674 WAR COMICS
Th e character types were similarly predictable, a range of characters drawn from
diff erent backgrounds to represent the melting pot of America, although African Ameri -
can characters were rarely present. Th ere were also recognizable types, such as the
rookie, the experienced sergeant, the crazy lieutenant, or indeed, the cowardly offi cer,
but the backbone of the squad was almost always a heroic everyman character who
could be roused to near superhuman acts of violence to defend his buddies and kill the
enemy. Th e counterpoint to all this was the battle-weary “Willie and Joe,” Bill Maul-
din’s famous creations who preferred a dry manhole and clean socks to acts of heroism.
Th ese characters, much beloved of the troops, represented the reality of military life
much more than anything off ered by comics or fi lms of the time.
As World War II drew to a close in 1945 the popularity of war comics waned, but in
the early 1950s the Korean War (1950–53) provided war comics with a new audience.
Th e result was a spate of publications such as War Comics , Battlefi eld , Battle Front , Battle
Action , Marines in Battle , Fightin’ Marines , and G.I. Joe , most of which presented the war
as a grand adventure and portrayed soldiers as heroic supermen. Th is was very much the
tried and tested strategy from the earlier confl ict, but this time things did not ring true.
Th e Korean war was a bitter battle of attrition, and the news from the front was rarely
worth celebrating. National (later to become DC Comics ) published Our Army at War ,
Our Fighting Forces , and Star-Spangled War Stories , which were of better quality than
most war comics of the time (Wright), however, the most innovative war comics were
those produced by EC Comics, who published intelligent antiwar comics such as such
as Two-Fisted Tales and Frontline Combat , written and drawn by Harvey Kurtzman.
Th e subversive stance of these publications (and their success) would contribute to EC’s
downfall, as they were eff ectively put out of business as a comics publisher following the
introduction of the Comics Code in 1955.
In the 1960s, war comics declined in popularity, most likely due to the fact that
superheroes were on the rise once more, and because the Vietnam confl ict was a much
more ambiguous and morally complicated war, and one that sparked protests and riots
in the United States and worldwide. It was, like the Korean war, not a war where vic-
tories were particularly numerous. Th ere was little to celebrate, and comics retreated
into fantasy instead. Notable exceptions were National’s Our Army at War (1959),
which introduced Sgt. Rock, and Marvel ’s Sgt Fury and His Howling Commandos
(1963), which combined war stories with the dynamic excess of superhero comics. DC
had notable success with Enemy Ace (1965), which told the story of a German fi ghter
pilot, loosely modeled on the Red Baron, who fought in World War I and II. DC’s
Th e Unknown Soldier fi rst appeared in 1966, then sporadically through the 1970s to
the present. Th e character is a World War II soldier whose brother is killed at Pearl
Harbor. With his face destroyed by an explosion he vows to make a diff erence in the
war to avenge his brother, becoming a covert operative with no identity. From 1965 to
1966, Warren Publishing published Blazing Combat , a war comic in a similar format
to their successful horror comic Creepy. Written and edited by Archie Goodwin, Blaz-
ing Combat featured art by some of the best artists of the day; it promoted realism
