Wednesday, September 2, 2015

Tales From The Quarter Bin--Wither War Comics?!?

Remember when the comic companies used to publish war comics?

DC once thought it was a shootin' offense to not be putting out good war comics:











Wow...modern DC executives better hope that failing to give the readers what they want is no longer a firing squad offense...

It is curious...war comics were once all the vogue, even into the mid-1980s. DC was obviously proud that they were still cranking out Sgt. Rock and the Haunted Tank et. al.

All that changed post-Crisis. And I shouldn't single out DC--Marvel hopped off the war comic bandwagon a lot earlier than the Distinguished Competition.

I'm sure part of it was that WWII was more and more remote, and more recent wars were more problematical from a "will they audience accept this war as moral and necessary" angle. War comics are easy when you can make Nazis the villain; not so easy when you've got to portray enemy troops of other races and cultures and not offend anyone.

I don't have any really brilliant thoughts or ideas here...I just found it interesting that 30-odd years ago, DC was proud of their war comics, and sold them fairly hard. Times change...

From DC Sampler #1 (1983), by these guys:


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5 comments:

  1. SallyPSeptember 2, 2015 at 4:00 PM

    dang it, Nazis really do make handy dandy villains.

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  2. Mista WhiskasSeptember 2, 2015 at 8:41 PM

    They sort of tried to revive war titles with the New 52 (Men of War) and then again with GI Zombie.

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  3. snellSeptember 2, 2015 at 10:03 PM

    Yeah, but those were tied to super-heroes & supernatural...not straight war titles.

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  4. Martin GraySeptember 3, 2015 at 6:14 AM

    I used to enjoy the straight war comics, good tales that often said something interesting about humanity. I didn't need a dinosaur robot.

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  5. snellSeptember 3, 2015 at 6:19 AM

    We all need a dinosaur robot, Martin...we all do.

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