Any serious discussion of the best war comics of all time is sure to include the legendary Harvey Kurtzman-edited E.C. titles Frontline Combat and Two-Fisted Tales. The stories found in these anthologies focused on the brutal realities of war instead of flag-waving glamorization and would even view conflicts from the enemies’ point of view, putting a relatable face on the nameless soldiers on the other side of the field.
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Creating characters who willingly alienate themselves from the rest of a society viewed as boorish, irritating, tasteless, or just hopelessly uncool is familiar territory for cartoonist Daniel Clowes. In celebrated books such as Ice Haven, David Boring, and the highly successful Ghost World, Clowes has given us characters who barely tolerate the majority of the populace to which they unwillingly have to interact with. Still, even considering Enid Coleslaw (the cynical, disaffected, teenage heroine of Ghost World)
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There’s something fascinating about seeing your favorite hero doing what they do best, but in a radically altered setting or environment. A big favorite of mine as a kid was What If? from Marvel. In (somewhat) more recent years it’s a real kick to see what DC creators do with the various Elseworlds releases. One that always springs to mind is Gotham By Gaslight in which we see what Batman would be like if he lived and operated in the late 1800’s. Pretty far-out to be sure, but how is the reader to react upon seeing the caped crusader as Raskolnikov, the down and out homicidal elitist in Dostoevsky’s towering classic of Russian literature Crime and Punishment? One way is to laugh out loud and that is exactly the way I reacted to that story and the many others in R. Sikoryak’s new book Masterpiece Comics.
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