The Losers - Kill Me With Wagner!

Jack Kirby's tenure on Our Fighting Forces which at the time featured The Losers began with a whimper in the one hundred and fifty-first issue. The comic sported a typical Joe Kubert cover which had his usual ironic gag of the heroes assuming that they are out of danger when in fact a silent mob of Nazis are lingering in the shadows. He did this one countless times and this is a pretty good one. But it doesn't really have that much to do with the story directly. There is no indication that the interiors of this comic are any different than a myriad of other DC war books available for fans that same month. But there was something different, the great Jack Kirby playing out his contract with DC was given the book and he would do what he often did with projects of his kind, create something different, something special.

Jack Kirby begins his run with the heroes (Johnny Cloud, Captain Storm, Gunner and Sarge) on a mission behind Nazi lines in which they are to work with the local resistance to rescue a great musician, a woman who has become a master of the classics, especially those by Hitler's favorite composer Wagner. We first meet the team as they are skulking around the local area seeking a secure way to enter the town where the musician lives. They find the way in, even battle the local Nazi commander who himself is conducting a brutal search for the same artist. He is a music lover, but the irony is that his soul is no less black for his purported love of music. The pianist is discovered at last and the team is successful in saving her as well as many other local townsfolk before the Allies launch a deadly bombing attack on the hapless town. 

This story sets up the structure of most of the Kirby stories pretty well. While our four heroes are mostly front and center in most of their stories Kirby will tell, they nonetheless are not necessarily the focus of the story. I was reminded of Will Eisner's approach to The Spirit in which the titular hero was often out of the limelight in his own series.

D. Bruce Berry is the inker for Kirby at this period,a time when Mike Royer who had inked Kirby with great success needed a break from the relentless schedule the "King" maintained. Berry like Royer before him sought to retain as much of the real Kirby as he could, but sadly he was not able to bring the drama that Royer succeeded in supplying and much of Berry's work on Kirby feels more like tracing than true lush inking. The inker in those bygone days was needed to make the work dark enough for reproduction and Berry accomplished that, but added little to the finished product aside from that.

D. Bruce Berry's own stylish artwork. 

It's difficult to imagine a more disparate group than the Losers. An aviation ace, a P.T. boat commander, and a non-com and his young partner are a mash up of the services for certain. Their special missions will find them in both the European and Pacific theaters of war as well as on the home front and in other regions of the world affected by the great conflict. In a mere dozen issues Kirby transports the Losers across the globe and they will encounter a wide range of different distinctive characters who will teach our heroes about how human beings react to the rigors of war.

More to come.

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A Day In The Anti-Life - Fourth Estate!

I've been a consumer of television news my whole life. I'm part of that generation which didn't move from newspapers to TV, but rather always suckled at the glass teat (as Harlan Ellison put it). News was something that happened a few times a day in my early years, in the morning, at noon and then again in the evening. There were local news reports often followed on by national news which hailed from three networks, of which the most venerable seemed to be CBS headed by Walter Cronkite. I personally grew up in an NBC household and the venerable team of Chet Huntley and  David Brinkley were the go-to voices for important things in the world. News was just news, and then it changed.

With the advent of cable news and more specific types of television channels came into existence. Famously people think of MTV but the most important addition to the TV dial was a project from Ted Turner, the owner of the Atlanta Braves and a major force in early cable development with TBS (Turner Broadcasting Services) and later Turner Classic Movies. What that addition was, was Cable News Network or CNN for short. CNN changed the way folks consumed news, now you were forced to wait for the dollops of news that the networks delivered in neatly packaged half-hour and sometimes hour long dosages, but were able to see the news when you wanted to.

One of the problems of course with a station hosting twenty-four hours of news is that finding enough news might be an issue. It sometimes was, but early on CNN's format was sort of to just keep doing regular news reports but over and over with occasional updates. By many reports it became normal for CNN to be left on in many offices and breaking stories merely unfolded in real time before our eyes. The first Gulf War really was an opportunity for CNN to show its mettle and it did so.

CNN proved successful and soon there were others like MSNBC and FOX who jumped onto the cable news business and CNN's luster faded. The network has been a real disappointment for many years and seemed content with light material with an entertainment spin or glomming onto whatever story seemed to be the center of spectacle at the time. While some critics still had regard for its overseas efforts, domestically CNN was a station I came to avoid. With an eye permanently on the ratings meter they milked meager stories for all they were worth and then some. A low point for me was the Boston bombing story which was generally a debacle for news reporting but for CNN offered countless chances to screw up as they seemed unable to even properly report what was happening before their very eyes.

And then came Donald Trump, the man destined to become our current "so-called" President. And with the advent of "The Donald" CNN has blossomed and become again a news organization worth the title. One one hand it can be suggested that the rise of Trump is just the latest fad they have glommed onto, but it's been a long long time now and they seem to have left that attitude behind for now...at least I hope that's the case.

What I'm seeing from CNN these days is for real hard-nosed reporting by competent experienced tough-minded reporters taking proper journalistic care and delivering the goods on a regular basis. (MSNBC is too political too much of the time and Fox is downright disreputable too much of the time. Of note is how Mark Levine hijacked their air to rant and rave about the "wiretaps" in Trump Tower. A miserable bit of blather which got no push back but rather got merely pushed.) Reporters have not been slow to speak truth to power and they have been stalwart when the powers want to strike back. "Access" has always been the weapon that the powerful have used to tame the press, in other words demanding concessions in coverage to guarantee the ability to speak with the particulars. That weapon seems to have lost its potency with the Trump machine who either don't know how to use it deftly enough or are so egregious that finally at last that trade off is seen as too profane for the consciences of those in charge of the Fourth Estate.

Trump and his cronies have tried to belittle and undermine the press and they have been successful to some degree. The general public is convinced that the "media" (whatever that is) is not reliable, at least not as reliable and trustworthy apparently as a proven racist misogynistic serial liar who stumbled into the role of "Leader of the Free World". But sometimes people get pretty desperate to believe what they want to believe.  Despite these attacks by the powers above, the press and in particular CNN have not relented nor swooned in the heat of criticism. Instead they seem inspired to pour it on even more.

Cutting the mainstream press out of the loop in the White House is a foolish attempt to curb criticism and it's doomed to fail. The press does not require access to cover a public official nor a public event and now that "The Donald" has fallen out of his private tower of personal glory and moved into the "People's House" he will find much more difficult to hold the press at bay.

CNN is fulfilling its promise when it launched all those decades ago. It is doing what journalism is supposed to do in a free country, bringing the tough news to those folks who are in charge of this country really, the people. That some of those people might still prefer to drink the Kool-Aid provided by the Trump machine is not something purveyors of the facts can be concerned with. (I notice that Fox is doling it out in heaping helpings about this most recent fracas over wiretaps; disgraceful claptrap that even their own reporters have trouble defending, though others seem downright eager to once again stoke up the outrage machine which they keep primed with annual blasts at those who don't celebrate Christmas in the correct manner.) So it is even more important that CNN's folks keep their noses to the ground and find the facts and present them. You know those facts are uncomfortably close to the truth when the focus of the investigation begins to squall and  yells foul.

The purpose of journalism is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. To that end CNN is the tip of the spear in the modern American news landscape, I congratulate them and challenge them to keep it up for all our sakes. And I hope that if and when the ratings slip, they don't abandon their mission. It's too important.

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The Losers - Born To Lose!

"The Born Losers" are a mismatched squad of American warriors who band together because of the needs of their country in war and because each of them has suffered a loss of self-respect because of the rigors of war. They dub themselves "Born Losers" as almost a badge of shame, a fatalistic nod to the grim realities of warfare which demands sometimes even more than the lives of the soldiers who fight.

Among the Losers is Johnny Cloud The Navajo Ace who debuted in All-American Men of War #82 in 1960 and was among the highest profile ethnically diverse characters in a time when such stuff was indeed rare. Riddled with much of the usual cliche details, nonetheless it's no small thing that a character like Johnny Cloud even made it to the newsstands.

Captain Storm hit the stands in 1964 and this P.T. Boat captain had his own title which lasted several years. Distinctive because of his Ahab-like wooden leg, he too finds that the war has great cost making him a self-styled loser.

The duo of Gunner and Sarge debuted in 1959 in Our Fighting Forces #45 and that team along with their dog "Pooch" battled for many years afterwards.

All of these DC war heroes found their way into G.I. Combat #138, a comic written by Robert Kanigher and drawn by Russ Heath which featured the "origin" of the Born Losers. Jeb Stuart and his tank crew fail mightily when they attempt to cross a bridge and attack an enemy outpost. That defeat shakes Jeb to his core and he dubs himself a "Born Loser". Later the bedraggled tank crew run across Captain Storm making his way across the desert after losing his ship and his men to enemy attack. Later still they find Gunner and Sarge who have themselves just survived an enemy attack which cost the lives of six raw recruits they were training. And finally the tank crew finds the crashed plane of Johnny Cloud who has not only lost his own plane but is demoralized by the death of the young pilot who was flying alongside him when the enemy attacked. These four men join the crew of the haunted tank and together they vow to overcome their status as losers and they organize another attack on the enemy outpost which had frustrated Jeb and his crew before. This time they are successful, but despite that success, the loss of men and their common sense of having violated trusts causes the heroes to still feel like Born Losers.

In the pages of Our Fighting Forces #123 by Kanigher and artist Ken Barrr, this quartet of "Losers" is given another mission to redeem themselves. Quite literally taking over the book from Hunter's Hellcats who hand off the mission to the Losers, we see the team undertake a near suicide mission when Captain Storm is tapped to imitate a man who looks remarkably like him even down to the wooden leg and spread disinformation among the enemy. Great pains are taken to make Storm's capture look legit and he withstands torture for enough time to allow Cloud, Gunner and Sarge to come to the attack while Storm then attempts to turn the tables on his Nazi captors. The four men survive and the mission is accomplished but regardless this new team of "Losers" is ready for their next mission.

More to come when Jack "King" Kirby takes on The Losers.

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The Howlers - Seven Against The Nazis!

When Sgt. Fury and the Howling Commandos first debuted in early 1963 they were Marvel's second action team after the revolutionary Fantastic Four. Both the Avengers and the X-Men were still months away from hitting the stands. There is some debate about the origin of this comic with Stan suggesting it was done on a bet of sorts with Martin Goodman to bring the Marvel magic to any comic genre and other sources suggesting that the Commandos was yet another Kirby concept which found its way into the Marvel mythos. Both things could be true, but who knows at this point.

In the first adventure we meet the "Howling Commandos", the First-Attack Squad led by Sgt. Nicholas Fury with Corporal "Dum Dum" Dugan his second in command. Each of the Howlers was distinctive with a specific ethnic or regional background to set them apart. Dum Dum was a Boston native and former circus strongman, while Fury hailed from Hell's Kitchen in NYC. Also on hand are Private Izzy Cohen, a tough-minded Jew from NYC with a mechanic bent, Private Rebel Ralston, a hillbilly and ferocious fighter from Kentucky, Private Dino Manelli, an Italian loverboy-type who was famous in the movies, Private Gabe Jones, a quiet trumpet-playing black man from NYC, and finally Private Junior Juniper, an Ivy Leaguer and youngest of the team. These guys have the flavor of the Simon and Kirby Newsboy Legion all grown up and gone to war.

In their first documented mission the team is sent into Europe to rescue a French Resistance leader who had fallen into Nazi hands and who knew the date of D-Day. Their mission is to bring him back but by all means not allow this critical bit of data to fall into enemy hands. The team fight and trick their way through enemy lines, sometimes with the help of the French Resistance and do find the man they seek, who it turns out has a daughter in the Resistance itself. All of these characters manage to get a moment to shine and of course this first mission is a success though the tough as nails Fury is not apt to give his Commandos much time off nor any credit for a job well done.

One neat note is that the final panel of the debut issue shows Fury and the Howlers chasing onto the beach during D-Day, but Stan sagely has a caption which says that's a story for another day. That day came some years later in the second Sgt.Fury and the Howling Commandos Annual.

This tale was ironically reprinted a few times, one notable instance was as the one hundred and sixty-seventh and final issue of the esteemed run in 1981. The first reprinting was of part of the story only a year after its initial printing in the first Marvel Tales Annual.

As concocted by Lee, Kirby and inker Dick Ayers this first adventure is pretty standard issue as far as what they do. The energy and heat in this series comes from the friendly combative natures of the Howlers themselves who are constantly in a war of words among themselves, using a realistic and even fatalistic attitude to adjust themselves to the combat missions they undertake. They are men who volunteer for defacto suicide missions and they approach that with an aplomb and general good nature, an attitude which makes them admirable in the extreme. The fight they wage is a relative bloodless one, limited by the rigors of the Comics Code, but death is part of the equation, if not as stark and horrrific as in real life of course. This is classic comic book action with just a tiny mote more realism than one might find in a battle against the Skrulls.

I hope to get a look at all the Commando comics produced by Lee and Kirby. Kirby did precious few of these, handing off the chores to the reliable and sturdy Dick Ayers sooner than later. But more on that next week.

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Fighting Fascism!

Hating Adolph Hitler is easy to do these days. He's an antique historical figure safely tucked away in the past who imagined and performed enormously evil acts. He and his noxious regime of Fascists were properly reviled and opposed by most of the world in a war which transformed the whole of global politics for generations. And Jack "King" Kirby was of course part of that war, both literally and figuratively.

Kirby and his partner Joe Simon famously drew their brand new hero Captain America socking Adolph Hitler on the jaw on the cover of the very first issue of Captain America Adventures way back in 1941. It seems bland enough to us now, but at the time it was a bit of a push since the United States was not looking to get directly involved in the coming war which we now see as having been inevitable.

But nothing's inevitable. Choices were made and the U.S. joined the fight in the nick of time we now see and joined with the Allies, and the forces of Fascist evil which threatened to drowned the world were defeated, and the new world order was established.

Jack Kirby fought for that victory over Fascism. He always seemed clear minded about the nature of the threat of Adolph Hitler and his kind and knew quite well the threat was not confined to the vile nature of a single human being.

A man is just a man until he can convince men of similar kind to join in a movement. Then it becomes the duty of every man and woman to stand up to the evil they see before them. It's the task of all of use to do as Jack Kirby did throughout his career, and that is to look evil in the eye and call it out for what it is and stand up for what is right. No one is perfect, but all men and women can do what is right if they only will.

Here is an article which further discusses Kirby's fight against Fascism. And here is another which has a lot to say to all of us in our own time.

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Kirby 100!

Here's an upcoming publication which caught my eye and could well catch my fancy. Kirby 100 is due out from Twomorrows Publishing (the folks who started with the great Jack Kirby Collector) and will present an avalanche of Kirby's most amazing artistry with commentary by one hundred luminaries from the world of comics, all of them I daresay admirers of the great man. I'm curious to see what folks have to say, but mostly I want to see the artwork. At two hundred and forty pages I'll likely pop for the hardcover edition (if I can get it) which adds sixteen pages of Kirby's famous Diety posters, some of my favorite images from the "King". Here are more details.

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Let Slip The Dogeared Pages Of War!

After last month's focus on love it's only fitting I suppose that this month the focus is on war. In some ways it can argued that most of stories that Jack Kirby is famous are war stories of some kind. (Certainly Captain America, New Gods and Thor fall into that broad category.) Not surprisingly as one of the multitude of brave American men and women who served during World War II, Jacob Kurtzburg was changed by that monumental event in fundamental ways which informed the rest of his life. Though a master of presenting action on the comic book page, Kirby never seemed to want to necessarily glorify violence. It had consequences for those who were part of it and even those who perpetrated it. Kirby saw violence in the streets of New York as a young boy and he got all anyone could ever want overseas in the European war front. He doesn't come across as a man who was haunted by the war thankfully, but he was transformed and never seemed ever to forget the cost of battle and the reasons that sometimes wars have to be fought.

I want to take a gander at some of Jack Kirby's war comics, surprisingly few actually given his particular experience. He along with his partner Joe Simon created for DC Comics many new series but perhaps the most successful was Boy Commandos. Later he gave us more realistic down-to-earth war adventures in titles like Foxhole from Mainline, Warfront for Harvey, and Battle for Atlas. Expect to see many select covers from those series and others in the regular "Favorite Covers" feature all this month.

Up front and in focus though will be a review of Kirby's famous war book for Marvel's early days Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos. Kirby  and his partner Stan Lee produced the first half dozen or so issues of that run before handing the artistic reins off to veteran inker Dick Ayers. According to some Fury is what Kirby aspired to be seen as, his ideal of a tough guy who people respected and responded to. Look for these adventures on weekends throughout the month.

And then there's The Losers. At the end of his tenure at DC in the 70's Kirby handled one of DC's many war titles - Our Fighting Forces which at the time was featuring the adventures of a ragtag team of warriors from different branches of the U.S. military - Johnny Cloud, Captain Storm, and the somewhat dynamic duo of Sarge and Gunner. Kirby claimed he didn't much care for the premise of this series, but it didn't stop him from creating some surprisingly memorable stories with this bunch of losers, This month the Dojo takes a leisurely look at arguably Kirby's most overlooked series.

"Make War No More" was the slogan on many DC Comics of the era. But make more war comics certainly especially when that maker is Jack "King" Kirby would have been the motto for any comics fan.

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