U.S.S. Stevens - The Collected Stories!

In World War I this observation was made about the nature of war -- "Months of boredom punctuated by moments of terror." No fictional work I've come across communicated that notion more effectively than Sam Glanzman's remarkable tales of U.S.S. Stevens, a destroyer class warship in the Pacific during World War II. Glanzman served aboard the U.S.S. Stevens and in incisive but powerful four-page vignettes paints a picture of men making the best of life on board a ship and dealing with the vagaries of life as well the constant threat to life and limb. 

Above is a photo of the U.S.S. Stevens, the actual ship as plows though the ocean waters. The ship was decommissioned and scrapped in the early 70's at about the same time that Glanzman highly personal tales of the men of that vessel began to appear in the pages of various DC war comics such as Our Army at War, Our Fighting Forces, Star Spangled War Stories, G.I. Combat, and even Weird War Tales, among others. The series continued in black and white in slightly longer form in Marvel's Savage Tales and many years later in the Joe Kubert Presents mini-series. 

In all the time the series ran for DC for most of the 70's it never rated a cover appearance, though clearly it was a series well regarded by fans and pros alike. Joe Kubert seems to have been especially fond of it and even decided to use Glanzman's roughs as opposed to his more polished fully-inked work because to his mind those pages had more power. The ship did appear on an issue of Dell's Combat though as illustrated by Glanzman some years before he the series for DC. 

These are clearly exceedingly personal tales for Sam Glanzman, about men he knew or knew of. In the collection of these stories from Dover Books there is an amazing amount of background material on Glanzman and a very detailed set of notes about each of the stories and the sources. The earlier stories work best for me, both in their compact size at four or sometimes five pages and they are more personal snapshots of life aboard a ship in time of war. Later Glanzman tries to cover more of the broader nature of the war and while informative lacks the personal power of those intimate tales of men in wartime.

On this day when we take a moment to remember the Americans who were slain during the attacks on Pearl Harbor, it's this volume which showcases the individual stories of men who waged war against an enemy and as often as not against some aspect of themselves that serves to memorialize them best. They weren't suckers and losers as some have suggested in the past, but American service men who put country above their personal desire and needs. They were patriots. 

More about the U.S.S. Stevens tomorrow. 

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