Blazing Combat
Fantagraphics Books, 210 pg
(Download a 3 story excerpt from the publisher)

I have a penchant for reading these things, especially if it was banned in some way or another as Blazing Combat was when it was published in 1966. Of course I wanted to see what would get it banned, but also how war is represented. Can something interesting be said in the comic form that hasn’t been said already. While I read with relish the works of Joe Sacco or Spiegelman’s Mouse, it has been a while since I’ve read a war comic that follows the more traditional format of a war comic: short vignettes about soldiers, usually with heavy interior monologues, noting the hardship but at the same time the purpose as something hideous, but necessary.

Perhaps half of the stories fall into that category: soldiers in combat fighting a surviving because that is what one does. Usually the tension is not about glory in a campaign, but about entering action as a cocky youngster and coming out a humbled survivor, or  a veteran doing what he has to do and hoping to survive once more, with the understanding that it is the enemy who cannot survive. While it is possible to inject a note of triumphalism that suggests glory is one’s goal, comics often, because of their lower profile, can question this more than movies (here I’m specifically thinking of films and comics between 1945 and 1980). Blazing Combat, to its credit, avoids that trap and there is seldom a note of triumphalism.  Instead, as the editor notes in the interview at the end of the book, it is more about soldiers talking to soldiers, the phenomenon I’ve noticed in survivor accounts where one does not dwell on the horrific, instead it is the shared experience, which the survivors know were horrific, that is the means of understanding. When I read the description of the book as banned for its anti war stance I thought I wouldn’t see anything that suggested dutiful ambivalence. But it is that shared expression that can have its own power. Unfortunately, too, it can come across as triumphal.

What got the book  banned, though, are the stories of futility that show nothing in war has any value. One story shows  takes place during the Spanish American War and shows two Americans are shown talking about how they can’t wait to see combat, which is juxtaposed with an American killing a Spaniard in hand to hand combat and walking away in horror. In another, the WWI British ace William Bishop is not noteworthy for his skill as a pilot. There were others such as the Red Barron who were as good and are remembered still to this day. What sets him apart is he survived the war. In other words, fame is pointless if you don’t survive. And in the most scandalous for the time, a story follows a Vietnamese villager who tries to save his land from an American patrol. The outcome does not make the Americans look good. It is especially prescient since it was written in 1965.

As a work of comic or social history it is interesting. As something to read and enjoy it is a little tedious. How many times can you read a five page story about a youngster learning the hard way what war is? If you want to see an approach to war in comic form that tried something different, this is your book. However, if you want entertainment (or great insight), not so much. But I think that its name says it all: Blazing Combat. Typically this has a connotation of excitement and adventure, and sometimes that bleeds into the stories, because it is difficult to create a war comic that even in its most nihilistic, is not partly about glory. If humans are capable of saying, Vive la Muerte (Long Live Death) as they did at the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, it is possible to enjoy the action of Blazing Combat, even if the name is ironic.

I will say the art for a comic is actually quite interesting and shows and good range of styles, though it is still in the comic vein.