Showcase Presents Sgt Rock 3
Reviewed by Martin Skidmore 11-Nov-10
Getting a collection that is nearly 90% Kubert is a major treat, especially with one of comics’ stronger writers and a good character.
I guess Kirby and Ditko are the only regular Marvel/DC comic artists I like better than Joe Kubert, and Marvel exhausted most of their best’s prime material ages ago in the Essential volumes (though why do we still have no Nick Fury volume, with plenty of Kirby and, depending how they were to organise it, Jim Steranko too?), so getting a collection that is nearly 90% Kubert is a major treat, especially with one of comics’ stronger writers and a good character.
Kanigher was an excellent craftsman, and there is a point to every story, but he does tend to bludgeon you: for instance, in the story “Nothin’s Ever Lost In War” that phrase appears 14 times in 15 pages, plus several “Everything’s Lost…” in counterpoint against it, and I can’t even face counting how many times the word “lost” is used – must be approaching three figures. What this adds up to is that Kanigher collections don’t work fabulously well when read quickly, which is my problem for devouring these Showcase volumes so quickly, I suppose. Read them over a few weeks rather than in a day, and the downside of his work would be vastly less aggravating.
Still, even with that drawback, the Kubert art is always exciting and potent: his work is arguably the most vigorously inked ever, he had a great sense of composition and character, and he provided some of the most compelling covers in comicbook history – I’m not sure anyone was ever better at making me want to read the story illustrated. (This was not always a good thing for me: I recall being very disappointed in the interiors of a number of comics he hooked me on buying.)
Warning: the rest of this is entirely digressive.
An odd note that I can’t resist including here is that I joined a DC war comics Yahoo group several years back. For me, 95% of the best of DC’s war output is by this pair (then there are small amounts of giants like Kirby, Toth, Krigstein), and I assumed that this was the standard view, but not in that group: a lot of them positively disliked both Kanigher and Kubert. The problem was that Kubert didn’t care to get the details right. For me, Russ Heath tended very much towards the lifeless: despite lovely rendering, there was so little body language, expression or energy. For them, Heath got every rivet on every tank spot on. Kanigher was disliked because of a lack of realism – Rock and Easy Company regularly shooting down fighter planes with machine guns and the like. Besides not knowing that this is highly unlikely (I’ll take their word for it), and having no idea about or interest in where the rivets should appear, I didn’t care. I read Rock and the rest as other DC comics, as stories and characters that belonged in the same universe as Batman dodging an infinite number of bullets, even before we think about Superman, so the level of realism was incomparably greater than the superhero comics. I guess if I were a fan of serious war literature and went to Rock, I might have seen it differently. This memory interests me as an example of completely distinct perspectives (close to Thomas Kuhn’s ‘incommensurable paradigms’, even).
I also recall being in a comic shop in Bristol when someone asked if they had any war comics. The only one being published and in the shop at the time cover-featured The War That Time Forgot, i.e. soldiers vs dinosaurs, and when this was offered the customer gave the shop assistant one of the most contemptous looks I’d ever seen. Frankly the quality of the comic pretty much made this justified, to be fair.
Tags: DC, Joe Kubert, Robert Kanigher, Russ Heath, Sgt Rock, War
I have volume 3, waiting to be read, but having picked up volume 1 for a fiver I read that and quickly went back for volume 2 – even at full price !
To me, realism in war comics would refer to historical accuarcy (Sgt Fury promptly goes out the window !); but also the human side of things, in that the good guys did often lose and die and it is this aspect that the two big K’s capture with Rock. I must confess that I never considered how realistic being able to shoot down a plane from the ground was, but that never seemed to stop a lot of films (see also historical accuracy).
When reading volume 2, I was often referring back to the contents page, not so much to confirm who wrote and/or drew the issue I was reading, but the publication date. A number of stories seemed to me to be way ahead of the early 60’s regarding the treatment of specific characters.
For someone who “doesn’t like war comics”, I seem to be reading a lot of them nowadays. Charley’s War goes without saying; as well as Enemy Ace (beautiful artwork accompanying very human based stories – ie not big hunks firing bullets at the filthy enemy); Blazing Combat; Kirby’s Losers (perhaps not the greatest example of historical accuarcy or human portrayals); and of course Easy Co.
I do look forward to reading volume 3.
Good point re progressive stuff – it was unusual in its liberal anti-prejudice attitudes at the time.
I read “Commando” as a kid, and remember those fondly, but I have no idea whether they’d hold up today. I’m all for ditching realism out the window when necessary to punch up a story. It’s not like I would know the difference, anyway.
I would like to draw ones attention to Tardi’s It Was a War of the Trenches for those interested in realism. It’s a tough book, pitch black humor, mostly full of despair and terror. I’m happy it was published, I’m happy I read it, but I don’t see myself re-reading it anytime soon.
A somewhat lighter approach to war, while still (far as I can tell) keeping it realistic, would be Hugo Pratt’s work… hard as it is to find in English translations.
There was at least one Hugo Pratt story in Commando, or one of those titles – actually I have a copy of it somewhere, let me check…
It’s actually Battle Picture Library 11, ‘Dark Judgement’, 60 pages of Pratt!
“why do we still have no Nick Fury volume?”
That puzzles and frustrates me, too. All the other ‘missing’ Essentials volumes are likely to have rights issues, such as ‘Master of Kung Fu’, but I can see no way in which that would apply to Nick Fury.
“having no idea about or interest in where the rivets should appear, I didn’t care.”
My favourite ever war comics are Kurtzman’s, so I’m not sure I see realism as some barrier to good storytelling. (Tho’ I’d agree with those who’ve said that if realism’s not the thing being aimed for, there’s little point in worrying about it. It’s like when people complain that the science isn’t right in the Fantastic Four… well of course it bloody isn’t!)
It particularly surprises me given Fury’s big part in a number of big stories in the last few years, and of course his role in all the Avengers lead-ins. Then again, maybe they don’t want to be pitching this white Nick Fury when the movies and Ultimates line have Samuel Jackson. Or perhaps they fear someone would rerelease the TV movie where Nick is played by David Hasselhof.
“perhaps they fear someone would rerelease the TV movie where Nick is played by David Hasselhof.”
That fear doesn’t stop with ‘them’.
thanks for this review, martin – i’ve been trying to wean myself off buying too many showcase & essential vols cos of space gonsiderations but i yam tempted… – btw, it’d be useful for me if, when reviewing gollections, you & yr fellow scribes could tell us what issues are reprinted – in this instance it’d help us to avoid possible duplications as we’ve already got quite a bit of sgt rock material in the house
you’re a bit hard on poor old russ heath – i can only think of a handful of artists whose work WOULDN’T seem “lifeless” when gompared to joe kubert & alex toth – i wish somebody would do a gollection of his 1970s work for warren which certainly WASN’T lifeless – there’s a very goob ( & funny ) cannibal story where heath was absolutely BUZZING, iirc
i thought heath’s reputation for being slow, missing deadlines etc was due to his partying w/hef & the bunnies at the playboy mansion ( where i believe he lived for a year ) – but maybe it was because of his exquisite rendering of all those rivets…!
x Martin H
12/11
Very good point re the issues. I’ll try to remember that for the future. This covers Our Army At War 149-180, except 164 and 173, which presumably didn’t have any new Rock material.
Heath is very variable – maybe sometimes he was rushed, and didn’t bother putting any thought into his pencils. There are decent jobs, and others where characters are shouting angry words while looking completely calm, arms at their sides. Yes, he looks good compared to an enormous number of artists, but I generally encounter him in contexts where I am used to seeing Kubert, and that was specifically the comparison I was making above. I am more disappointed with him than, say, with John Buscema following Jack Kirby on the FF among others. Or John Romita following Ditko, say on Spidey.
I second Martin H’s suggestion to reference issue numbers when reviewing collections.
I also have to say that I like Russ Heath’s work although I have to confess that I haven’t seen that much of it.
– thanks for the issue numbers, martin – i spose one of the “problems” of heath following kubert = that unlike kirby or ditko, kubert was likely to pop up again at any moment – reminding ppl how goob he was in gomparison to heath
( this was NOT A PROBLEM for the lucky readers tho )
( & romita & buscema did have to gompete with kirby & ditko in the form of reprints )
i was gonna try to work up a gag abt you being disappointed with neal adams/tom palmer taking over from don heck/vince colletta on the xmen but i don’t think i’m up to it…!
I am sympathetic to that argument complaining about the lack of realism in US war comics. I remember when I was small hating how in US comics all the tanks looked the same, while in the British ones you could match off tanks against different models in the Airfix catalogue.
I have read some Commando books recently and can reveal that they are not very good.