”
– William Tecumseh Sherman
Hell it is, as we are reminded in every media, including comics. Recent graphic novels give us three different flavors of hell.
War Stories Volume Three ($24.99, Avatar) is a series of stories written by fan-favorite Garth Ennis and illustrated by a variety of artists. War Stories began life at DC’s mature-readers line Vertigo, with those stories collected in the first two volumes. This third volume is the first from Avatar, which picked up the series in 2014.
Despite the name of the publisher, though, the quality of Ennis’ writing is consistent throughout. In every case he manages to give the reader what he needs to know about the broader conflict in which his story is set, while boring down on the war’s impact on the humans at the heart of it. Ennis is so accomplished at the exposition that it never feels forced or even noticeable. Or maybe it’s just that the human story is so compelling that all other considerations fade into the background.
This book contains three stories:
* “Castles in the Sky” follows a young waist gunner on a B-17, the “Flying Fortress” the U.S. based in England for daytime bombing raids over Germany. (The English bombed at night, preferring broad-based volume over the specific targeting preferred by the Americans.) Our focus is on Sgt. Leonard Wetmore, a rookie with good manners but a lot to learn.
Part of his education occurs as Wetmore meets Paula Pritchard, a youngish English widow working in the air base kitchen, and her sulky Yank-hating kid. That story goes more or less as you’d expect it to, albeit with Ennis’ insightful and spot-on dialogue giving the familiar romance new life. Wetmore’s other education occurs in the air, courtesy of the German Luftwaffe and anti-aircraft crews. They are hard lessons, and Ennis doesn’t spare us the terror, horror and pants-wetting panic of combat.
* “Children of Israel” is set in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, following a veteran tank commander and his reservist crew as part of the Israeli effort to defend the Golan Heights from Syrian/Moroccan/Iraqi invasion. They would have no reinforcement, as the Israeli Defense Force had a similar fight on their hands with the Egyptians in the Sinai peninsula. What drives the story – aside from the war – are the personalities of the crew members, ranging from the stoic, unnamed commander to the “nervous wreck” loader, Shlomo. Think “Fury,” only in the Middle East (and a few years earlier).
* “The Last German Winter” takes an unusually sympathetic look at German refugees in World War II, in this case 15-year-old Rachel and her family fleeing West from East Prussia as the Red Army invades in early 1945. Being a German female on the cusp of a wave of revenge-crazed Soviets – rape, torture and murder was standard operational procedure – was, to say the least, a precarious position. But through a series of coincidences, Rachel and her family come under the protection of a German tank crew separated from their unit and fighting guerrilla fashion against the advancing Russians. Rachel takes a shine to one of the tankers, and it seems the story is taking a conventional turn – until it doesn’t. This is an ending few will see coming, and it is sobering.
Throughout, Ennis never lets us forget Sherman’s words above. “All hell” is depicted in harrowing fashion, but mostly it is delivered at a very human level, which is what makes these stories so powerful. The movement of large armies and the decisions of generals are important in the annals of history. But Ennis remind us that it is the millions of little people who do the fighting – and pay the price.
But that’s fiction. Reality is represented as well.
Gene Basset’s Vietnam Sketchbook: A Cartoonist’s Wartime Perspective by Thom Rooke (Syracuse University Press, $24.95) shows the mundane side of armed conflict.
Political cartoonist Gene Basset was sent to Vietnam by the Scripps Howard News Service in 1965 to … well, draw cartoons. His brief was pretty open-ended. (Full disclosure: The now-defunct SHNS was the company that first syndicated this column.)
So Basset drew cartoons. Lots of them. Hundreds of them. Da Nang street scenes, soldiers in bars, planes being loaded up, cock-fighting, you name it.
And stored them all away.
Decades later, Basset met Thom Rooke, a professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Rooke was blown away by the cartoons, and I can’t describe why any better than he can:
“It can even be argued that a sketch virtually requires subjective interpretation by the artist,” Rooke writes. “The photographer decides whether a scene tells a story of interest; the camera captures it faithfully. The sketch artist likewise decides whether a scene is of interest, but once chosen, the scene is inevitably altered by the artist. One does not – indeed, one cannot – draw with the realism of a photograph. Consciously or unconsciously, the elements of a sketch are subtly altered. Expressions, and therefore emotions, are forged or stylized. In the end, it is the feeling and mood of a scene – not necessarily the historical accuracy – that is captured by the pen and pencil.”
Determined to publish the sketches, Rooke organized them to reflect the Kubler-Ross model of the stages of grief. (A bit artsy, but hey, he’s a doctor.) Then, as we plow through Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance, Rooke describes, interprets, explicates and gives enormous background to each and every sketch, more than earning his “author” cred.
Also on the reality front, but much more grim, is Walking Wounded: Uncut Stories from Iraq by writer Oliver Morel and French illustrator Mael (NBM Publishing, $29.99).
The title is actually a misnomer. The stories are from California, Indiana, stateside VA hospitals, wherever veterans were that Morel found while filming his documentary On the Bridge. But they “uncut” part is true – the illustrations include the part we usually don’t see, the experiences the vets remember, are re-experiencing at a given time or are influencing their decisions and emotional state.
To highlight the two perspectives, Mael illustrates the vets’ current lives in shades of gray, while the Iraq experiences are seen in a rusty red wash, as if they are oxidizing over time – but still knife-sharp and toxic. The effect is not just an effective storytelling tool, but horrifying in its glimpse into the psyches of these damaged men.
Walking Wounded isn’t the story of filming of On the Bridge, but the creation of the documentary provides a framework for all these stories. No doubt the documentary would serve well as a companion piece, but Walking Wounded stands on its own as a testament to the psychological scars of the combat we as a country seem all too eager to rush into.
As Robert E. Lee said, “It is well that war is so terrible – we would grow too fond of it.”
Reach Captain Comics by email (capncomics@aol.com), the Internet (comicsroundtable.com), Facebook (Captain Comics Round Table) or Twitter (@CaptainComics).
Replies