Showcase Presents: Enemy Ace

What I try to do with reviews at this Bookshelf blog is keep it simple and spoiler-free, and let you know whether I'd recommend you pick up a copy of what I just read. Seems to work okay. This time, a brief review of Showcase Presents: Enemy Ace (DC, 2007).



I read this book a couple of years ago and remember being quite taken with it, but a reread over the last three weeks was considerably more difficult. It's a collection of as many adventures of Enemy Ace that DC could cram between the covers of one of their nice Showcase Presents volumes: 500-odd pages, mostly illustrated by Joe Kubert, with additional contributions by Howard Chaykin, Russ Heath, Frank Thorne and others.

Visually, therefore, this is one hell of a good book. Kubert occasionally had a habit of letting anatomy get away from him, but the man could layout incredibly well, and he just drew the hell out of these biplanes in the air. It's very imaginative work, with his "camera" at constantly surprising places capturing the airplanes twisting and turning, the ground at wild and unexpected angles behind the dogfighting participants. There were many pages where I just blanked out the words and looked at how clever the pages were.

Letting my eyes glaze over the words was no great challenge. The career of a stoic, honor-obsessed German pilot called Hans von Hammer was certainly an interesting premise for a 1960s DC Comic, but writer Robert Kanigher was absolutely lost in how to turn this into a continuing adventure serial. Enemy Ace was never a hit title of its own; a few new installments appeared every few years in the pages of DC's many and varied anthology war comics. They are very repetitive, even for a Robert Kanigher comic. His standard "three-beat" plots are punctuated by the same character moments again and again. When you start figuring ahead - and it won't take you long - that his airplane's propeller will sound like it's saying "KILLER - KILLER" when he lands and next his orderly will be a toady and next he'll go hunting in the forest and meet up with that wolf that kind of befriends him, it's time to look at the pretty pictures of airplanes and quit reading.

Around the time that Batman was on ABC and hugely influencing the way DC made all its comics, the Enemy Ace installments in Star-Spangled War got slightly ridiculous, and these are compelling more from an archaeological standpoint than anything else. Von Hammer picks up a rogue's gallery and an arch-enemy in the form of a French pilot called The Hangman, and a completely bugnuts British pilot who must be seen to be believed. This guy had become psychotically obsessed with the story of St. George and the Dragon as a young boy, and now this fruitbat goes into aerial combat dressed in full plate mail armor. That is one incredibly dumb comic book.

As Enemy Ace made additional appearances into the 1970s and 1980s, other artists got a crack at him. Shorter episodes helped, but Chaykin's really interesting artwork and thick, blotchy inking breathed more life into the feature than any new plots. Enemy Ace was really a title that is not well-served by the all-inclusive Showcase collection. There's certainly material to like here, but the good stuff is buried under the weight of the monotonous Kanigher plotting. Reading it again made me feel that readers might be better served with a thinner, 200-page "best of" collection than this big book. Recommended with reservations.

Set-Before-1930-Edition, with Enemy Ace and the Wizard of Oz

Here's how this works: I finish reading something, and I tell you about it, and I try not to bore you to death. Today: reviews of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Image, 2006) and Showcase Presents Enemy Ace (DC, 2008).



This has actually been sitting on my nightstand for longer than anything else in that teetering stack, as it's a Christmas present I purchased quite some time ago and may finally get to deliver this month. Well, before it went, I wanted to actually have a look at it. It's a very charming adaptation of the L. Frank Baum novel, created by Enrique Fernandez and David Chauvel, made three years ago for a French publisher and released in this country by Image towards the end of '06.

I've actually never read the original novel, so I can't say whether it's that accurate an adaptation, but I was surprised by how very unlike the film it is, with the Wicked Witch of the West being a much smaller part of the narrative, and sorted before the book was two-thirds complete. It also takes place over the course of several weeks and, without spoiling anything, does not suffer from that awful cop-out ending the movie has. I do like the artwork, but with some reservations. Having finished it, I'm still not completely certain what the Tin Man actually looked like, since he's mostly seen from odd angles and in the shadows. He also sports a deeply bizarre, grisly origin not alluded to in the movie. Man, I'm going to have to track those books down if they're as creepy as this. Recommended, if for no other reason than it will spark your curiosity.



Ah, Robert Kanigher. We meet again.

Readers of "What I Just Read" may recall that I've been deeply disappointed with the comics work of Robert Kanigher, the prolific DC Comics scribe whose work from the 1960s and 1970s is seeing so much reprint in the Showcase Presents series. Fortunately, Enemy Ace is much, much better than some of the other books I've slogged through. It's a series set in World War One and featuring the taciturn Hans von Hammer, a German flying ace with no friends and a grim obsession with honor.

The series was only sporadically published, appearing from time to time in four separate anthology books from 1965-1979, and finally as a backup feature, drawn by John Severin, in some 1981-82 issues of The Unknown Soldier. Much of the other material is drawn by Joe Kubert, who makes up for some sometimes slapdash anatomy with a wonderful depiction of emotion in his characters and detailed reference for all the airplanes roaring over the skies of No Man's Land. Other artists contributing include Russ Heath and Howard Chaykin.

As for the stories, well, at least 400 of the 550 pages on display here are, despite some note of repetition (Von Hammer has a suck-up of an orderly, he takes his leaves in the woods in the company of a black wolf), really first-rate stuff. From time to time, it must be said, Kanigher slips, and his patented "three-beat" formula becomes evident (for example, trapped in France and trying to make it back to his lines, von Hammer meets three women, each of whom know a French airman whom von Hammer has shot down in the last week). There are even a handful of occasions where everything goes to hell and things get completely ridiculous - there's one completely braindead story about an English ace who, as a young boy, was obsessed with the tale of St. George and the Dragon, grew up convinced he was the reincarnation of St. George, and now takes to the air in full plate armor.

But when he wasn't being lazy and he wasn't giving von Hammer some retarded version of a rogues' gallery to fight, Kanigher really delivered on this title, making it by far the best of his work I've read, and streets superior to either Sgt. Rock or The War That Time Forgot. That's not to say that you won't find even better air combat in Johnny Red, or better WWI-set drama in Charley's War, but overall, this has turned out to be among the best of the Showcase books, and recommended for anyone curious in the material.

(Originally posted May 1, 2008 at hipsterdad's LJ.)

Saga of the Super-Sons, Showcase Presents Sgt. Rock

Here's how this works: I finish reading something, and I tell you about it, and I try not to bore you to death.



And then there was the time that Superman and Batman got married in the 1950s and had kids. Clark Jr. and Bruce Jr. grew to be teens in the mid-70s and had to totally deal with their square parents, who were just were not with the scene, man. And because Superman Jr. was only half as powerful as his dad, the old man was always laying down the law and saying he shouldn't get involved with either criminals or chicks. Talk about a generation gap! Didn't these relics understand this was the dawning of the Age of Aquarius? Sometimes a cat's just got to do his own thing, you dig?

DC actually published this lunatic stuff for years in the pages of World's Finest Comics. One month, you'd have Superman and Batman in a traditional team-up, and the next month, you'd have their otherwise unmentioned teenage sons riding around the country on motorcycles having bizarre, quasi-socially relevant adventures. The Super-Sons were quietly shelved after Bob Haney moved on to other titles, apart from an odd, unnecessary retcon published a couple of years later. Every Super-Sons appearance is reprinted in this collection. Recommended for nostalgists and completists.



Oh, it's Robert Kanigher again.

This isn't quite as much of a slog as Kanigher's other 1960s titles, but it's still very repetitive and very uninspiring. Actually, the principal draw is Joe Kubert's artwork, but you won't believe the shortcuts he chose to take to get all these pages turned in. There are countless panels with nothing but explosions or helmets flying, or close-ups of rifle barrels.

DC wasn't entirely like this in the 1960s - the TV show era of Batman, for instance, is silly and inventive and fun - but Kanigher's books display an amazing sense of malaise and a lack of imagination. They weren't made to be read one after another, and the total absence of any continuing subplots or storylines mean that you can put this book down at any time, not missing anything. I hoped Rock would have aged better than this, but it didn't. Not recommended.

(Originally posted February 13, 2008 at hipsterdad's LJ.)

Showcase Presents Wonder Woman

Here's how this works: I finish reading something, and I tell you about it, and I try not to bore you to death.



Months and months ago, the Hipster Daughter said that she wanted to read this. With a deep discount available, I confirmed that she really did want to read this and I wouldn't be tossing money away on something that would just sit there. She said absolutely and took it home with a big smile. She took it to school the next day and...

Well, she came home that night claiming she'd read the whole thing and was done with it. She doesn't lie very well yet, my daughter, and I hope she never learns. I asked her for some follow-up thoughts to share with y'all about this edition:

The Hipster Daughter: "The Wonder Woman Showcase was very horrible. If I were you and I wanted it, I'd say 'It is absolutely bad. Don't get it.' It's horrible because the comics and the pictures and she's not drawn right and it's just very horrible."

Me: "Was there anything in particular that struck you as horrible?"

THD: "Well, the one where there were three Wonder Womans."

Me: "I mean, in general, were there any storytelling tropes, or reliance on particular storytelling devices, which trigger your critical reaction to this set of stories?"

THD: "No."

Me: "What did you think of Wonder Woman's boyfriend, Steve Trevor?"

THD: "Booooo! I didn't like him!"

Me: "Any last thoughts?"

THD: "I think the illustrator is having trouble. I just don't like how she's drawn, she doesn't look like regular Wonder Woman."

Well, if you're not catching contemporary girls, will grown-up readers have any better luck?

Emphatically not. This has been the only Showcase I just do not want to read another word of. Well, I forced myself to finish The War That Time Forgot, another case of Robert Kanigher taking grandiose plots and making them dull and ordinary through repetition and a lack of internal storytelling logic. You will only have to read a few to start to see an incredibly common Kanigher trait - the stories almost always progress along a "three-beat" path: Wonder Woman tells Steve that she'll marry him if he can find him three times in a day, for example. But even when it isn't spelled out in a story's requirement, they almost always progress along the same predictable set of beats. Reading this after finishing The Haunted Tank and TWTTF, and now starting Sgt. Rock, is like masochism personified.

Speaking of which, the Steve-Wonder Woman marriage dynamic is nutty, and not in a good way. You know how in the classic Japanese turkey Prince of Space, the hero just keeps saying "I keep telling you, your weapons have no effect on me!" all through the film? Wonder Woman genuinely tells Steve "I've told you dozens of times that I'll only marry you when there's no more crime and injustice for me to fight!" in almost every issue. Trevor, you big fucking sap. TURN IN YOUR MAN CARD, SOLDIER.

Little girls who despaired that the Super Friends version of Wonder Woman had the powers of "Owns rope and airplane" might take some comfort in knowing that the Wonder Woman of these comics can do anything. She can breathe in outer space, she can flip islands above her head to get them out of the way of tidal waves, anything. So to challenge her, Kanigher makes her retarded. I gave up during a story when an evil scientist builds a robot Wonder Woman and convinces her that she's not needed anymore. But before she throws in the towel, she agrees to a challenge and will defeat the robot in any task. That task is: stay awake. The first one to fall asleep will leave for Paradise Island. While you get your brain around that gem, consider that the duel of not-sleeping plays out in front of a packed stadium, who've paid to watch Wonder Woman and a mannequin stare at each other. It's not a good kind of lighthearted goofy; it's played straight.

But I still had some sandwich to eat at lunch today and the restaurant TV was on Fox News, so I gave it one last try. The final story I read had Wonder Woman use her live TV special to reward Bonnie, a heroic teenage girl who saved two kids from drowning, her struggles captured by a photographer who thought he was shooting Marlon Perkins' Wild Kingdom or something and didn't try to save the kids herself. So Wonder Woman grants her three wishes. The third is - no shit - the third is, Bonnie wants to go back in time ten years and hang out on Paradise Island with Wonder Woman when she was a teenager. Who's expecting her on the other end of the time machine. Wonder Girl - that's who she was before Bob Haney got confused and thought she was WW's teen sidekick - and Bonnie hang with WG's love interest, a merboy named Mer-Boy, who can't get along with the mer-centaurs who also live in the waters off Paradise Island. And there's some sunken ship and a box which contains some robot grasshoppers which eat oxygen, and if Grant Morrison had written this or if Herbie the Fat Fury showed up, it'd be the best comic ever. But this is just lifeless hackwork from someone churning out as many pages a month as he could get 1959 DC to pay for.



And the Hipster Daughter's objection to the art? Holy anna, is she ever right. Ross Andru and Mike Esposito conspired to design the ugliest superheroine ever in these pages. There's no sense of anatomy or proportion or perspective in any of the pages. It's an ugly, ugly book full of unreadable stories.

And sure, I'm just some old grownup, but the way I see it, you put 500 pages of Wonder Woman in the hands of a nine year-old girl in the third grade and she gives up that quickly, you've got a book that has zero appeal whatsoever.

(Originally posted January 15, 2008 at hipsterdad's LJ.)

The War That Time Forgot

Here's how this works: I finish reading a comic collection, and I tell you about it, and I try not to go on too long.



This isn't the entry I thought I'd write.

This Showcase volume collects seven years of The War That Time Forgot, a 15-page strip that ran throughout the 1960s in the pages of Star-Spangled War Stories. It has the greatest premise ever - WW2 GIs battle dinosaurs, giant apes, undersea beasts and hundred-foot tall Nazi robots on a South Pacific island - and it runs it completely into the ground. This is not how it should have been. This should have been the best book ever. It's not.

For about 100, 150 pages, this was a tremendously entertaining read. But these stories were not made to be collected in a 550 page volume, where the amazing repetition of the scripts are exposed. Robert Kanigher was writing these for eight year-olds who wouldn't follow a war comic for seven or more years, but I have to wonder whether he wasn't driving them away by using the exact same plot structure in every story! Seriously, if you've read one War That Time Forgot, you've read them all. A fresh-faced GI, who narrates the events from after the fact (confirming he'll survive it), is assigned a suicide mission to pick up where another mission fails, and his transport either gets torn out of the sky by a pteranodon with a wingspan greater than Rodan's which cracks a B-29 in half, or his ship gets sunk by a tentacled horror. If he's in a submarine, it's going down, too. He and his surviving fellows all speak with exactly the same New York lingo and jargon and refer to the monsters as, alternately, refugees from "the age of nightmares"/"the Ice Age"/"the late-night horror show," repeatedly. The GIs will be able to see underwater without a mask, and they will invariably throw hand grenades at the dinosaurs and call their weapons "pineapples." They will either obtain the Macguffin assigned by the brass, who will never believe this story, or they will destroy it so the Japs can't obtain it. Every strip is the same.


This happens about eleven times in this book. I'm serious.

From time to time, some recurring characters will turn up for not more than three or four strips. Among these are the most annoying characters in all of fiction, Morgan and Mace. Mace was responsible for the accidental death of Morgan's brother before the war; Morgan is convinced Mace is a coward and can't wait for him to turn yellow so that he can gun him down for failing to complete the mission. We know this because, in an average 15 page story, this is explained at least six times. I am not kidding. Then we get a flying baby dinosaur called Dino and a kid named Caveboy, and, DAMNATION, THIS BOOK SHOULD BE BETTER THAN THIS.

You do get some rare art by Gene Colan, Russ Heath and Joe Kubert in its pages, and Kubert actually did a little research to see what dinosaurs were thought to look like, as opposed to "whatever the fuck he felt like drawing." But the overwhelming majority of the pages are by Ross Andru and Mike Esposito, who can draw helmets and trees and tommy guns all right, but nothing else. Certainly not dinosaurs. Not recommended at all. Dammit.

(Originally posted November 05, 2007 at hipsterdad's LJ.)