Will Eisner was a master storyteller with the uncanny skill of making real people feel real, not something always well done in comics. Most of the population of the world in comics are relegated to crowd scenes, part of the mass of humanity, often speaking with one or maybe two voices in response to the activities of the heroes or villains or both. Eisner was able to pluck out especially interesting people from the background crowds and give them distinctive voices. His men had paunches or didn't and his women were sexy or not, but mostly they were real.
"Last Day in Vietnam" is told from the specific limited first-person perspective of a reporter heading into the back country of Vietnam for the first time and his guide is a soldier with a smile on his face. We find a very real man, a soldier who is heading home and feeling thrilled but especially fragile now that the relative safety of the hearth is near. He's full of bravado, naivete, and you can tell he's talking to fill the air, to keep the fear from creeping in. But that fear does creep in when real immediate danger rears up and things change for him, and his imagination meets his reality. We see all this from the safe distance of the reporter, so it's best not to be too judgmental as it might be easy to be. Eisner gives us that option.
Today is indeed the fiftieth anniversary of the last day of the Vietnam War, marked with the fall of Saigon after twenty years of relatively pointless conflict. The war ended in the nick of time for me personally as I would have been eligible for the draft in the year.
I read this story not in its original collection, but in The Mammoth Book of War Comics.
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I read this story not in its original collection, but in The Mammoth Book of War Comics.
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Congratulations on avoiding the draft for Vietnam - what a lucky escape! My father turned 18 only a few weeks after the end of World War II so he too avoided having to fight and possibly die in that war - he still got conscripted into the British army but at least the conflict was over. Thankfully the days of America blatantly meddling in the political affairs of other countries seems to have ended and the CIA no longer stalks the world trying to overthrow democratically elected governments.
ReplyDeleteFor certain anything approximating an American hegemony is over, and that's not a bad thing at all. The sins my country has committed are many, but that is so with any dominant power. It's a grim reality we all must confront before we can hopefully make a better world.
DeleteI don't miss the draft one bit but at times wonder if there were a way to enable a federal civilian corps. I wish I'd kept my final 1A card but like a lot of guys in my cohort symbolically threw it into the trash at the end of selective service.
ReplyDeleteI'm firmly against a draft or any kind of service like you suggest merely because the U.S. is nationalistic enough already. I was only a few months from having to register when the end came -- thank goodness.
DeleteJust to be clear, no one was drafted after 1972. Draft cards were issued for the next few years in case the draft was reinstated, but it never was.
ReplyDeleteGood info. I still remember talking to my Mom about needing to register. Potent.
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