Reading the work of work of Sam Glanzman has always been a joy for me since the earliest days of my fanboy existence reading his provocative stories in Charlton's often overlooked Hercules series. That said I was asked a few years ago to write a reflection on Glanzman for an upcoming publication for Drew Ford's It's Alive brand at IDW. I was very happy to do it and the timeframe was tight, only a few days as I recollect. I hit the keyboards and knocked out an essay posthaste and sent it in. Ford expressed satisfaction with it and in fact it appeared (by reports) in Dunkirk: From the Pages of Combat published in late 2018. For evidence of my contribution I direct you to this link at the Grand Comics Database where my name appears with appropriate lack of prominence near the end of the entry. And that is all the evidence I have.
When Ford contacted me he needed the essay fast and said he would pay for it, fifty bucks specifically. I said I'd do it for nothing, just the honor of being able to contribute to a book about Glanzman being sufficient payment along with a few copies of the book when it was published. He insisted on payment and said and that's way he did business, and copies were no problem. More after the essay itself.
Sam Glanzman was not at the battle of Dunkirk. But he could have been.
The late Samuel Joseph Glanzman was a comic book artist of great skill and great accomplishment. But that is not all he was. Beyond being an early Golden Age comic artist, he was a manual laborer in mills, shops, factories and boat yards. Without question his time in the Navy aboard the ship U.S.S. Stevens during World War II is fundamental to anyone wishing to glean more about the nature of his later comic work. Sam Glanzman drew some of the most authentic war comics ever published.
He produced comics for many publishers over many years, but that is not all he drew. He was an artist who worked in a number of genres, perhaps most famously on Charlton’s Hercules series from the late 60’s. That’s where I first encountered his distinctive storytelling, a style which evoked the real world without being slave to it. The Hercules series is well remembered for the later issues in which Glanzman experimented with unusual and baroque page designs. But the early issues of that run are more typical of the work that Glanzman had produced for most of his career – stories which presented a world recognizably the one in which we live, but also filled with lush details which stark reality often obscures. The people, even the heroes were not out-sized behemoths, but recognizably real people, though people with particular personalities.
In his work which dealt with a more modern world, such as the battles of World War II, that ability to capture the essence of reality allowed the reader to immediately identify with the soldiers and sailors who were thrust in harm’s way day in and day out. The outcome of their dangerous adventures always to some extent uncertain, just as it was and is in the real world.
And it is that powerful feeling of reality which predominates his work dramatizing the battle of Dunkirk. That story from the Dell series Combat, told with vigorous economy, presents some of the leaders and men who served on both sides during this infamous sea battle which saw the evacuation of British forces from the beaches and ruined docks in order to preserve the future of the forces. We see through Glanzman’s masterful blend of frank realism and dramatic flourish how the struggle was on one hand to preserve the resources needed to wage the war, but also to simply save the men who waged that war. The story is at once the story of thousands and the story of a few – the secret to grand storytelling. The big picture is clear with ships and planes in conflict, but so is the human drama which unfolds within the shadows of these machines of war.
I was not at the battle of Dunkirk. But thanks to the nimble storytelling, the careful craftsmanship and authentic understanding of Sam Glanzman, in some very small way I could have been.
- Dean Webb (a.k.a. Rip Jagger)
I never saw my fifty bucks, and frankly I don't give a care about it. But I also never received even ONE copy of the book so I could have the thrill to see my name in actual print on actual paper in an actual comic celebrating a comic artist I admire. In fact I didn't even know the book had been published until much later and by then all my outlets had sold out and I've been unable to get a copy anyplace else.
A few e-mails to Ford about the matter drew one response in which he apologized and said he'd make good. Being a trusting soul by and large, I took him at his word and even sent him another essay he requested for a later collected edition. I was a sap I guess. For not only did I not get my first fifty bucks, I didn't receive the promised second fifty bucks and I still never got a copy of the first comic book. I followed up a few times and got dead air. Considering it lesson learned (twice) I dusted my hands of the affair and largely forgot about it. But reading the U.S.S. Stevens stories by Glanzman reminded me and so I'm sharing my tale of meager woe and sharing the essay as well. Maybe soon I'll share the second one as well.
I can now add my name to the long long list of comic creators who have been gypped by an editor. It's an illustrious list and no small part of me is glad to be part of such magnificent company. Another really big part wants the actual comic book, and a teensy bit wouldn't mind the money. At any rate my name is in the GCD and that's not nothin' amigos.
Rip Off
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