Grunts
Mirage Studio, 1987. A projected series that only went the one issue.
Cheap sentiment.
Confusing artwork, bad story, and a sanctimonious 'Make war no more' tag at the end. So here we have someone that likes action and adventure but feels like they have to tack on hippie philosophy at the end of their ultra violent comic. Why not make a comic about lawyers inventing PTSD? Guess what happens to those that turn the other cheek? Real men love fighting and the ladies love real men, everything else is bullshit.
But these guys got published, as we all should.
Make war no more indeed. The unlucky and the weaklings will fall by the wayside like nature intended.
Nietzsche is pietzsche.
Nietzsche is pietzsche.
I suspect the creators grew up with war comics and funny animal books and said, "I can do that."
ReplyDeleteFAIL.
You know why I seldom write battle scenes? Because I haven't been there. In my first book, I wrote a scene where a prisoner beats the sn0t out of one of his captors. I've been in hand-to-hand any number of times. Real armed conflict? I'm a stranger. And I'm not going to try and make my living writing it.
One doesn't have to have been in combat to write good fiction, I really believe. Bernard Cornwell writes the most riveting battle scenes and he has never been in armed combat. What I object to is pacifism that flies in the face of reality, such as the oft used 'what if they gave a war and no one came'? This ignores what is usually the basis of war, aggression. I put these two stories up as a how not to draw a comic, while there is nothing wrong with the talent of the artists it is hard to read and dense. The idea is a good one and could have been made to fly. I used to listen to my uncle Glen's stories of the retreat from the Yalu and even as a kid all I thought was, glad I wasn't there. But I also thought he was as cool as they come, and that he did his job and survived where so many died or ran. So while as a more mature person I don't ever want to be in a war should it happen I hope that I could be professional and brave. Course, anyone that needed me in an army would be in dire straits for sure, but I could free up a younger man to go get killed while I guarded an important rock somewhere!
DeleteHeh, I have a copy of this book somewhere. It was distinctly not memorable and I believe there were no more issues under this title -- at least that I could find. I think it was trying to tap into the popularity of Steve Gallacci's furry war stories, which in the late 80s and early 90s seemed like something really new. Plus they were well drawn. The furry alternative at that time was underground 'toon stuff or soap-opera fantasies such as Chuck Melville's "Melari's Wish" or Vicki Wyman's Xanadu comics.
ReplyDelete