anarchy comics

Tags

Anarchy Comics, Epistolier, indie box, Indie Comics, Kronstadt, Last Gasp, Liberty Through the Ages, Nestor Makhno, Russian Revolution, Spain, underground comix, Volny, war

In 1978 and 1979, Last Gasp published four issues of Anarchy Comics. The series combined history and satire, politics and humor, wildly veering from educational to absurd in its exploration of left-wing themes. One minute, it’s seriously explaining how the black flag became a symbol of anarchy, and the next it’s having a laugh by sending a deranged punk rocker into a futuristic, peace-loving utopia that enrages him. Archie gets ridiculously spoofed as Anarchie, in the same series that presents a historical discussion of women anarchists. It’s a wild ride that might serve as propaganda if it only took itself seriously, which it refuses to do.

You can often find copies of Anarchy Comics at MyComicShop, and some are occasionally available from Last Gasp. But you can save yourself the trouble of tracking down individual issues thanks to the 2012 Anarchy Comics: The Complete Collection, which you can easily find on Amazon in paperback and Kindle.

Here are two short pieces about the Russian revolution, from our archives. The first is by Spain, the creator of the satirical left-wing action hero Trashman, who appeared in Subvert by Rip Off Press.

If you haven’t yet discovered the underground comix insanity Last Gasp published in the 1970s, dive into the archive of Last Gasp highlights collected on this blog.

mars

Tags

gustav holst, Mars, planets, poems, poetry, war

mars

you and i have unfinished business

you taught me destruction
a skill for leaving trails
of unmarked graves and broken spears

your path leads nowhere but down

stone is your only element
you bask in the sun for millennia
and only learn what it means to burn

you serve neither love nor justice
but conquest as its own reward
its prize a thread of wounds and ash

what words could you offer for redemption

how dare you speak them
over the eulogy of rain
and falling earth

Weird War Tales 25

Tags

Alfredo Alcala, black magic white death, DC Comics, George Kashdan, horror, war, Weird War Tales

We hope you’ve enjoyed revisiting Weird War Tales with us this month. We’ve posted many vignettes from this series over the past four years, and have now reached the end of our collection! We sold the last of them on eBay in 2014, but they live on in the digital archives of Mars Will Send No More.

Here are a few pages from Weird War Tales #25. Other than the wonderful cover, the stand-out of this issue is the rugged yet sumptuous artwork by Alfredo Alcala in the George Kashdan story, Black Magic-White Death! This issue also contained another fun Kashdan story called The Unseen Warriors with art by Alex Nino.

And that brings our Martian catalog of Weird War Tales to a close — unless of course you want to send us a box with more inside it!

Weird War Tales 23

Tags

Alfredo Alcala, Day After Doomsday, DC Comics, John Albano, Len Wein, Rich Buckler, war, Weird War Tales, weird war tales 23

Today, Weird War Tales #23 rises from the savage depths of the vintage DC Comics shortbox with a fairly famous two-page story by Len Wein and Rich Buckler: Day after Doomsday. The artwork by Alfredo Alcala in the opening story is also a worthy treat for the eyes.

Credits: The Bird of Death script by John Albano, art by Alfredo Alcala. Day After Doomsday script by Len Wein, art by Rich Buckler. Corporal Kelly’s Private War script by George Kashdan, art by Alex Nino.

Here are both pages of Day After Doomsday for you!

Weird War Tales 21

Tags

Bernard Baily, Frank Robbins, Ghost in the Portrait, Jack Oleck, Joe Orlando, one hour to kill, Sheldon Mayer, soldier, time travel, war, Weird War Tales, weird war tales 21, when death took a hand

You can still buy the original Weird War Tales #21 at a decent price if you don’t mind VG to VG+ copies. Printed by DC Comics in the early 1970s, Weird War Tales also makes regular appearances on eBay where you can often score inexpensive lots of several issues at once. The stories blend sci-fi, horror, and fantasy elements into vignettes about war and combat. Pretty much anything goes in these tales as long as there’s a war on!

The first story, One Hour to Kill, gives us a man tasked with traveling back in time to kill Leonardo da Vinci before Leo can establish an early design for guns, thereby eliminating from history all human suffering caused by our propensity to shoot each other with small projectiles at high velocities. It turns out pretty much like every EC Comics story that had a similar idea in the 1950s, but that doesn’t stop it from being fun.

Here are the last three pages, below, where the tale reaches its climax.

Another story, When Death Took a Hand, stood out to us not simply as a worthy ghost story but as an example of a pretty sweet art technique. Look how the spooky ghost soldier is rendered. It looks to us like the inker rendered the black shapes and lines of the ghost, but then drew white lines through it with a white pen. No, that’s not exactly a revolutionary idea to today’s comic book artists, but try digging out any other comic book made in 1974 and finding this cool visual effect.

Credits: Cover art by Luis Dominguez. One Hour to Kill script by Jack Oleck, art by Frank Robbins. When Death Took a Hand script by Sheldon Mayer, art by Bernard Baily. Joe Orlando, editor.

We obtained a handful of vintage Weird War Tales when we bought a friend’s box of 70s and 80s DC Comics back in 2011, and they’ve been fun to read. They had some awesome Alex Nino artwork we dutifully scanned for posterity and learning. This one has one of our favorite covers from the lot, and we have a couple more issues we’ll take a look inside here.

Weird War Tales 24: The Invisible Enemy

Tags

DC Comics, Ernie Chan, Ernie Chua, invisible enemy, Jack Oleck, Luis Dominguez, war, Weird War Tales

Spirit tigers rock. Yes, it’s true: the dramatic storyline and sumptuously dark artwork make this story a real standout in DC’s anthology series, Weird War Tales. But what really sold us on this one? Spirit tigers! They bring to mind the mystical tiger spirit that watched over Kull the Conqueror and gave him increased power. Tiger goddess? Sign us up!

Weird War Tales #24 featured a second story, which we have in our sprawling archives of vintage Alex Niño comics here: The Last Battle.

Collector’s Guide: from Weird War Tales #24; DC Comics.

Cover art by Luis Dominguez. The Invisible Enemy: script by Jack Oleck, art by Ernie Chan as Ernie Chua. The Last Battle: script by Jack Oleck, art by Alex Niño. 32 pgs. Cover price $0.20.

Kill or Be Killed: Fightin’ Army #150 from Charlton Comics!

Tags

Charlton, Charlton comics, Fightin Army, Indie Comics, war, war comics

We don’t have much to say about this comic other than any time we see a Charlton appear on the top-secret 50-cent rack, we pick it up. Every now and then, you find some charming vintage stories in these low-grade, low-budget books. The first and third vignettes here work pretty well as short war stories. The ads for mind control and cosmic consciousness seem especially far-fetched. Did anyone actually order this stuff? Is it even legal to sell mind control?

This issue doesn’t have the artistic merits of a classic Sgt. Rock or Weird War Tales book from DC Comics, although Charlton seems to use DC as a model here. Fightin’ Army ran from 1956 to 1984, right around the time Charlton went under, selling the rights to its golden age superheroes to DC, where Alan Moore based his Watchmen characters on them.

Collector’s Guide: From Fightin’ Army #150; Charlton, 1981.

Samurai by Gene Day

Tags

Death, Gene Day, Indie Comics, Samurai, Star Reach, war

We discovered the short story “Samurai” in one of our favorite comic blog features: Black-and-White Wednesdays at Diversions of the Groovy Kind. Gene Day’s incredible artwork appears in 1977’s Star Reach #11.

pastel robot 3: GI Robot goes 16×20

Tags

art, DC Comics, drawing, fire, GI Robot, pastel, robot, Smoke, war

We had fun last week doing 9×12 portraits of an old DC Comics war character called GI Robot. Would you like to see how we put him together on a 16×20 in. piece of Fabriano Artistico paper?

First, we played around with a small set of Inktense colors. These come in little bricks like pastels but, when exposed to or brushed with water, turn into colorful rich inks.

Maybe the vintage copy of The True Story of Smokey Bear we read before bedtime inspired this fiery, angular background — or perhaps Franz Marc, or both.

Next, we use white chalk to lightly sketch the outline of GI Robot’s big areas of color. We then fill them in with pastels. We blend the first layer of pastels with our fingers, go over the area with the same color again, and blend a second time. This did a good job covering up the background, and it has a kind of ghostly cool where it still shows through.

Once the color takes hold, we outline the color areas in black pastel. Then, right over the white areas, we fill in the black shapes in and around the face. For several areas, achieving the right darkness of black requires the same process as the color areas: apply, blend, apply, blend.

We hit GI Robot with a couple coats of spray fixative. Then we went back to the black and white areas of the face and gave them another coat or two. After another layer of spray fixative, GI Robot rocks, ready to frame.

Pastel Study of GI Robot

Tags

art, comic book, comics, commando, DC Comics, drawing, GI Robot, military, pastel, Pat Broderick, Robert Kanigher, robot, Smoke, war, Weird War Tales

Inspiration for these pastel renderings of a robot in an army helmet comes from Weird War Tales by DC Comics. One can find the original panels drawn in 1982 by Patrick Broderick and John Beatty in Weird War Tales #108, in the Robert Kanigher story “Robots Don’t Have Hearts.”

You can buy Weird War Tales #108 for around $5 to $10 these days, depending on its condition. It remains collectible as an early appearance of the Creature Commandos, another short feature that ran in this issue.

In our gallery below, you can view the cover of this issue and the complete GI Robot story. Enjoy!

Cornplanter!

Tags

Cornplanter, Native Americans, Sgt Rock, war, war comics

“Warrior” is an interesting short piece about a Native American named Cornplanter from DC’s Sgt. Rock. Wikipedia has an article about Cornplanter where you can learn more. This page has no artist or writer credits. If you know who produced this, please comment!

Collector’s Guide: From Sgt. Rock #347; DC Comics, 1980.

Men of War #1: The Origin of Gravedigger

Tags

David Michelinie, ed davis, first appearance, first issue, gravedigger, men of war, origin, racism, Romeo Tanghal, war, war comics

Men of War #1 gives us the first half of the origin of Gravedigger in his first appearance in DC Comics. Author David Michelinie would conclude next issue with a tale of Gravedigger’s breaking into a military installation, an unlikely story that plays well as a comic book nevertheless. Gravedigger earns his nickname digging graves in a non-combat unit. He wants to fight in the war, but the color of his skin gets him assigned to an all-black non-combat unit.

While films and novels have dealt with racism in the military before, Michelinie sticks to a theme of institutional racism. We do not see Gravedigger suffer from physical and verbal abuse, but we do see him confronting a racist system. Artists Ed Davis and Romeo Tanghal deliver a realistic style in the vein of DC’s other 1970s war comics like Sgt. Rock. Let’s have a look!

Collector’s Guide: Men of War #1; DC, 1977.

Make All-Out War in Your Own Home!

Tags

advertising, war

What kid wouldn’t jump at the chance to make all-out war in his own home? You get enough nuclear battle equipment for maximum effort warfare and massive counter-attack!

Dude, it used to be you could order guns, tobacco pipes, and ladies undergarments from comic books. You’d see an ad telling you to lose weight because no one likes fat people, then turn the page to an ad telling you to gain weight because no one likes skinny people. You could send away for the secrets of Kung Fu, a fake goatee, x-ray glasses, live seahorses, and necklaces with shark’s teeth.

Basically, if you ordered everything in a comic book, you’d have all the tools necessary to become the most awesome person on earth! Now it seems like it’s all anti-drug ads and video games. Kids, take our advice. Put down the video games, start doing drugs, get a fake goatee, learn Kung Fu, and impress the ladies with your live seahorse collection! And above all, make all-out war every chance you get. Parents love it when you turn their heavily-mortgaged house into a wasteland of trenches, landmines, and human suffering.

Sgt Rock 339: The Collector by Rick Veitch!

Tags

Rick Veitch, Sgt Rock, The Collector, war, war comics

Before taking on Swamp Thing and moving on to careers producing their own works, artists Steve Bissette and Rick Veitch drew stories for DC’s Sgt. Rock. This week we’ll look at a few of their back-ups for DC’s once-popular war comic.

Collector’s Guide: From Sgt. Rock #339; DC Comics, 1980.

Sgt Rock 346: Detour by Steve Bissette!

Tags

Detour, Sgt Rock, Steve Bissette, war, war comics

Before taking on Swamp Thing and moving on to careers producing their own works, artists Steve Bissette and Rick Veitch drew stories for DC’s Sgt. Rock. This week we’ll look at a few of their back-ups for DC’s once-popular war comic.

Collector’s Guide: From Sgt. Rock #346

Sgt Rock 343: Crabs by Steve Bissette!

Tags

Crabs, giant crab, Sgt Rock, Steve Bissette, war, war comics

Before taking on Swamp Thing and moving on to careers producing their own works, artists Steve Bissette and Rick Veitch drew stories for DC’s Sgt. Rock. This week we’ll look at a few of their back-ups for DC’s once-popular war comic.

Collector’s Guide: From Sgt. Rock #343; DC Comics, 1980.

Sgt Rock 338: Future War by Rick Veitch!

Tags

Future War, Rick Veitch, Sgt Rock, war, war comics

Before taking on Swamp Thing and moving on to careers producing their own works, artists Steve Bissette and Rick Veitch drew stories for DC’s Sgt. Rock. This week we’ll look at a few of their back-ups for DC’s once-popular war comic.

Collector’s Guide: From Sgt. Rock #338; DC Comics, 1980.

Sgt Rock 347: Go Down Moses by Rick Veitch!

Tags

Go Down Moses, Harriet Tubman, racism, Rick Veitch, Sgt Rock, slavery, war, war comics

Before taking on Swamp Thing and moving on to careers producing their own works, artists Steve Bissette and Rick Veitch drew stories for DC’s Sgt. Rock. This week we’ll look at a few of their back-ups for DC’s once-popular war comic.

Collector’s Guide: From Sgt Rock #347; DC Comics, 1980.

Alex Niño: I Never Dreamed the Ray Would Transmit a Living Being!

Tags

Alex Nino, Corporal Kelly's Private War, dreams, George Kashdan, occult, war, war comics, Weird War Tales

Alex Niño’s work was featured in DC Comics publications such as Weird War Tales, House of Mystery, and House of Secrets. You will also find Alex Niño in issues of Forbidden Tales of Dark Mansion, Secrets of Sinister House, Weird Mystery Tales, and The Witching Hour. Alex Niño also appeared in Warren’s Creepy and Heavy Metal.

Here on Mars Will Send No More we have a nice collection of Space Voyagers, and an ongoing gallery of work from the out-of-print Satan’s Tears.

If you’d like to dig into our whole online Alex Niño gallery, just click Alex Niño.

Comics in the Afghanistan War!

Tags

Afghanistan, national geographic, war, war comics

We were reading a blog the other day where the author suggested that comic books are dead. Dude, come on! Marvel and DC may have to re-number their books every week to stoke the sales fire, but comic books as an art form — as a communications medium — are far from dead. Wherever sequential pictures tell a story, comics live! Wherever words and pictures together tell a story more fully than either words or pictures alone, you are getting your world rocked by comics!

We suggested to the author that there’s a comic book in every seat of every commercial airplane. You know, the adventure where the lady puts an oxygen mask on her kid. The comic book where a bunch of people go sliding down an inflatable slide into the ocean. Yeah, that comic!

Later on, we found this page in a 2011 National Geographic. The military was using comics to communicate with people in Afghanistan! It’s pretty simple to follow the storyline on these: The locals tell a soldier where the bombs are hidden, the soldiers round up the bombs, and the locals get paid cash. Hey, DC should try that plot sometime!

Every Child Needs a Fully Automatic Machine Gun!

Tags

advertising, automatic firing bb machine gun, war

1956 was a good year to be alive. For a small investment of $1.25, any child could own a fully automatic machine gun. Plus, at no extra charge, that child could become the Commander-in-Chief of a complete combat unit. These days, we hold ridiculous presidential elections to choose our Commander-in-Chief. But in the good ol’ days, it only took $1.25. Times were simpler then.

This ad brings back fond memories of childhood, when we commanded our own combat unit. Every morning, we would rouse our troops from their slumber and begin combat training in the back yard. Dad liked that he never had to mow the lawn, because we dug a series of trenches and fox holes into it. Mom was often disturbed by the presence of space ships hovering above our house as part of our combat unit. But she did her patriotic duty by continuing to load ammo into our automatic weaponry. The neighbors never complained when our shells misfired and took out their houses, because they knew the price of freedom was eternal vigilance.

Best of all, our new toys made our friend’s toys outdated. What a sensational feature! If only we put children in charge of the arms race, we would have destroyed our foes long ago.

Every Child Needs a Nuclear Submarine!

Tags

advertising, nuclear weapons, Polaris Nuclear Submarine, war

1968 was a great year to be a kid. For just $6.98 (plus 75 cents postage) two children could purchase their own fully functional Polaris Nuclear Submarine. Yes, fully functional. It had a real periscope, controls that really worked, and rockets that really fired. Screw you peace-loving hippies! Our kids were keeping an eye on the Red Menace, with their hands on the trigger!

This ad brings back so many fond memories of our childhood, where we routinely fired nuclear missiles at the godless oppressors with our little brothers and sisters. Every day, we’d flush the cooling water from the reactor into a large bucket. Mom would take it outside and dump it on the neighbors’ lawn. The neighbors never did know why all their flowers died and their pets grew hideously-deformed extra limbs. But that was the price of freedom in the good ol’ days!

It makes us sad, looking at the little tykes these days. They grow up with their padded car seats, their baby-on-board window hangers reminding everyone to be careful around them. Their Nerf guns fire foam-covered projectiles that hardly ever put an eye out. We teach them that bullies are bad and that they should not fight at recess. AARRGGHHH! You pussies! Weaklings! Learn how to operate a Polaris Nuclear Submarine! Feel the hot burn of uranium on your face in the morning and learn to love it! Atomize them all and let Jesus sort them out!

Kids these days. For more informative reading about the real joys of atomic weapons, we recommend you visit Atoman and Atomic Follies.

Losers – First Issue!

Tags

Andy Diggle, first issue, Jock, Losers, Vertigo Comics, war, war comics

The modern incarnation of The Losers is my favorite action series. If you saw the movie and think you know this comic book, then think again. If you like crime comics, this will be at the top of your list, too. I’m also a big fan of Ed Brubaker’s & Sean Phillips’ Criminal, too, if that gives you any idea of my taste in crime comics!

When the Losers, once an elite U.S. Special Forces Unit, stumbled onto the C.I.A.’s dirty little secret, their refusal to play along got them murdered — or so the C.I.A. thought. Now the Losers are back and out for payback against the organization that betrayed them.

2020 Update: Once upon a time, I sold my collection of all the original single issues, but I missed it so much that I got the complete TPB series in 2019 to read while traveling. I started reading it on the plane, didn’t finish, but stayed up until almost dawn in my hotel room reading the rest of it. If I were doing a top-ten list of books I couldn’t put down and lost sleep over, Losers would be near the top.

Anyway, let’s enjoy the first two scenes introducing our cast of Losers!

Collector’s Guide: From Losers #1; DC/Vertigo, 2003. Story by Andy Diggle; art by Jock. Reprinted in Losers TPB #1, 2004 and a double-sized Losers TPB in 2010.

Looking for the Jack Kirby version? Click Jack Kirby Losers to dig Our Fighting Forces #152!

Alex Niño: Whatever They Are, They Aren’t Friendly!

Tags

Alex Nino, Day After Doomsday, war, war comics, Weird War Tales

Alex Niño’s work was featured in DC Comics publications such as Weird War Tales, House of Mystery, and House of Secrets. You will also find Alex Niño in issues of Forbidden Tales of Dark Mansion, Secrets of Sinister House, Weird Mystery Tales, and The Witching Hour. Alex Niño also appeared in Warren’s Creepy and Heavy Metal.

Here on Mars Will Send No More we have a nice collection of Space Voyagers, and an ongoing gallery of work from the out-of-print Satan’s Tears. If you’d like to dig into our whole online Alex Niño gallery, just click Alex Niño.

G.I. Joe 21 – The Silent Issue!

Tags

G.I. Joe, G.I. Joe 21, G.I. Joe Silent Issue, Larry Hama, Silent Interlude, Silent Issue, Snake Eyes, Steve Leialoha, Stormshadow, war, war comics

Here it is: the complete, famous “Silent Issue” of G.I. Joe! Absolutely our favorite issue from Marvel’s 1980s series of this toy franchise that goes back to the 1950s. You know, it’s not such a big deal these days to do a silent issue, but this was groundbreaking stuff in 1984. We didn’t have silent month from Marvel or Frank by Jim Woodring or Age of Reptiles or even the death of Ultimate Spider-man back then. So hats off to Larry Hama for giving this one a shot! It’s become quite a collector’s item since it came out.

You might notice from the cover that this is not the original printing. Our scans come from a Hasbro reprint we scored on eBay for considerably less than the price of the original. It must have been packaged with a toy or something, because we can’t find any info on it at the time of this writing. If you can enlighten us on the source of this reprint, please do. We like that the colors and the glossy paper quality make this in many ways a superior printing to the original.

Anway, how about we stop using all these words to talk about a wordless issue? Just get ready to rock the complete “Silent Interlude” with Snake Eyes and Stormshadow having a ninja showdown!

Collector’s Guide: From G.I. Joe #21. March 1984, Marvel Comics. Reprinted in a G.I. Joe third printing by Marvel. Reprinted in the Classic G.I. Joe TPB #3 by IDW.

Plot and breakdowns by Larry Hama, finished art by Steve Leialoha.