Mel Brooks Would Have Been Proud

Friday Comic Book day.

Sam Kweskin is best remembered for his moving and sensitive portrayal of concentration camp horrors in City of Slaves in Battle Field #9 (1953), but here he shows a less serious side of his talent in a fun story about Hitler, the devil and other dictators. There are some people who find humor the opposite of seriousness, but for me they are two sides of the same coin and this funny send-up of De Führer expresses just as much emotion as the somber images of prisoners behind a barb wire fence. The anti-communist twist is a bit much, but very telling for it's time and it is all done tongue in cheek anyway. The real hero here is Sam Kweskin's art, as far as I am concerned and it it yet another sample of how Comics Can be Fun. And may I remind you that all of the samples used so far come from two simple issues of one title, Adventures Into Weird Worlds.

War Is Hell (But Necessary) 7

 Chapter 7

Yesterday I looked in some more detail at the story Truck Convoy. What this story shows, is not only Chapman's grim pessimism about the war. It is also extremely well told. I don't know if Chapman saw or read Harvey Kurtzman's war comics. But his use of sequential panels with little more than sound effects is similar and disproves the numerous claims that this device as unique to Kurtzman and that he was the only one using it. Of course, one could try to argue that it was not Chapman doing this, the he was merely the writer. Harvey Kurtzman sketched his lay-out and his artists followed them meticuously. Hank Chapman merely worked with a typewriter.

He did this sort of tiers with Joe Maneely.

Russ Heath.

George Tuska.

Werner Roth.

Joe Sinnott.

Paul Reinman.

Robert Sale.

Dave Berg.

Bernie Krigstein.

Syd Shores.

 Sam Kweskin.

And (probably) Mort Meskin.

If you follow the link you will find more from each of these artists.