Customer Reviews

Blazing Combat

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

After waiting for more than a year for this book to come out, it finally arrived. I won't go into the details of how the original Blazing Combat magazine came to be (you can do so by reading the introduction and interviews included within), just bear in mind that between the covers of this book you'll be reading some of the best war stories ever (second only to Harvey Kurtzman's war titles for EC) and viewing the best comic book art ever (from some veteran EC artists and some newer ones like Gray Morrow, Gene Colan, Russ Heath and Alex Toth).

Okay, let's get on with the book itself. Fantagraphics has done a great job as usual. I actually prefer the sturdy mat paper Fantagraphics has used as opposed to the glossy paper Dark Horse used for their Creepy and Eerie reprints. There is no glare on the pages from your source of light and contrary from what you may think, the paper is actually heavy and sturdy and a million times better than the pulp paper used for the original comic. The reproduction is pristine clear, especially concerning the duo-tone and dot screen patterns that most of the artists used at the time. A special treat is of course Russ Heath's Give and take, which is probably the best use ever given to a duo-tone board (and the artwork itself will just blow you away). There are some interesting interviews with Jim Warren, the publisher, and Archie Goodwin, the editor and writer of most of the stories. And even if the series was done in the mid 60s, most of the stories still hold up to date. And the artwork is just the best that there ever was. Most fans, critics, etc. believe that the art in EC comics were the best ever, but to me, all those artists really came around and did their best work in the 60s and early 70s, mostly for the Warren magazines.

My only complaints are:

1. The book size. Smaller than the original magazines and smaller than Dark Horse's Eerie/Creepy reprints.

2. The covers by Frazetta aren't reproduced at the beginning of each chapter, but rather at the end of the book and only as a series of small vignettes.

3. It's a pity there is no input from the artists themselves, as I am sure most of them would have some pretty interesting stories to tell (at least those who are still alive).

4. It's a pity Fantagraphics didn't reproduce the original magazine's letters page section as well (as the Dark Horse reprints did), but this is only a minor complaint.

All in all, and keeping those minor complaints aside, this book is a real treat and is highly recommended. You won't be disappointed.

As someone who's not a comics buff, I'd never heard of Blazing Combat until I stumbled across this book's arresting pop art cover in the library. Since I like graphic storytelling and military history, I picked it up and took it home. If you're familiar with the four original comic books (or rather "magazines," as this title was published) which appeared over the course of ten months in 1965-66, then you know what to expect. If you never saw those, then you're in for a treat, 'cause here are unsanitized stories of war from throughout (mostly) American history. In the interviews with the original writer and publisher that appear at the end of the book, they both cite Harvey Kurtzman's 1950s war comics as the primary influence on Blazing Combat. The concept was not to be anti-war (as many have accused the stories of being), but to represent the reality of war -- mainly illustrating the adage that "war is hell."

The 29 stories do so, ranging from the American Revolution through the Vietnam War that was just starting to heat up during the time the stories were originally published. Each tends to focus on a lone soldier and his own struggle to survive and cling to humanity, or in some cases, turn away from it. Some do tell "heroic" or inspiring stories, such as the Battle of Britain, or the amazing career of World War I Canadian ace Billy Bishop (72 confirmed kills!), but others show the darker side of war, such as a WWII G.I. prying gold fillings from dead bodies in the Pacific theater, or the terror of fresh troops. Almost every story is told from a soldier's point of view, a notable exception being "Landscape" -- a Vietnam story that shows the war's effect on a peasant farmer, in a remarkably prescient critique of all the problems of that benighted war.

All the stories were authored or coauthored by longtime comics writer-editor Archie Goodwin, and as such, have a fairly uniform voice. At times, they sometimes drift into cliche, such as the ones whose closing panels are a dead soldier's open wallet photo of wife and child, or a dead GI's valentine, and other such maudlin touches. There's also the regrettable abundance of explanation points, which appear at the end of practically every other sentence. But at roughly 5-8 pages each, they have a consistent rhythm and are generally solid enough little dramas. The one outlier is "Survival," a stellar Twilight Zoneish tale of a man trying to stay alive in a frozen post-nuclear war landscape.

As with pretty much every book I've seen published by Fantagraphics, the production is outstanding. High-quality matte paper retains the detail of the artwork (which was reproduced from the original films), beautiful printing, binding, etc. The range of artists ensure that there's a nice mix of styles throughout, which keeps the book from getting visually stale. Almost all are quite good, and special mention has to be made of Russ Heath's work in "Give and Take," which stands heads and shoulders above the rest. The only quibble I have is that the four covers to the original comics appear only as a small spread at the back of the book. These were amazing paintings by Frank Frazetta, and it's a real shame they couldn't have gotten their own full page each. On the whole though, the book is an amazing value, and makes a great gift for anyone interested in American military history or the history of comics.

NOTE: For those who are interested, I tallied the settings: American Revolution 1, American Civil War 3, Spanish-American War 1, World War I 4, World War II 10, Korea 3, Vietnam 4, Misc. 3 (US Cavalry vs. Indians, Post-Apocalypse, Thermopyle). Similarly, almost all the stories are of ground combat, with a handful of aerial combat tales and a single submarine story.

Fantagraphics has managed to pull together every single issue of the legendary "Blazing Combat" into one big compendium. Yep, they managed to get all *ahem* four issues. Actually these were produced in larger magazine format and published quarterly so just these four issues were more than enough to fill a good size book. The book is all black and white just like the magazine and they have a very cool 1950's/60's look that I really enjoyed. The art isn't consistent in quality but none of it is bad and when it's good it's very good (for instance everything done by Wally Wood).

Warren Comics was a fairly modest blip as comic companies go with only 16 comic magazine titles published in its 26 years of existence. I am aware of many of their titles including Creepy, Eerie and Vampirella but I never actually purchased any of these magazines. However, this small company managed to acquire quite a stable of talent, many of which worked on Blazing Combat. All of the stories were written by the legendary Archie Goodwin and the artists include Joe Orlando, Alex Toth and a pair of Mad Magazine alumni John Severin and Wally Wood. Wood, in particular, is one of my all time favorite artists. Although he only draws two of the stories they are really standouts artistically and a blown-up image from one of his stories is used for the books wraparound cover. The inside cover art is taken from the covers of several of Blazing Combat's issues. These images, by Frank Frazetta, are absolutely some of the best most intense comic covers I have ever seen.

I enjoyed the writing I can't say I was blown away. One of the litmus tests I use to determine whether a collection of this sort is worth a buy is whether or not I might find myself coming back and reading it again. In fact this book is available in my local library and if I had it all to do over again I would have checked it out rather than purchase it because I don't see myself going back and rereading the stories. The big problem is that the stories all tend to follow the same template likely because all of them were written by the same writer. The stories take place in wars going all the way back to ancient Persia through the Revolutionary and Civil War and of course the two World Wars, Korea and Vietnam. They're good stories but for me it's kind of the difference between Saving Private Ryan and the James Bond movies. Private Ryan might look better in my collection and may be better on a technical level but the Bond movies are just more fun to watch repeatedly. I'll give this collection four stars because on technical merits it's quite good and the interviews with Frank Warren and Archie Goodwin at the end are a great addition. My point deduction is because I just know this book is going to get stored away in a box and forgotten about. On the other hand if I ever get another bookshelf it might look quite nice.

Finally, a publisher that knows how to package the Warren reprint material in an attractive, thoughtful, and reasonably priced volume. At nearly half the retail price of the unimaginatively thrown together Dark Horse reprints of "Creepy" and "Eerie," this "Blazing Combat" volume from Fantagraphics actually exceeds the print quality of the original magazines, both in terms of the paper stock and image clarity (these stories are actually shot straight from the original photostats, unlike the scan-and-paste job done by Dark Horse with middling results). If you own the original issues (as I do), a side-by-side comparison will make you glad that you spent the bucks to upgrade to this volume (something you'll never say about the original "Creepy" and "Eerie" in comparison to Dark Horse's reprints).

I'll concede the missed opportunity regarding the Frazetta covers--it would have been preferable to have had full-page reproductions (though I love the design choice to use a detail from one of the covers for the endpapers). Some reviewers have lamented the absence of the fanboyish "letters pages" (often of dubious authorship, anyway), which would have actually detracted from the overall brilliance of the art and stories in this volume. I know that I for one don't care if Bill W. from Sunnyside, N.Y. "really liked" such and such story (which was the general tone and content of the readers' letters).

I actually can't say enough about the well-chosen matte paper stock, which again underscores the book's thoughtful design. And the great interviews with both James Warren and Archie Goodwin (publisher and writer, respectively) represent the kind of value-added material you won't find in the slapped together Dark Horse books.

Best of all, you don't feel like you're being gouged when buying this book...Fantagraphics' "Blazing Combat" (as well as the recent IDW book on Noel Sickles) serves as an exemplar of how a quality reprint package can be produced with an intelligent eye for design and sold at a retail price that doesn't leave one feeling fleeced.

What do you get when you take one of the greatest writers in the history of comics, pair him with a veritable gallery of Hall of Fame artists and set them loose as compelling a subject as there is, men at war?

What you get is this book, Blazing Combat.

Writer Archie Goodwin teams with artists like Joe Orlando, Wally Wood, Reed Crandall, John Severin, Alex Toth, Gene Colan, Gray Morrow and Russ Heath on tales of war spanning Thermopylae to the future. (Just once for the future, thankfully. Despite the Alex Toth art it's the weakest story in the book.)

The title, Blazing Combat, is a bit of a misnomer. It brings to mind lesser contemporaries like Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos, while this is anything but rah rah cartoon war.

The book strives for slice of life realism and often succeeds. There are few heroes here, just men good, bad and indifferent doing a job and striving above all to live to get home.

Of particular interest, and generally exceptional quality, are the Vietnam stories. Landscape (which I've seen reprinted before but in an annoying half-sized format) tells the story of a lone Vietnamese farmer struggling hopelessly to ignore the war. Viet-Cong has a particularly modern resonance, as an American adviser watches his South Vietnamese charges torturing a prisoner by water board. Depressing, isn't it, that as a nation we've forgotten something about what constitutes torture that we understood nearly 50 years ago.

For my money the best story in the book is Conflict, a tale of a black medic and a bigoted white soldier wounded in the Asian jungle, with transcendent Gene Colan art. To take on war and race relations all at once in the bygone world of 1965 might have taken a lot of guts, though I doubt Goodwin thought of it that way. He was just telling a story, and a damn good one, without a an instant of preachiness lurking about.

Lest my emphasis on the Vietnam tales mislead you these stories span a wider net. There are plenty of yarns set in WW2, Korea, the Civil War and the American Revolution and many of them are on the same level as the Vietnam tales. In fact. the universality of the experience across different times and places may be one of the strongest points made by this outstanding book.

Sadly, those Vietnam tales ultimately doomed the book. Anything less than whole-hearted support of the war was still politically untenable at the time. The military banned the title from sale in PXs, and wholesalers let the book pile up and rot in warehouses rather than face the wrath of veteran's groups like the American Legion. Despite decent sales for issue #1 few copies of #2 - #4 ever saw the light of day.

Bonus material consists of interviews with writer Goodwin and publisher James Warren. Possibly because his primary publications, Creepy, Eerie and Vampirella, declined so precipitously in later years he rarely receives the credit he receives as one of industry's true visionaries. This volume benefits greatly from the simply fact that Warren, alone among his contemporaries,thought to save the original printers film, resulting in magnificently pristine reproduction compared to so many collections that print from scans of printed books or worse yet, recreation.

A few small complaints: it would have been nice to see the pages reproduced in their original published size, or better still a larger format for reproduction. Though it might add ten bucks to the cost of the book I've always believed that the rather limited audience for this sort of product would happily pay a slightly higher price for a better product.

Particularly disappointing is the treatment of the original Frank Frazetta covers. They appear only in a greatly reduced size accompanying an interview with Archie Goodwin. Surely space could have been found to afford them all a full-page sized reprinting.

Still, the material and Fantagraphics production are five-star all the way.

To a naive baby boomer teenager raised on Hollywood war movies, BLAZING COMBAT was a bucket of ice water right in the face! Here were comic books showing the real face of war, no fame and glory here. Given the subject material and the time-period BLAZING COMBAT first appeared, it's no wonder the establishment worked to deep-six such heretic publications.

The 30-odd stories in BLAZING COMBAT cover warfare from Thermopylae to Vietnam. Most feature stories of the Civil War, WWI and WW II. Battles are won and lost yet what author Archie Goodwin emphasized was the often appalling toll war takes on the soldiers, sailors, airmen and civilians involved. Along with groundbreaking plotlines, BLAZING COMBAT showcased the work of some wonderfully talented artists. I especially enjoyed the work of Russ Heath, Wally Wood, Reed Crandall and John Severin.

Re-reading the stories in this collection brought back vivid memories. So, a big Thank-You to Fantagraphics Books for giving BLAZING COMBAT a new lease on life...and to Archie Goodwin and publisher James Warren for their bravery and daring so many years ago. Recommended.

This collection reprints Archie Goodwin's highly acclaimed four issue BLAZING COMBAT series. BLAZING COMBAT was controversial at the time (late 1960s) for its realistic depiction of war and perceived anti-war sentiment. The thought-provoking and emotional stories range from six to eight pages and tell tales from wars throughout history, from ancient Greece to the Civil War, WWI, WWII, Viet Nam and even a look at the fallout after a war in the future. Goodwin's stories are brought to life by a Hall of Fame list of artists: John Severin, Gray Morrow, Wally Wood, Joe Orlando, Russ Heath, Reed Crandall and more! My only complaint is that the beautifully painted covers are not reproduced at full size anywhere in the book.

The material in this volume is beautifully presented, the art work has never looked better. My one gripe is that Fantagraphics choose to not print it in 'issue format' like the EC archives, and Creepy and EERIE archives do. It's actually a lot easier to read and thumb through that way.
They did produce the covers in small thumbnails. The covers pictured are in soiled used condition. Couldn't they of used better quality prints that show off the cover art better?
Oh well.
Does anyone have the rights secured to 1984 [1994] yet? If not, after reading BC, I hope that Dark Horse reprints them.

Without question this is the best reprint book I've read in years. Most of the stories seem to focus on WWII and WWI, and they are thoughtfully written by Archie Goodwin who adds meaning to each encounter. This collection also presents the best comic illustrators of all time, including John Severin, Wally Wood, George Evans and many more. A great buy for the price and one book you will probably read again and again. I'd give it 6 stars if I could.

I loved this collection, it has a little bit of everything, the art is great, but the stories are even better. It is all black and white. Some stories take place in WW2, Korea, and Vietnam. There are pilot stories, stories about the brutality of the PTO campaign etc... The stories are intended to go deeper than your typical war comic, some stories make you think about the inevitable toll that human beings pay when they experience war. I highly recommend that parents not give this to a very young child, but it is perfect for boys older than 14. It will definitely get them thinking about war in a more realistic way than most war comics would. It will definitely take them away from a paintballing mentality and transition them to a real life mentality.