Last month I did a post about war comics, including classics of the genre such as 1950s’ Two-Fisted Tales and Frontline Combat as well as serials running in Battle in the late 1970s/early 1980s (although not yet the brilliant Charley’s War, which will be the objet of a later post…). In the period between those publications, military fiction remained alive on the comic book stands thanks to DC, which kept a number of titles going even when the glorious narratives of World War II began to be challenged through the revisionist attitude prompted by the conflict in Vietnam.
Joe Kubert, in particular, did some truly solid work writing, drawing, and/or editing these series, especially the Sgt. Rock stories from Our Army at War. And while not every issue hit the mark, Kubert’s covers tended to be a visual tour-de-force every single time, his Rock a rugged soldier whose manly brand of heroism carried the weight of WWII, with everything that had become romanticized and/or reconsidered in the intervening decades. Joe Kubert himself had first started drawing professionally in the early 1940s, when he was still in his teens, and he had a believable take on the period aesthetics, approached through the impactful, dynamic style he developed throughout his career.
With that in mind, this week Gotham Calling is highlighting 15 cool covers that combine inventive concepts with exquisitely dramatic compositions:
