Sgt. Rock: Between Hell & a Hard Place [Paperback]

Joe Kubert (Author), Brian Azzarello (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1, 2004

This thought-provoking story presents a tale that calls into question the double standards of humanity and morality during wartime. In the midst of a covert World War II mission, Sgt. Rock discovers that four of his prisoners were brutally murdered during the night. With the fifth and only surviving prisoner on the run, the Sergeant must determine if the cold-blooded murderer is a member of Easy Company or the German escapee. A moralistic murder mystery set against the backdrop of war, this book examines the fine line between being a soldier and a sadistic killer.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

For more than 30 years, legendary comics artist Kubert (Yossel) drew and occasionally wrote stories for Our Army At War, a war comic chronicling Sergeant Frank Rock and "the combat happy Joes of Easy Company" as they fought their way through Europe during WWII. Kubert's stark, mood-saturated drawings set Sgt. Rock apart as a classic. After many years away from the character, Kubert has teamed up with Eisner Award-winning writer Azzarello (100 Bullets) to produce an impressive and often moving graphic novel that showcases the development of Kubert's powerful, understated drawings. It's 1944 and Easy Company is battling through the Hurtgen Forest toward the German town of Grosshau. Out on patrol, the men of Easy Company - among them Bulldozer, Ice Cream Soldier, Wildman and Little Sure Shot - take four SS officers prisoner. But after the fighting, they return to their prisoners only to find that three of them have been murdered, shot at point blank range. The fourth prisoner has disappeared, forcing Rock to solve a murder mystery: is the killer from Easy Company, or is it the vanished officer? Azzarello contributes a fine script, taut with looming danger and the fatalistic humor of soldiers facing combat. Sadly, the ending (Rock and the killer banter while a beautiful French woman looks on) seems contrived and disappointing. Nevertheless, this is a terrific war yarn that conveys some measure of the grim courage and despair of American WWII infantrymen.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Sgt. Rock is synonymous with the war comics that flourished in the 1950s and 1960s, before Vietnam changed the pop-cultural climate. This upscale graphic-novel revival teams Rock's original artist, the venerable Kubert, with scripter Azzarello, known for his hard-boiled contemporary comic-book thrillers. Grittier and grislier than the original, this Sgt. Rock is more Band of Brothers than the larger-than-life heroics of the old war genre. As the battle-scarred troops of Easy Company take some green replacements through their baptism of fire, they must ferret out who is behind the brutal murder of three German prisoners. Besides heightened realism and more gruesome combat scenes than were permissible four decades ago, Azzarello adds moral ambiguity to Easy Company's exploits and his trademark mordant dialogue. And Kubert, who recently released an ambitious graphic novel about the Holocaust, Yossel, has never been better in his 60-year career. Revisiting one of his signature characters, his solid mastery shows on every page of this proof that there's life yet in a genre long fallen into neglect. Gordon Flagg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 144 pages
• Publisher: DC Comics (December 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1401200540
• ISBN-13: 978-1401200541
• Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 0.4 x 10.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,108,158 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Kubert's Rock, May 13, 2006

By 

Bennet Pomerantz "Bennet Pomerantz, AUDIOWORLD" (College Park, Maryland) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Sgt. Rock: Between Hell & a Hard Place (Paperback)

Artist Joe Kubert doing Sgt Rock again...for most fans of the original Rock of Easy Company, that is all you need to say. And Between Hell and a hard place, it is a graphic delight.

War comics were a staple of DC and Marvels comic line (Rock, Haunted Tank, The Losers, Unknown Soldier for DC, Sgt Fury for Marvel)in the 1960-1990's. Then suddenly they (like the Westerns genre) vanished from the comic lines-to be overtaken by the Superheroes with their Crisis's, Secret Wars and now their Civil Wars

With writing talent of Brian Azzarello (from the comic 100 Bullets) and Kubert at the pen, This taut graphic novels is both a tribute to the DC war line and a great visual tale. It is also like it harkens back to the days of Bob Kanigher (writer) and Kubert (inks) in the orginal Our Army at War books.
It is a war story with a mystery thrown in and it works on many levels

If you haven't read Sgt Rock before, dont worry...you wont be lost-Azzarello reintroducers the reader to Rock and his Easy Company. The art seems almost like a movie flying outta the books. This isn't a KID's comic book, it is WAR with all the dirt and grit. It is not pretty, but it is great storytelling

Bennet Pomerantz, AUDIOWORLD

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars classic sgt rock, May 31, 2004

By 

DaveTheRed "timone312" (las vegas, NV, USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Sgt. Rock: Between Hell & a Hard Place (Hardcover)

I used to love comics like sgt. rock and g.i. combat as a kid, and this hardcover novel really brought me back. A great story, great art, it had me holding my breath like i was a kid again! I wish they would do a graphic novel like this for the unknown soldier, jeb stuart, all of the old war comic greats...

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Rock Steady., January 22, 2006

By 

Michael F. Hopkins "A Deeper Groove" (Buffalo, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sgt. Rock: Between Hell & a Hard Place (Hardcover)

I came of age during the 1960s, when the foreboding
glare of the previous decade's McCarthyism gave way
to both the hope of a new day's tolerance, and the
despair that Peace and Justice didn't come all at
once.
Vietnam was a deadly cancer of that despair, but
that misguided conflict was but a terrible symptom
of the larger conflict waged within our hearts
between ethical clarity and convenient viewpoints.
The names may be different from Nixon, Faubus,
Falwell and Hoover, and many of the places are a
distance from Southeast Asia, but make no mistake:
That conflict, as old as Creation, still wages as
hotly today within and without our minds and our
souls.

What, you may ask, does all this have to do with
a fresh tale about an Army Sergeant from World
War II? In the vertigo of 1960s comics, much fuss
was stirred over a war comic at Marvel, about a
bunch of superheroes in khakis who whooped it up
whenever they went into battle. Interesting band
that SGT. FURY AND HIS HOWLING COMMNADOS
were, they never quite came across as soldiers.
Even when the element of Death was introduced
into their narrative, it always came across as
an afterthought for the sake of plot, never as
the grim, steady product that War is so efficient
at producing.
A purely 1960s production, SGT. FURY would
be eclipsed by the looming landscape of
the very real, highly traumatic real-life
subject painting a deadlier drama on the
day's nightly news than anything the Howlers
breezed through.

Over at DC, however, War was depicted as the
nasty business that it has always been. No flag-
waving propaganda machine here, the War comics
which came from DC (ENEMY ACE, THE LOSERS, OUR
FIGHTING FORCES, etc.) always depicted the blunt
& ugly reality of what a dirty business War
is, and how the only good of War is in its
ending.
The tales of SGT. ROCK and EASY CO. rank as
pinnacles of this genre, its original tales by
author Robert Kanigher and illustrator Joe Kubert
a worthy complement to the 1940s chronicles of
master cartoonist Bill Maudlin, and his tireless
reporting of what was happening with ordinary
Joes sweating it out on the Front.
Laughter in the midst of despair, courage in the
crucibles of white-hot fear, compassion delivered
in tension-filled moments between blood to be
spilled and turf to be held. All this and more
spell the exploits of EASY CO. and its battle-
tested non-com; getting it done in the hope that,
maybe, they'll live to get home.

This is the powerful heart that beats through
BETWEEN HELL AND A HARD PLACE, the gripping
DC/Vertigo Sequential Novel which places ROCK
and EASY in the thick of even deeper conflict,
with burning questions about prisoner abuse and
combat honor which are as pertinent in days of
holy terror and oil-pimping as it was in the
days of "good wars".
Acclaimed Vertigo Editor Karen Berger brought
the legendary Joe Kubert aboard for a new project
on SGT. ROCK, some 45 years after co-creating
the character! It was Kubert who suggested a
hardcover graphic novel, as well as the choice
of Brian Azzarello to write this chronicle.

Kubert couldn't have picked a more versatile author
to upgrade the gritty exploits of EASY. Widely
renowned for his award-winning film noir-rooted
crime drama, 100 BULLETS, Azzarello is as at home
writing about the cosmos-spanning derring-do of
SUPERMAN as he is denoting the driven manipulations
of LEX LUTHOR, or spinning the gangbanging urban
blight confronted by LUKE CAGE.
Anyone thinking that Azzarello's work with recognized
characters is a sell-out, a watering-down of his edgy
style needs to stop looking for trends to proclaim or
fall into, and read the man's work. All of it.

Kubert, one of the giants of Sequential literature,
displays the depth of his finely-chiseled pictorals
in his return to one of his most famous characters.
In the years since his last SGT. ROCK tale, the
creator of TOR, co-creator of WWI's RITTMEISTER
von HAMMER,and acclaimed interpreter of HAWKMAN
and TARZAN established a world-renowned school
for Cartoon and Graphic Art, conceived two
exceptional books on the horrors of Hate and
shapings of War (FAX FROM SARAJEVO and YOSSEL:
APRIL 19, 1943 ), and has witnessed two of his
children grow up to master the Sequential field
for which he has given so much over the long
decades.

Each man brandishes the full dynamic range of their
expressive wizardry to conceive a tough-minded,
heart-gripping tale of conflict, the camaraderie it
breeds, the wariness always at one's shoulder, and
the awful shock of what one moment can tear asunder.
Films such as Spielberg's SAVING PRIVATE RYAN and
Samuel Fuller's THE BIG RED ONE are aptly reflected
in this saga's earthy dialogue and sharp intrigues,
but BETWEEN HELL AND A HARD PLACE is far more than a
mirror of post-WWII cinematic recollection.

In BETWEEN HELL AND A HARD PLACE, we bear witness
to the communicative power that this idiom can command.
For longtime readers, you will see familiar
characters dealing with familiar horrors as never
before. For new readers, a more honest depiction of
conflict is at your grasp.
When a casual conversation takes place amidst a
freshly-discovered mine field, we lose the privilege
of taking any moment for granted. In an explosive
outburst of temper, we feel the madness that sane
people must court in surmounting insane situations.
In a pivotal exchange between a haughty aristocrat
and a weather-beaten grunt, a captured woman's
fate projects the true folly and utter pointlessness
of War as a bearer of Truth.
The only Truth about War, whether for the warrior,
the conquered, or the pacifist, is that it's raw
Hell. Once more, the exploits of EASY CO. bring
this brutal Truth home with rock-steady clarity.

If the earliest signs on Kubert's 2006 project,
SGT. ROCK: THE PROPHECY, are any indication,
the clarity which distinguished BETWEEN HELL
AND A HARD PLACE will become even more
dangerously crystal-clear.
For a world too often befuddled by peril
cloaked in comfortable catch-phrases, economic
spin doctoring, and murderously comforting
prejudices, such clarity has never been more
desperately needed than right now.