Nick Fury from the Beginning (reviews by shaxper)

[shaxper]

with pedestrian storytellers like Ayers or Heck the flaws in the process are more evident.

Thus far, I'm really enjoying Ayers. I certainly hope that continues. Generally speaking, your ominous warnings prove to be correct though

Another problem you'll soon notice about Dick Ayers and the "Marvel method" is a tendency to run out of room at the end of an issue, skooshing the final sequences down into densely panelled and oppressively wordy final pages

Ugh. I hate when that happens.


Still, my point remains that Stan could have explained some of this through his narrative boxes in much the same way that he explains linguistics and historical references.

I summon the overenthusiasm!

Actually, I think I summoned it. You squelched it

[shaxper]

Sgt Fury and his Howling Commandos #10

“On To OKINAWA!”
writer: Stan Lee
pencils: Dick Ayers
inks: Geo Bell
letters: S. Rosen
colors: ?

Grade: B

What an unexpected issue. I had expected the fun of this issue to be seeing how different fighting in the Pacific Theater would be for the Howlers, and indeed, they suggest as much toward the beginning. But, in fact, the true fun of this issue is in watching the Howlers get there – all the complex coordination it takes to get them from the UK to Okinawa in under 72 hours. It’s exciting and almost feels like science fiction as we see refueling planes, trip wires on an aircraft carrier, and even a submarine that launches people out of its torpedo tubes. While the adventure was still present once they got on the island, the journey took up the bulk of the book and was truly the best part.

Really the only significant development in this issue is a new approach to characterizing Happy Sam. While he’s always been a hothead, past issues have never depicted him as Fury’s actual equal, and one issue even suggested he was a far weaker man who felt indebted to Fury (Sgt Fury #5). We always knew Nick truly respected the man, but we never knew why. In this issue though, Lee is clear to show that Happy Sam is just as tough as (if not tougher than) Nick when it comes to training and leading troops. The Howlers are amazed to see a man who spends much of his time behind a desk never tiring out as he leads them through the day’s training, and Nick genuinely comes off as less menacing than he. It’s fun to see this side of Sam and helps us to understand how Nick respects him.

In a sense, Nick almost becomes a character we can relate to in this issue through relative inaction. He does just as much fighting and saving as ever, but he says less this time around, taking flack from his soldiers and taking flack from Sam, all in stride. Somehow it made me relate to Nick a little more and feel a bit of what it was like to walk in his shoes. I’m not sure why his bark softened as much as it did in this issue, but it was a nice change of pace. He sort of became the straightman to everyone else.

This issue does feature the first appearance of Captain Savage (thanks to Scott Harris for pointing this out!). He is not named in this issue, but he commands the submarine that gets the Howlers to Okinawa.

I don’t know if Col. Phil Parker will ever be appearing in this comic again, but this is his first appearance in the mag, and he certainly seems like an important enough character. A colonel that the Howlers actually respect and don’t mouth off to, as well as a soldier brave and capable enough to be a one man espionage team in Okinawa while clearly being in his middle age. It’s nice to see that even the Howlers have heroes that they look up to in the army.

Probably better that most Howlers stories not be set in the Pacific Theater. I know it’s hard to abandon old war-time stereotypes (especially when it’s still fun to have the Howlers call Germans “Krauts” and “Otto”) but the visual depiction of the Japanese seemed a little too over-the-top, especially as Dino puts face paint on Izzy to make his eyes look more slanted. Japanese people don’t actually look like that.


Anyway, the plot synopsis in one long sentence:

The Howlers are ordered to Okinawa to free Col. Parker before the place is bombed, they take a long journey across the world, disguise Izzy as a Japanese officer, and team up with other allied prisoners to overtake an entire destroyer.

[Scott Harris]

I don’t know if Col. Phil Parker will ever be appearing in this comic again, but this is his first appearance in the mag, and he certainly seems like an important enough character. A colonel that the Howlers actually respect and don’t mouth off to, as well as a soldier brave and capable enough to be a one man espionage team in Okinawa while clearly being in his middle age. It’s nice to see that even the Howlers have heroes that they look up to in the army.

I don't remember is Col. Parker ever appears again, but there is a character introduced in this issue who will end up not only making several more appearances but actually getting his own series. Yes, it's the skipper of the submarine, whose name we later learn is... Captain Savage!

[shaxper]

I don't remember is Col. Parker ever appears again, but there is a character introduced in this issue who will end up not only making several more appearances but actually getting his own series. Yes, it's the skipper of the submarine, whose name we later learn is... Captain Savage!

Oh, that is awesome! He had a very memorable face, and I loved the interplay between him and The Howlers, but there was zero indication he was going to end up being someone important.

So Captain Savage and the Leathernecks were Navy?

[dan bailey]

So Captain Savage and the Leathernecks were Navy?

IIRC, some (like Savage & his first mate, whose name is escaping me right now -- he's the one with the sailor's hat behind the good captain) were Navy, others (Sgt. Yakety Yates & Pfc. Lee Baker, on his other side, & for that matter the other two guys, Jay Little Bear & ... ummm ... the French guy) Marines.

"Leatherneck" is a synonym for Marines, pretty much.

[Cei-U!]

Only Savage himself appears in Sgt. Fury #10. Commander Stone, his second-in-command here, is not the same character as Leatherneck Raider Blarney Stone, who is an enlisted man and much shorter than the commander.

Cei-U!
I summon the case of mistaken identity!

[prince hal]

Is that the Lucky Charms leprechaun over Savage's shoulder?

Oh, and not that the Howling Commandos is supposed to be akin to a John Keegan book, but Captain Savage wouldn't have had a whole lot of time to lead his Leatherneck Raiders if he's still a sub commander before the invasion of Okinawa, the last major campaign of the war, which ended in late June of 1945.

[shaxper]

the invasion of Okinawa, the last major campaign of the war, which ended in late June of 1945.

Gotta love chronological accuracy in this title...

[Scott Harris]

Gotta love chronological accuracy in this title...

It's pretty simple -- events during World War II on Earth-616 (or whatever you want to call it) happened in a different order than they did on our Earth.

Now where's my No-Prize?

[foxley]

This mission appears not to be part of the Okinawa Campaign, but a specific one-off to rescue an American opeartive (judging from Shaxper's description).

There are some specific dates in the Leatherneck Raider books that would place this mission at odds with a 1944 dating.

[shaxper]

This mission appears not to be part of the Okinawa Campaign, but a specific one-off to rescue an American opeartive (judging from Shaxper's description).

Except that the urgency in rescuing him is that Okinawa is going to be bombed in 72 hours.

[prince hal]

The most recent of Shax's very entertaining and informative accounts of the Sgt. Fury comic made me think of something that may only be of interest to such as we, but that's why this place exists, right?

When Shax wrote about the depiction of the Japanese, it got me to thinking about why the war comics set in the Pacific never seemed to have clicked the way those set in the ETO did. Of DC's "Big Five," only Our Fighting Forces' Gunner and Sarge had a long run: six years or so. Lt. Larry Rock, the "Fighting Devil Dog" had what was essentially a Showcase-type tryout before he vanished. Captain Savage lasted about 20 issues or so.

I'm guessing that for quality and consistency, Sam Glanzman's USS Stevens series trumps any and all Pacific-set features. Of course, it was not a cover feature, nor did it emphasize the amalgam of war and super-hero comics that permeated even the best Marvel and DC books, though.

I'm wondering what factors made the Pacific War less popular. Maybe one reason was the lack of visual appeal? Europe offered more of a variation of settings and seasons, while the Pacific War was (or was perceived to be) nothing but jungle/tropical isle settings.

The action itself may have been seen as more dramatic (again, from a visual standpoint): how many covers featured man vs. tank confrontations. OFF often had covers like this, even though such confrontations were relatively rare compared to the number that happened in Europe. Maybe even the readers saw them as more contrived ? That's ascribing a lot of knowledge to a few hundred thousand ten-year-olds, I know, but, hey, we were all experienced moviegoers. We knew how those wars were fought. :)

Maybe the Nazis were easier to depict as the enemy because their motives were clearer? Was their "humanity" easier to portray because they looked like "us?" (Shax mentions the cartoonish way (even for the Fury comic) that the Japanese were portrayed in "On to Okinawa.")
Were we still looking at the Japanese as the savage enemy without honor, which made them more two-dimensional, while dealing with the notion of the "good German" trapped between loyalty to his Fatherland and personal honor, which made them more rounded characters?

Or am I exploring a minor topic in too much depth?

Ah, well. Back to pondering the mysteries of my navel...

[benday-dot]

Great points PH. It's something I've lamented. The stories to be told of the Pacific front are myriad, but often sadly missing. A generation earlier in the newspaper strips the south pacific provided a perennially interesting theater for intrigue and adventure. And the call of the exotic from those austral lands was siren in the world of popular culture, advertising and imagination.

Thankfully, in comics, we do have Glanzman's masterpiece. Another great run I'll remind war comic readers of took place in Out Army at War sometime around the middle of that books second century mark. Sgt. Rock found himself caught behind in the South Pacific for an epic little stretch. Russ Heath was an atom smasher of an artist on the storyline.

[foxley]

Except that the urgency in rescuing him is that Okinawa is going to be bombed in 72 hours.

Oh well, this must be that famed level of realism and attention to detail that Stan Lee introduced which Marvel Zombies keep telling me is the reason Marvel is so much better that DC.

[shaxper]

I'm wondering what factors made the Pacific War less popular. Maybe one reason was the lack of visual appeal? Europe offered more of a variation of settings and seasons, while the Pacific War was (or was perceived to be) nothing but jungle/tropical isle settings.

Two possibilities off the top of my head:

1. The threat wasn't considered as dire. Hitler was the big bad guy calling the shots. I think we tended to see the Japanese as his stooges. Therefore, all the glory may have been perceived to have occurred in the European Theater. However, I've noted in a lot of media of the time period, the Japanese were considered a bigger threat than the Germans when it came to defending the home front. I assume this was because of Pearl Harbor. It seems to me (as someone who wasn't even alive then) that the German army was seen as the bigger threat in the grand scheme of the war, but individual Japanese saboteurs were a much bigger threat to Americans living on US soil at the time.

2. The way we won in the Pacific was far less glorified. All throughout Sgt Fury thus far you can almost taste the building anticipation for Normandy. Whether or not dropping the A bomb was a good tactical move, it's hard to see that act as equally heroic and somehow embodying the best of our armed forces.

Just my thoughts on the matter, of course. I wasn't born until '79, so I lack some level of credentials in this discussion.