Showcase Corner - Enemy Ace!

I think it can be safely said that no company produced better war comics than DC during the Silver and Bronze Ages of comics. Charlton certainly held their own in the genre, but most other publishers only dabbled, even Marvel with only a handful of titles such as Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos. But for DC, the war comic was a main event and not a sideline and the kings of the form were writer Robert Kanigher and artist Joe Kubert. And while the pair worked on many successful titles such as Sgt. Rock and others, I will suggest that their most exquisite creation was Enemy Ace. Though Kanigher is most always listed alone as the creator I will maintain (and I'd reckon most would agree) that Kubert was essential to the character's initial success. 

That success first began in Our Army at War #51 which at the time featured Sgt.Rock as the lead. Enemy Ace began as a back-up with an enigmatic cover. He went on to appear in two more issues of Our Army at War before getting a chance to break out on his own. That chance came in Showcase. 

Showcase issues #57 and #58 give the "Hammer from Hell" his first real cover push and handsome ones they are indeed. Enemy Ace was Hans Von Hammer a man of noble birth and noble instincts who attempted with some limited success to bring chivalry to the warfare in what he consistently called the "Killer Skies". World War I is the war that forever ripped off the noble veneer of war and thanks to the advances in machinery and the limited advances of human behavior saw the massacre of hundreds of thousands of men and even women and children as the war groaned on year after year. One place in which the illusion of men of honor fighting with selected nobility could be maintained was in the sky where single warriors in new machines which flew high above the mud and blood below could engage in combat. The war in the sky was no less deadly but as presented in Kanigher's stories was possessed of a clarity which allowed men to make choices about how they went about waging it. 

The Showcase experiment worked and Enemy Ace was awarded his own ongoing series in the pages of Star-Spangled War Stories taking over from a multitude of dinosaurs in the ongoing War that Time Forgot series (more on that next month by the way). Joe Kubert's atmospheric cover for the first Enemy Ace issue gives a good insight into how Kanigher and Kubert approached the character. Enemy Ace was a very personal war story, told from the first-person perspective of Von Hammer himself. This was not an uncommon technique for DC war stories but it was used with unusual deftness and attention to character in this outing. 

The stories of Enemy Ace are surprisingly similar in construction, almost to the point of eliminating plot as a primary concern. The events that transpire in an Enemy Ace story are only important in how they impact Von Hammer and those around him. It is always character that matters, it is always the effect of various things that fuel the narrative. 

I was especially struck in this reading at the absolute mastery of Joe Kubert's storytelling. Drawing a comic filled with airplanes (even interesting looking World War II versions) can become quite static very quickly. The sky offers very little in the way of establishing perspective, and Kubert solves this with astonishing skill by using close-ups of Von Hammer himself to establish those distances and visual cues. This only reinforces the written words which are a running catalogue of Enemy Ace's thoughts and feelings and desires as the deadly struggle in the "Killer Skies" rumbles along with death a split second and a single mistake away. 

Von Hammer is the muchly awarded ace of all of Germany and while he takes no pleasure in his accomplishments others do and he is regarded as great hero by many. But often as leader of his "Jagdstaffel" he is called upon to make hard choices which result in the deaths of many young men who are still often aglow with anticipated glory. Some are terrified, some are bloodthirsty, but all must fly and most often die. 

Another constant in these stories are the eccentric and distinctive enemy pilots that Von Hammer confronts in dogfights. He encounters men with names like "The Hunter" and his most capable foe "The Hangman". The latter is also a man of noble birth and he and Von Hammer has a several-issue combat which is filled with various acts of chivalry on the part of both men. When the Hangman is seemingly killed finally his sister takes to the skies as "The Harpy". Enemy Ace's relationships with women are touched upon in the stories but almost always they are nurse who want to share the glamor of Von Hammer but are chilled by his icy demeanor. 

The stories of Enemy Ace are quick to point out the bravery of the combatants and Von Hammer himself is often struck by the nobility and bravery of those Frenchmen and Englishmen he battles in the deadly skies. 

One singular issue of the run was actually penciled by Neal Adams with Kubert inks. It is only slightly less effective in its storytelling which features a whole squadron of mysterious skeletal pilots. 

One of the most bizarre aspects of the Enemy Ace stories is Von Hammer's surreal connection to a deadly wolf from the Black Forest. After his combat missions Von Hammer would take a rifle and go hunting which most often became merely an opportunity for him to meet with this lupine familiar and open up his heart to ears which seemed weirdly empathetic. 

Enemy Ace is a hard man who is thought an emotionless killing machine by those around him. This is a hurtful burden for our hero but he carries that weight and the responsibility for his squadron with a grim-faced determination. 

The weirdness of the enemies Von Hammer confronts in the sky can be quite compelling such as the obsessive Englishman who imagines himself St. George reincarnated. All of these bizarre villains make the stories feel almost mythic and not actually realistic in some ways. 

One story which felt out of place to me concerns Von Hammer taking a shine to a little puppy. Like most creatures who fly with the Enemy Ace, Schatzi's fate is not one to taken for granted. 

The reader can see the handwriting on the wall when Enemy Ace's page count gets diminished, and reprints are brought to hand to fill out the book. But it was good stuff being Kubert's awesome Viking Prince. 

Star-Spangled War Stories #150 is the last to feature Enemy Ace on the cover and the logo changed diminishing his name and doing more to promote the book itself. 

Star-Spangled War Stories #151 has the Enemy Ace reduced to a back-up with new war hero The Unknown Soldier taking the lead. He will keep that position until the book's cancellation many years later. 

Star-Spangled War Stories # 159 is the last to feature Enemy Ace for several years. When he did finally re-emerge several years later Kurbert was gone but his place was taken by Frank Thorne who did a creditable job capturing the flavor of the series as Enemy Ace battled DC's other WWI ace the Balloon Buster.  

Enemy Ace returned to the comic racks in the pages of Men of War with its second issue. He had to once again back-up another feature named Codename:Gravedigger, and in fact in most of the issues he was one of three different features in the book. 

Enemy Ace was drawn in his earliest Men of War stories by Ed Davis but quickly the artist on the series became Howard Chaykin and he was more than up to the task. His stylish noir artwork worked quite well on Enemy Ace and to my mind only Kubert did it better. 

In the early 80's Enemy Ace returns once again, this time Kanigher is joined by veteran war artist John Severin who does his typical amazing job at capturing the details of war. But something is missing from these stories from the back pages of Unknown Soldier (which had taken over the numbering of Star-Spangled War Stories), the weirdness which filled the atmosphere of early tales has disappeared for a more conventional feel for war tales. 

This collection wraps up with a story written not by Robert Kanigher as had been the case with all the rest but Denny O'Neil when he brings in Enemy Ace to Batman's world in Detective Comics #404 in a somewhat ghostly form. The artwork by Neal Adams is bang on though if you are looking for the real Von Hammer you might be disappointed. 

Enemy Ace as imagined by Kanigher and Kubert was a knight fighting for his countrymen and for his honor. He was a relentless killer but he was not a heartless one. We are able to see into his mind as he tells us his story and that makes all  the difference. The early issues of Enemy Ace feel almost poetic in their rejection of narrative disntction and focus on reflection and style. I daresay these are works of art, worthy of  being collected and read again and again down through the years. 

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