EC Comics! It's An Entertaining Comic! Issue 63

The EC Reign Month by Month 1950-1956
63: June 1955 Part II

Evans

Aces High 2

"Chivalry!"★★★★
Story by Carl Wessler
Art by George Evans

"Revenge"★★
Story Uncredited
Art by Bernie Krigstein

"Locker 9"★★★
Story by Carl Wessler
Art by Wally Wood

"Footnote"★★★
Story Uncredited
Art by Jack Davis

"Chivalry!"

Battles in the skies above France during World War One were marked by a sense of "Chivalry!" and the rules of fair play were observed by both sides. Lt. Pat Hogan saves the life of his friend, Steve "The Kid" Barry, in an air battle. Three days later, it happens again, when the Kid comes up against Germany's Flying Fox, Baron Walter von Ritter, who refuses to press his advantage when he sees Barry's relative youth. After the battle is done, German Lt. Horst Viegel remarks that the Kaiser instructed his fliers to destroy the enemy, and the next time they're in the air, Horst shoots down the Kid's plane and then mercilessly guns him down as he runs on the ground. Disgusted by this violation of the rules of decency, von Ritter forces Viegel to face Hogan, who finishes off the rash German pilot.

George Evans sure can draw WWI air battles, and Carl Wessler's script is well above average. Even though we get a flashback to how the two pilots first met (something that would later be done to death at DC), the story works well and the ending is completely satisfying. Reading about the respect shown between the two sides in WWI makes what happened in WWII all the more tragic.

"Revenge"

Captain William Warren falls hard for pretty Nurse Ellen Mack when she tends to him in the hospital. Soon, he professes his love but she is killed in an air attack by German pilot von Rustow and Warren vows "Revenge." Before you can say "Great War" he's back in the air, flying his Spad and looking for the villainous Hun. Find him he does and, out of ammunition, Warren crashes his plane into von Rustow's so that both are killed and Nurse Ellen is avenged.

It's interesting to see how weak Krigstein's art can be when he tries to tell a story in a straightforward fashion, without any pyrotechnics. This is just such a story and, with a corny and predictable plot, Krigstein turns in a mediocre six pages.

Down in the muddy trenches, Burt Rolfe yearns to fly a plane in the Lafayette Escadrille and soar high above the war. Up in the sky, Lt. Eddie Blackton pilots his plane over No-Man's-Land and succeeds in downing a feared German Halberstadt. Eddie returns to base for a celebration, but everyone know he's doomed because he has the jinxed "Locker 9." Next time out, his plane goes down in flames and, in the trenches, Burt Rolfe receives word that he has been accepted into the Lafayette Escadrille. He arrives and can't understand why his fellows lament that he has been assigned to Locker 9.

"Locker 9"

Carl Wessler is two for two in this issue with this well-plotted and exciting story of a doomed locker and the men who use it. Wally Wood is great, as usual, making me wonder if he may have been the most versatile of all the EC artists. Is there any genre at which he did not excel?

Major Trout is the new commanding officer of a squadron of flyers and he's a tough one who intends to instill discipline in the young hotshots and who doesn't care whether they like him or not. Insisting that attention to detail saves lives, he tells the men a story of a pilot who ignored a loose cotter pin and ended up losing his leg in a crash. Trout then pulls up his pants leg to display a prosthetic leg and his men get the message. After they leave, he removes the fake leg and reveals that his healthy leg had been strapped behind him. The story was true, but the loss of a leg was icing on the cake.

"Footnote" is a pretty good story until the ridiculous double twist at the end where we're supposed to believe that Trout has been sitting on his leg for an hour and that no one noticed the prosthetic leg was a fake. The old story about the tough commander who only knows what's best for his men has been told umpteen times, but Jack Davis illustrates it well. Too bad the uncredited writer had to add one twist too many.--Jack

"Footnote"

Peter: I'm getting mixed messages from the first two stories in Aces High #2: "Chivalry!" insists that the Germans had a sense of fairness and gamesmanship about them but "Revenge" just strikes home what a horde of dirty rotten scoundrels they were. The art this issue is universally great but "Chivalry!" reaffirms that this is George Evans's book; the excitement of Evans's dogfights just soars off the page. "Footnote" has a great twist, one that plays on our expectations of cliched finales, and "Locker 9" has some great Wood art and an intro that made me laugh out loud since it echoes the kind of plot devices Bob Kanigher ran into the ground over at DC. The guys on the ground always think the guys overhead have it made and vice versa.

"Chivalry!"

Craig

Extra! 2

"Dateline: Oslo"★★★
Story and Art by Johnny Craig

"Stromboli!"★★1/2
Story by Colin Dawkins
Art by John Severin

"Hong Kong!"★★1/2
Story by uncredited
Art by Reed Crandall

"Dateline: New York City"★★★★
Story and Art by Johnny Craig

Intrepid, globe-trotting reporter Keith Michaels is sent on the trail of a woman who may know the secret to uncovering a cache of gold smuggled out of Germany during the war. Following her to Norway, Keith teams up with a hardboiled dame named Erica and, together, they rescue the young woman from some tough characters who look like they'll stop at nothing to pry the secret out of her.

"Dateline: Oslo"

"Dateline: Oslo" is pure Johnny Craig enjoyment! I don't know what it is, exactly, but Craig is my favorite overall creative person at EC. His stories are almost Eisneresque in the way he combines suspense and humor, story and art, and sprinkles a bit of the old hardboiled storytelling in for a topper. When Keith meets Erica, their dialogue is a delight: "You must have a good-looking doll at Bjornigsfjord to want to get there so bad," she says, and he tells her, "Look, honey, I appreciate your troubles, but I have to get to Bjornigsfjord"--all while lighting a cigarette. Love it.

Adventurous press photographer Steve Rampart parachutes on to the Italian island of "Stromboli!" where he witnesses a well-dressed man chasing another man named Colucci. The pursuer is a doctor who tells Steve that Colucci is the only man who can clear his name, but when the pursued dies in a house collapse then Steve must give the doc a pep talk to keep him from giving up on life. The doctor works valiantly to minister to many injured locals and is thrilled when his last patient turns out to be Colucci's wife, who also has information he needs to clear his name.

"Hey! Where'd our knives go?"
(Stromboli!")

Not the best work I've seen from Dawkins or Severin, "Stromboli!" suffers from some corny dialogue ("What? I don't dig you, Jack . . . talk English!) and a predictable finish, but it's reasonably entertaining nonetheless.

Geri Hamilton's pretty nose sniffs out news in "Hong Kong!," where a strike threatens the local government. Of course, a nefarious foreigner is behind the whole thing, and when he loses his cool after Geri's photographer takes his picture, the reporter knows something is up. The story she files leads to the scheme being unraveled.

Reed Crandall's half-page splash is a thing of beauty but the story is a dud. This comic book suffers from the need to have each story focus on an intrepid reporter who uncovers something exciting, and by the third story in this issue the conceit is already wearing thin.

Keith Michaels returns from Norway to find that his boneheaded editor sent his secretary, Vicky, out on what seemed like a safe and simple story, but now she is being held hostage by a psycho on the top floor of a condemned building! Keith races to the scene and heroically leaps from a neighboring building before crashing through the skylight and confronting the psycho. Keith manages to survive a gunshot wound and a beating before he knocks the psycho out a widow to his death. Keith and Vicky also fall from a great height but when he awakens in a hospital bed he learns that they landed in a hastily-set-up police net.

A great sequence from "Dateline: New York!"

Wow! What a great story! There's very little set up and no real investigation in "Dateline: New York City"--just several pages of slam-bang action. We are told that the psycho is the Penguin, who used to run a speakeasy and who just got out of a mental institution, apparently a bit too early. The last four pages, where Keith performs some amazing feats of daring in order to rescue Vicky, could have come straight from a pulp magazine. It may be far-fetched, but hey--it's a comic book! Isn't this why we read them?--Jack

Peter: I'm still trying to figure out exactly what was going on in "Dateline: New York City." The Penguin was holding Vicky hostage and people can jump really far in New York City. That's about it for me. But then that's the secret formula of Extra!, I guess. Just turn your brain off to the nonsense being conveyed by the little words and enjoy the pretty pitchers. Severin and Crandall are aces but I wouldn't mind if this became an all-Craig title (a la Kamen and his Psychobabble); Johnny's pencils handle the high adventure as well as anybody and they've got that Steve Canyon newspaper strip look to them. Extra! is just as good as any of the competitors' adventure titles but perhaps that's the rub: it's not as good as the ECs that preceded it. A little trivia here: Johnny Craig, in an extensive interview with the Comics Journal, reveals that the powers-that-be at EC removed all the knives from Severin's finished art in the fight scenes in "Stromboli!," which is why the choreography looks so funky!

"Dateline: Oslo"

Williamson

Valor 2

"The Champion" ★★★1/2
Story Uncredited
Art by Al Williamson

"Poetic Justice" ★★★
Story by Carl Wessler
Art by Bernie Krigstein

"The Colonel's Son" ★★
Story by Carl Wessler
Art by Graham Ingels

"The King's Service" ★★★
Story by Carl Wessler
Art by Wally Wood

Since being taken as a slave by the soldiers of Rome, Flacchus has served honorably as Marcus Aurulis's most durable gladiator. Flacchus misses the wife he left behind but gets on with his business without revenge in his heart. Aurulis, thankful for Flacchus's years of bruised and bloodied service, declares the gladiator a free man and Flacchus opens a nice little sword shop in Rome. One day, a blind beggar comes into the shop and Flacchus immediately recognizes him as a former gladiator, left to wander and beg for his meals. The old man is run down by a horse and chariot and the occurrence leaves Flacchus shaken; soon after, he discovers that he is also going blind and decides to end his life in the arena. "The Champion" enters himself into an event and introduces himself to his opponent, a young Tuscan named Arminius. As the men talk, Flacchus realizes this is his own grown son and decides it's a fitting way to die.

Who doesn't love a well-told gladiator tale? I do, and "The Champion" nicely fills the bill, giving us a fully-developed lead character, pathos, and a sly twist in its tail. What's most welcome is the absence of vengeance; this warrior has just come to realize these were the cards he was dealt, why bitch about it? Sure, the coincidence is a stretch but it works on several levels. It's a better expository than a caption that says, "So here's what happened to Flacchus's wife and oh, he had a son . . ." The whole enchilada is delivered with a delicious Williamson sauce, the closest thing to Frazetta we'll get, dark and broody in spots and fully-lit when the action arrives. It's just like a good Steve Reeves movie!

In 12th-Century China, the cruel emperor Wu Ming has declared poetry to be a crime punishable by death. A group of poets rise up and murder a handful of Wu Ming's guards. All poets, that is, save the pacifistic Chou Po, who shrinks back and awaits the outcome. After the carnage is over, the group of men cast out Chou Po and head for the Emperor's palace to protest the new law. The poets never stand a chance against the horde of guards and are slaughtered in the courtyard to the delight of Wu Ming. Weeks later, the Emperor makes an appearance in the village to strike fear in his subjects but a young, pretty girl dares approach the procession to offer a flower to the Emperor. The girl is immediately arrested and brought to the palace, where she declares love for her ruler. Clearly smitten, Wu Ming brings the girl to his chambers and, an hour later, the girl emerges, telling the guards that the Emperor is asleep. Chou Po heads back to the teahouse, removes "her" wig, and cleans the blade used to murder Wu Ming. "Poetic Justice" has a sly twist that I must admit I never saw coming (though it's pretty obvious, isn't it?) and some glorious Krigstein art that almost matches that of the classic "Pipe-Dream" from Vault #36. It's remarkable how Wessler continually screws with the reader's preconceived notions of Chou Po as a character. Initially, we see him as a coward (as do his fellow poets), a future antagonist or a rat. Certainly not as a savior. That last page serves up some outré suggestions--Wu Ming's counsellors with their winks and "ahem"s at what might have taken place behind closed doors. And just how far did it get? A 12th-Century version of that scene from The Crying Game, perhaps?

Colonel Jean Lescours disapproves of his son's plans to marry the beautiful Janice but, when Napoleon invades Russia, the Colonel devises a way to keep Paul from making a really big mistake. Lescours pulls some strings and has Paul commissioned to accompany him to Russia so that he can keep an eye on him. The other soldiers are envious and spiteful of this coddled young man's place in the detachment and they let it be known loud enough to bother Paul. When his father wades into battle and leaves an officer to watch Paul in a tent safely away from the carnage, Paul pulls a gun and rushes to the front. There, he takes a bayonet and dies, leaving his father heartbroken. Luckily, Paul and Janice were married before Paul's commission and Janice shows the fruits of their wedding night to grandpa. A big steaming chunk of French soap opera, the bastard step-child of Margaret Mitchell and The Guiding Light, "The Colonel's Son" is the standout of the issue, but for all the wrong reasons. The dialogue is sappy ("You see, Colonel . . . he was a man and he loved me . . . so we were married . . . without your blessings!") and the plot threadbare and perhaps a little too reminiscent of "Yellow" (Shock #1), so the only thing that keeps me turning these pages is . . . yep, Graham, who continues to forge ahead in the terror-less swamps of EC.

Young knight Geoffrey wants only one thing in this English world and that's to join the Round Table of King Arthur. To that end, Geoffrey applies for the job but is told to ease on down the road while the knights attend to more pressing matters. After his squire is frightened away in a skirmish, Geoffrey takes Edward, a gnarled old man, as his new squire and the two take a tour of the English countryside, Geoffrey raising his sword to anyone who so much as sneezes a derogatory word in King Arthur's direction. After several battles, the knight and his squire rest by a lake but soon Edward is rousting his master awake to warn him of a nearby danger. Five knights sit around a fire, discussing  the assassination of Arthur. Geoffrey strides in and challenges the men to a battle but Edward pipes up before any damage can be done. Satisfied that Geoffrey is indeed a brave knight, King Arthur removes his old man makeup and he and his Round Table knights welcome Geoffrey into the fold.

A worthy successor to last issue's Arthur tale (and it almost seems like a chronologically-wonky novel we're reading here), "The King's Service" is a rousing adventure tale with fabulous Wally visuals. Much like in "Poetic Justice," Wessler plays with our expectations of the direction Geoffrey's path will take. Just a handful of months after this grand "New Direction" had begun, one thing was crystal clear: EC was finding success (quality-wise, at least) with the genres they'd already mastered (war, adventure, and suspense) and were floundering in the subjects that were new to them (medicine, newspapers, and--choke--psychoanalysis). -Peter

Jack: Williamson's gorgeous cover sets the stage for his brilliant work on "The Champion," an excellent tale by an uncredited author in which a kindness is repaid with more kindness. "Poetic Justice" is an intriguing tale from long-ago China with a surprise ending and a master of disguise whose talents rival those of DC's Unknown Soldier! Krigstein's work is better here than in "Revenge" but it's still the weakest art in the issue. "The Colonel's Son" is sentimental and old-fashioned with a gentle twist at the end and adequate art. Though I guessed the ending of "The King's Service," it was still well-told with even more fabulous art from Wally Wood. In all, a satisfying comic.

In only seven days . . .
Jack envies Peter's he-man lifestyle
in Star Spangled DC War Stories #136