The Lonely War Of Capt. Willy Schultz!

The Lonely War of Capt. Willy Schultz is a bit of a legendary series in the near hundred years lore of the comic book. The series was written by a very young man named Will Franz and drawn by a veteran talent named Sam Glanzman. It was produced by Charlton Comics, a house infamous for its production of what many deem substandard comics. Personally, I've always been a Charlton fan, appreciating the utter strangeness which could percolate in a company which by definition had little oversight over its talent because they paid so poorly. We'll pay you less money, but we'll leave you alone. It's a bargain many creators accepted. But in the case of this series maybe even the lackadaisical Charlton saw a need to crack down. (Caution: There are spoilers below.)

Will Franz was a very young man when he submitted samples to Charlton. At first his work was rejected but eventually he got a gig when his story titled "The Sniper" was published in the fifth and final issue of Charlton Premiere. War stories seemed to be his area of interest and he got a few more. Then he partnered with Sam Glanzman. Glanzman likely needs no introduction, but for the record he was a veteran of World War II and had been working in comics for a few decades when he and Franz joined forces to bring the world The Lonely Wart of Capt. Willy Schultz. 

The saga of Willy Schultz begins with a boner as the folks at Charlton misspelled his name on the cover of the debut issue of Fightin' Army. Willy is an American soldier in a tank unit. His immediate superior gives an order that kills his colleagues and Willy, a man of powerful conscience, is properly annoyed. Circumstances are such that as he pulls a gun on the hapless officer a Nazi soldier shoots and kills him. But the blame quickly falls on Willy and while being transported for trial his jeep is attacked and he is the only survivor. Considering himself a de facto dead man in the American forces, he puts on a German uniform and after a brutal trek across the desert blends into a unit. His dilemma is powerful -- how does he save himself while masquerading as a Nazi and at the same time not bring harm to Allied forces. 

While still set in WWII in North Africa, the story brings to the four-color page the situation of a warrior who finds decency in his enemy. It's not a message necessarily that folks looking to program young men to fight in foreign lands are eager to see. The depth of the characterization is something apart from the war comics of the time. Below are some of the war titles on sale alongside the debut issue of The Lonely War of Capt. Willy Schultz. 

An entertaining batch of comics to be sure, but not comics that necessarily challenge the aims of war fighting. 

I'll just note (as did Stephen Bissette in the fantastic introduction to this collection) that another entertainment at the time was causing some ripples in the classic approach of media to war fighting. Branded starring the Rifleman himself Chuck Connors dealt with a disgraced military officer who must wander through the wild west seeking some solace. 

Willy spends several issues disguised as a German fighter, manning a Panzer tank. His situation is quite intolerable as he tries to negotiate the battlefield without directly taking American lives. The fact that he is nonetheless supporting the effort is treason by any definition. His choice to commit treason is that he's found a sympathetic humanity in the enemy. He eventually is able to slip away in the heat of battle and chances on a dead U.S soldier and appropriates his identity. But his time with the Germans has given him sympathy with the men if not their cause and he finds killing "the enemy" difficult. 

He continues his trek across North Africa, trying his best to avoid both forces. He has no success in that when he comes across a young German woman who has been blinded in a small engagement. His fluent German convinces her he's on her side, though that's an illusion which only lasts until others arrive. Willy and the woman named Ilse develop feelings for one another. 

There is some sense of redemption for Willy when he finds himself captured alongside General Stenik, the man whose son's death he's charged with. The General seems much more open to hearing the other side, though it's a tragic result for all those involved. 

Schultz is drawn into helping a British commando unit when they mistake him for American sent to assist them. He cannot adequately explain his presence, so he dons yet another German uniform and proceeds with the mission. He is ultimately captured along with the rest of the British team and lined up to be shot as a spy, but destiny in the name of Ilse provides an out. 

Sam Glanzman's artwork was really opening up about this time. His work on Hercules was becoming looser and vigorous, and likewise I see the same ideas for interesting design beginning to assert themselves in this two-parter which has Willy as a POW in an Italian camp, and he is  selected to lead an escape. As with most things in Willy's life, it doesn't go all that smoothly. 

Willy is recognized by an American officer, but one who decides that Schultz is more useful helping the Italian Partisan movement. An OSS officer named Daurio offered to get Schultz a pardon for his crime if he worked with the underground.

Franz's commentary on the ugly violence of war seems to be becoming more in focus as this two-part tale unfolds and Willy himself almost falls victim to the fury and rage of those he's trying to help. It was around this time that even the usually hands-off folks at Charlton started to request some changes. 

Both Glanzman and Franz seem to have found their way finally on this series, with the writing becoming ever more focused and emotional and the art more illustrative and compelling. Still and all the impact of the series was being felt and would yield repercussions. 

Shultz is routinely confronted with dilemmas while seeking to kill as few of the enemy as he can. Often his own life is at risk. Those around him are more willing to kill, as of course that's the purpose of war. 

Willy is able to find some measure of happiness even when he finds love with an Italian girl named Elena. They are confronted with the fact that they might have only a short time together and tragically that proves to be true. 

The series comes to an end with the death of the OSS officer Daurio and the chance for Schultz to gain his pardon. The Italian forces they fought with are wiped out, save for Elena and a few others. Where the strip would've gone from this point is unknown, but it didn't matter. The humanity and sympathy that the series demonstrated for the "enemy" was cited by one Conscientious Objector and that caused the military to contact Charlton and request that the series come to an end. Franz was given little notice and after a few more random war tales, effectively did not work in comics again. 

During the run of The Lonely War of Capt. Willy Schultz DC began the series Enemy Ace, which to my mind touched on many of the same themes, albeit with a more distant war and with warriors of a different kind. 

For this collection a new story by Franz was solicited, a chance to bring the saga of Willy Schultz to a satisfying conclusion. So, after many decades Franz was able to wrap up the saga, but sadly without his partner Sam Glanzman who had since passed away. Wayne Vansant was picked to draw the story, and he does a remarkable job of following Glanzman's style. We learn that Willy's life of tragedy continues when he loses Elena and soon thereafter circumstances again allow him to assume the identity of a German soldier. The war comes to a conclusion and escape detection he joins the French Foreign Legion and fights for many years before settling down on a rubber plantation in Vietnam. He'd found Isle again and they live a somewhat happy life, as much as anyone can after all the tragedy they'd endured. 

The series was reprinted by ACG many years ago, but it is wonderful to have these stories in a solid collection and it's most interesting to read an ending after all these decades. DC emblazoned their war stories for a time with the phrase "Make War No More", but in the saga of Willy Schultz we see that ideal played out as much as it can be. 

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A Sailor's Story by Glanzman!

Sam Glanzman's A Sailor's Story is a remarkable read. In this volume from Dover Books we have reprinted two vintage Marvel Graphic Novels from the 80's. When Glanzman wrapped up his U.S.S.Stevens tales in the back pages of DC war comics there was a lapse of nearly a decade before he was encouraged to tell these tales in longer form. 

The first titled simply A Sailor's Story reiterates many of the incidents and descriptions which were the basis for his short vignettes in the DC series. Here we get them repeated and tied together in a longer narrative which does provide a greater scope. We follow the day-to-day experiences of one seaman (Glanzman himself of course) as he leaves his home and his beloved dog to find a berth aboard the U.S.S. Stevens, a Fletcher Class Destroyer built in the massive wave of construction following Pearl Harbor. The ship of a little over three hundred men is cramped and filled with duties both dangerous and dull. We see our protagonist learn his way around the ship, becoming part of a team of men who are filled with a host of passions and expectations. We see him screw up and we see him succeed. We see men around him fall, but never does there seem to be a judgment about their behavior. It seems quaint in our modern era when everyone seems to feel welcome if not obliged to comment on the successes and failures of others, that in this story each man aboard ship is an island. What he does or doesn't do is his own buisness ultimately as long as he "turns to" when ordered to do so. 

In the second of the two Marvel Graphic Novels contained here titled A Sailor's Story Book Two: Winds, Dreams and Dragons, the focus shifts somewhat from the day-to-day of a sailor at sea during wartime to the war itself. This volume has more high drama and the artwork is at times stellar. Glanzman had a style which was deceptively simple and straightforward. Here we see him mix it up a bit more with schematics showing us the ships and weapons. He uses replicas of log pages to document the passage of time and travel of the ship. This tome really reads more about the ships themselves rather than the men aboard them, this is about the nature of the war in the Pacific which was terrible and frightening. In his matter-of-fact style Glanzman talks of encountering islands where Japanese soldiers and natives are killed and kill themselves in terrifying numbers. We encounter a great storm that destroys three U.S. ships and kills hundreds of men. And we encounter the the "Kamikaze", the "Dragon" of the title. These of course are the pilots who toward the end of the war crashed their planes into ships on suicide missions. The scale of these attacks was not something I quite realized as Glanzman says there was constant legitimate dread of these swift attacks. 

As a follow up to U.S.S. Stevens - The Collected Stories these tales in A Sailor's Story are somewhat repetitious, but not the same by any means. The stories here are like many tales we come across in myth and elsewhere, new iterations of a story needing to be told. In addition to the stories themselves there are loads of tributes to the talents of Sam Glanzman from a who's who of comic book talents. This one is highly recommended. 

This is a Dojo classic re-post.  

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USS Stevens by Glanzman!

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.

This is a Dojo classic re-post.  

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The Marvelous Land Of OZ!

The Marvelous Land of OZ was written in 1904. Baum had been busying himself by trying to turn in the original novel The Wizard of OZ into a play and a movie. Eventually he created this sequel specifically with an eye to making it into a stage production and a film. Dorothy Gale is not in this story, rather her place is taken by another innocent young child, albeit on born in OZ to begin with. This is the first of the OZ books to be illustrated by John R. Neill, but not the last as he'd remain with the franchise even after Baum's untimely passing many years later. There is a note appended to the beginning of the book which says that Baum wrote this novel fulfill a promise he made to one little girl. 

Without spoiling too many of the charming turns in this tale let me begin. We meet a boy named Tip who lives with an untrustworthy witch named Mombi. Using some magic powder he brings to life Jack Pumpkinhead, a creature made of wood and a salvaged jack-o-lantern. These two head off to OZ to escape punishment and soon use the powder to bring a sawhorse to life to help them travel. They get to OZ and meet the Scarecrow who is in charge just in time for a revolt by girls led by General Jinjur. Soon enough they head off to get help from Nick Chopper (the Tin Woodman) and before you know it the whole gang head back to OZ, but not before meeting the Woggle-Bug. There are lots more magic and many secrets as they seek yet more help to wrest OZ back from the girls who have put men to doing the housework. 

This is a charming story, filled with wit and lots of fantastical creatures. Perhaps there are in fact a few too many. The traveling troup seems to get quite crowded with at least seven. Pages go by and some don't even speak, especially Tip who gets increasingly overshadowed by the weirder aspects of the story as it unrolls. It he was writing this to supply himself with characters which could be translated to stage and screen, I can imagine why Baum throws so much stuff against the wall. Without the framework of the gray remote Kansas to give it additional zest, OZ feels a little out of focus at times. 

But these are minor quibbles. This ia fun run full of imagination and turns. There are some good secrets if not great ones. This one, like its predecessor would work wonderfully as a nighttime reading. 

Next time it's three years later and Ozma of OZ. 

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Astro City MetroBook One!

Following the success of Marvels, the duo of Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross teamed up once again to bring the world a whole new superhero universe, a place filled with heroes, villains, and the assorted sidekicks, bystanders, witnesses, and others who live for the most part in a little burg dubbed "Astro City". It's a fantastic conceit, a city which no borders save those of the imaginations of the creators. Joining Busiek and Ross on this endeavor was Brent Anderson, a tremendous artist, previously best known for his work on Ka-Zar the Savage and Strikeforce: Moritauri. Busiek wrote them, Anderson drew them, and Ross wrapped these delicious packages in magnificent covers. The success of the boys at Image gave this concept a place to live for a time. 

In the very first issue of Astro City we meet Samaritan, the "Superman" of this universe. But these are different kinds of superhero yarns, less interested in the hustle and bustle of defeating criminals in never ending battles and more interested in the thoughts and feelings of those who wage those battles and those who merely witness them. I this debut story we follow the hero in and out of his secret identity as a fact checker for a publishing house and as the supremely powerful and stunningly swift hero who responds to threats on schedule measured in seconds. His single joy doing the work is flying, which he does much less than he'd like. 

In the second issue we meet the Silver Agent and a reporter who as a rookie came across the biggest story of his career. We seem him now as an experienced editor teaching his reporters to stick to the facts. Print what you can prove. Sadly for him, or perhaps not, he could not prove much of the story which resulted in the saving of the world no less. 

The third issue gives us Jack-in-the-Box, or more accurately a smalltime hood's impressions of the hero. The crook stumbles across Jack's secret identity and then quakes in fear as he tries any number of schemes to attempt to profit from that ill-gotten information. This is an ideal Astro City story since we only really see the superhero from the outside, just as we might in our own world should such things exist. 

Different emotions come into play in the fourth issue which showcases a young woman who lives in Shadow Hill, a ghetto area of Astro City, cloistered and rife with Old World customs and actual magic. It is watched over by an enigmatic figure called The Hanged Man.  She leaves her superstition behind to head into the gleaming city, inspired by Winged Victory to make something of her life. Choices we make are often very tough and often surprising. 

We meet Crackerjack, a bombastic hero who is full of bluster and braggadocio. He is under surveillance by a mysterious old man who is watching all of mankind to make some kind of judgement. Due in part to Crackerjack's behavior he makes the call, and we will learn the consequences of that in later issues. 

The sixth and final issue of the original limited series returns us to the character Samaritan as we follow him and the heroine Winged Victory as they try have a simple date. Other heroes work overtime to give them leisure to spend a few moments together. It probably doesn't end as you thought it might. Busiek's ability to develop character is amazing to behold and folks in his stories have an uncanny reality. 

The series returns as an ongoing and follow a gaggle of heroes seen from afar by a man who has just moved to Astro City from Boston along with his two young daughters. His wife has left him for another man and he's trying to live his life with as little bitterness as he can muster for the sake of his girls. Watching the heroes of Astro City and the threats they battle gives him pause, but also inspiration. 

We get the first continued story in a two-parter which focuses on Astra of the Furst Family. It's always fun to follow the echoes of other heroes Busiek draws upon to create his super folks for Astro City and the does a great job with the Furst Family which reminds me of the Fantastic Four and the Doom Patrol as well. We get a look at some of weirder places in this world as the family searches for their little girl who has gone on an adventure to learn hopscotch. 

Given the luxury of the ongoing series, Busiek and Anderson gives us the first full-fledged six-part epic set in the town of heroes. There is a serial killer in Shadow Hill and the inability of the heroes to find the culprit begins to scratch away at the good will people felt for the heroes. Goaded on by a mayor with ulterior motives, the story documents the heroes as they fall from grace. We see this through the eyes of a young man who has come to Astro City to become a hero and who gets the chance when the Confessor becomes his mentor and fights crime as the Alter Boy. The Confessor has secrets of his own. By the end of this saga the Confessor has transformed. The story leads us back to that lone tale involving Crackerjack and the weird little man who watched him. The call he sent was for invasion. 

The tenth issue introduces us to the Garbage Man, an old man who rankled against forced retirement and used his technical wizardry and his new leisure time to commit crimes. When he commits the perfect crime, he finds that enjoying his spoils in remote sunny climes is not what makes him happiest. 

Jack-in-the-Box is the center of the next two-part story which introduces to him properly. He's a toy manufacturer who is a second-generation hero, following in the footsteps of his father who used his wits and inventions to stop the company he worked for from turning his creations into weapons. Jack is visited by two weird versions of himself who claim to be his son from different futures. Both seek revenge for something Jack did. He soon finds his wife is pregnant and now there's a dilemma of how to be a good father a good superhero at the same time. 

The collection closes out with a special issue numbered one-half which appeared as a promotional giveaway. The story revolves around a man who dreams of a lovely woman he's never met. This vision interferes with his work and his love life. When he finally learns the truth, he's given a difficult choice by the Hanged Man. It's a delightful tale, an ideal example of what Astro City is about. 

These stories are stunning, and it was so much fun to read them again after so many years. Here's something I wrote about the series years ago. I'll  let me then speak for me now. 

Kurt Busiek and Brent Anderson have told some utterly touching stories over the years about regular folks who just happen to have superpowers or who just happen to know someone who does. These are by and large gentle stories about all too mortal human beings trying to find a way forward in a world that doesn't always make the most sense. It's just like real life, but more colorful on occasion. That's the real secret of Astro City, that despite the likes of Samaritan, Silver Agent, The Confessor, and more, the world is very much like the one outside most of our windows. It's world of hard choices and difficult decisions made by regular folks with limited information and imperfect understanding. It's just like here and now.

 I'm already eager to dive into the second MetroBook. 

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