“Corpse on the Imjin!” And Other Stories (The Fantagraphics EC Comics Artists Library, 1)

This EC collection does an excellent job in portraying Harvey Kurtzman as an artist, a writer and as an editor. Each role Kurtzman tackled for his two war books ( "Two-Fisted Tales", "Frontline Combat" ), he performed to his elevated standards. It shows in the quality and timelessness of the work; unfortunately, it also shows in the bio and interview segments. It appears that his obsession with detail cost him financial success, as well as limiting the number of artists he could work well with. Some of the text reads like a warning to the Type A personalities among us.Ultimately, the proof is in the printed page. And the pages Kurtzman gave us are raw and filled with humanity. More than a couple of tales will leave the reader feeling sad, angry, frightened...sometimes the ending is so powerful it leaves you lacking a particular feeling, just an uncomfortable numbness. War and conflict are treated with realism and awe within a Kurtzman piece; neither flag waving rah rah nor flower power preaching. It is and always will be a necessary evil for peace.Pretty meaningful philosophy for a 60+ year old comic book, eh?

Ahhhh. Those dynamic Harvey Kurtzman layouts and that stark, clear and emotional brush just jump out at you. If you're an artist, you'll get mega ideas thumbing through the pages; if you hate war, note that Harvey Kurtzman was among the first to create comics work that wasn't rah rah rah sis boom bah for war. Brave and bracing. Read Big If as an example of a single idea that just unwinds beautifully.

Nice quality throughout this book! The cover is interesting, as it's a hybrid of direct printing on the cover material for spine and back, but with the front graphics printed on a wide paper band that is wrapped tightly and glued in behind the interior endpaper. Creates a nice texture difference and a slightly raised effect for the front art. All 24 of the interior stories are reproduced in crisp black & white on a quality uncoated paper stock that is off-white rather than bright white, so it's easy on the eyes. In the back, there's a four color section that reproduces 23 of Kurtzman's published covers for Two-Fisted Tales and Frontline Combat at full page size, as well as an interview with Kurtzman, some biographical info about various E.C. creators/artists, and a condensed history of E.C. itself.

This terrific collection of Harvey Kurtzman's war stories showcases both stories he wrote for other artists, and stories he drew himself. The real treat here is having the stories hedrew collected in one book as well as the pages of the covers he did for bothFrontline Combat and Two Fisted Tales. The text pieces are a nice additional as welland make for informative and enjoyable reading. If you never read any EC comics before this a great introduction and a must for any fan of great visual storytelling.

Another great Fantagraphics book. Excellent Black and White art with great war stories. Not one of the Fantagraphics books of the '...and other stories' series have failed to impress me yet and I highly recommend all of them. All of them also have good researched biographies on back pages of the featured author and or artist. The old style vintage burlap covers are a plus too and look great on a bookshelf!

What can possibly be said about his war stories that hasn't already been said over the past 50+ years? They hold up well to today's comic standards, and the messages in them never gets old. These (Frontline Combat, and Two Fisted Tales) are two EC books that should have survived into the New Trend and beyond!

I have read plenty of EC comics stories; Tales From the Crypt, Weird Science, Shock Suspense Stories, all the other horror and science fiction titles, but I had never read any of their war comics because the subject matter didn't appeal to me. I wish somebody would have told me that this is arguably the best (at least in story) material EC ever produced. Kurtzman's stories are gripping and visceral, and they mostly avoid the somewhat formulaic feel of ECs horror and sci-fi titles. I was surprised at how realistic and tragic these stories are, with art not only from Kurtzman, but from half a dozen other of the greatest artists in comics including Toth, Severin, Kubert, and the immaculate Russ Heath. I have several volumes in this EC series and this volume has so far been by far the most surprising and enjoyable.

Another great EC book full of the drawings and/or scripting of Harvey Kurtzman. He was a genius, in my opinion. One of my favorite MAD artists, but much more than an just artist. It's just amazing what those guys did! I love this book!!

EC Comics material has been anthologised a zillion times over the year but Fantagraphics' "EC Comics Libary" takes a new and very welcome tack by compiling key works from individual artists into handsome hardcover volumes.No-one should be surprised that Fantgraphics kicked the series off with a book devoted to Harvey Kurtzman, who is one of their domestic gods. This volume contains all eleven stories Kurtzman both wrote and illustrated for his two war/adventure titles "Frontline Combat" and "Two-Fisted Tales", along with the twelve stories he wrote which were illustrated (over Kurtzman's layouts) by "the other guys" who weren't part of his usual gang of Wood, Severin, Elder and Davis. There's also one real oddity, in which Kurtzman inks Severin pencils over Kurtzman layouts. Apparently, Kurtzman felt Severin wasn't much on an inker, an eye-popping statment to anyone with the slightest familiarity with Severin's work.The production values are outstanding. The book is beautifully designed, and the stories are printed on high-quality matt white paper which shows the art to the best possible advantage (though it's at slightly less than original EC comic size, which some may find disappointing). This is all appended with biographical and interpretative essays on Kurtzman's life and work, notes on the other artists and a brief overview of EC Comics. There's a real bonus in the full-color reproductions of all Kurtzman's covers for the original comic series, accompanied by an informative but overly-awed essay by underground cartoonist Frank Stack, which suggests he feels Kurtzman's the greatest artist of any kind since Michelangelo.Personally, I've never trusted the praise that Kurtzman has attracted from the underground generation. Stack states here that there have been no mainstream comics of any value whatsoever since Kurtzman left the field in the mid-fifties. Many of his peers feel the same way and the adulation Kurtzman received from Fantagraphics was only a little less glowing. This is largely based on his humour work - this is the man who created "Mad" in both comic book and then magazine formats - but while it's easy to see how revolutionary and jaw-dropping the early "Mad" must have been in the conservative culture of early '50s America, it's just not very funny from a modern perspective. I'd always found Kurtzman's work easy to admire but very difficult to actually like.Until now. This book has been a Damascene moment for me. The fully-solo stories here, most of which are set in the Korean War, are an absolute revelation and have finally made me realise that Kurtzman probably was the comics genius his admirers have been telling us all these years. I can only assume it's something to do with the black and white art, because I've seen some of this stuff in colour before and the impact in monochrome - which is, after all, how Kurtzman created it - is on an entirely different level. These are fantastic, miniature masterpieces of comics art and storytelling. The plots are simple but timeless vignettes on the absurd, irrational and arbitrary nature of war which achieve extraordinary resonance through Kurtzman's unique, deceptively simple and intense graphic storytelling. People who think modern super-hero comics are the be-all and end-all of the artform won't get it at all, but anyone who's responded to the likes of "Maus", "Persepolis" and Joe Sacco's work should appreciate these. For war stories they're extraordinarily subtle but the impact is amazing, and they reveal Kurtzman to be the first truly individualised sensibility to work in mainstream comics. I get it now. The guy was a freakin' master.The remaining stories, by "the other guys", show that even a near-genius like Kurtzman is prone to errors of judgement. Essentially, he gave up on them as not being good enough after trying them out on one or two stories, and reverted to giving the work to the four artists of his inner circle. The other guys he rejected? Russ Heath. Joe Kubert. Gene Colan. Johnny Craig. Reed Crandall. You know, some of the greatest artists ever to work in comics. He gets career-best work from longtime journeyman Ric Estrada. All these artists produced excellent work for Kurtzman, and the quality and impact is as good as the work from his usual crew. Quite why he rejected them is a complete mystery. The only person who does let him down is Dave Berg (ironically, later to be a star of post-Kurtzman "Mad"). Berg was a solid craftsman but his work is too inherently humourous for Kurtzman's fatalistic, downbeat war stories, and the Berg story looks like a parody of Kurtzman rather than the real thing.Then there's three stories with Alex Toth. In one of them ("Dying City", a bleak drama about a Korean family caught up in the war), Toth works over Kurtzman's layouts and the two styles work quite well together. In the other two, which are air force stories, Toth's amazing design sensibility fights for supremacy, and he allegedly changed one of the scripts to make it, as Kurtzman said, "too heroic". The stories are excellent, Toth's work is superb, and, as one of the book's essays points out, Toth actually makes two of Kurtzman's lesser scripts come to unexpected life. But it was a clash of very different sensibilities, and, with a control freak like Kurtzman in the editor's chair, he was having none of it.So there you have it. The second half of the book is fascinating, high-quality comics work and the first half is absolutely magnificent. It's already established itself as one of the most-loved items in my library and if you don't like it, I'll come round to your house and tell you why you should until you damm well do.

Wer zu diesem Buch greifen möchte, dem ist vermutlich bereits klar, was es mit EC Comics auf sich hat. Wem es nicht klar ist, erhält mit den Büchern der Reihe einen gelungen, bezahlbaren Einblick. EC's "New Trend" Comics die zwischen 1951 bis 1954 erschienen, bis der Comic Code ihnen den Garaus machten, haben hinsichtlich ihrer Inhalte, Haltung und grafischen Gestaltung Maßstäbe gesetzt. Ihre Horror, Crime, War und SciFi Storys sind Legende und die Zeichner lesen sich wie das All Star Aufgebot der amerikanischen Comic Geschichte: Wallace Wood, Jack Davies, Al Williamson, John Severin, Joe Orlando, Johnny Craig, Reed Crandall, Bernard Krigstein usw. usf.Fantagraphics legt die Comics aus der wichtigsten EC Periode, eben der New Trend Ära, erneut auf, denn Nachdrucke und Anthologien gab es bereits viele. FG's Ansatz bei dieser Edition ist es jedoch jeden Band einem der Künstler zu widmen. Die Ausgaben haben jeweils einen farbigen, bedruckten festem Einband (auch der Rücken ist bedruckt) mit rund 200 bis 240 Seiten. Die Storys sind in Schwarz/Weiß Druck wiedergegeben, die Originale waren koloriert. Das Papier ist von guter Qualität und matt, so das keine Reflexionen beim Lesen nerven. Umfang, Ausstattung und Qualität sind ihr Geld allemal wert.Die Entscheidung von FG keine Ausgabe im Farbdruck vorzulegen hat neben preislichen Vorteilen auch den Reiz, die Zeichnungen der Künstler in ihrer reinsten Form zu genießen. Ich persönlich finde das sehr ansprechend und wer z.B. mal in die "Jerry Spring" Neuausgabe von Jijè geschaut hat, weiß wie großartig das aussehen kann. Das ist auch hier der Fall.Harvey Kurtzman ist einer der ganz Großen in der Welt des Comics. Autor und Zeichner, Cartoonist und der kreative Kopf und Erfinder des wegweisenden Satire Magazins MAD. Davor lieferte er für EC Storys und Zeichnungen für die Titel "Two Fisted Tales" und "Frontline Combat". Zwei Reihen, Kriegs Comics, die Geschichten erzählten, die so in Comics und populären Medien bis dahin nicht zu lesen waren. Kurz zusammengefasst: Kurtzman zeigte die Grausamkeit des Kriegs ungeschminkt, keine Helden, kein Patriotismus. Sterben, Angst, Willkür, Zerstörung. Das was Soldaten tatsächlich erlebten und keine Hurrageschichten. Koreakrieg und zweiter Weltkrieg sind die Hauptszenarios, aber historische Epochen sind ebenfalls vertreten und für das Anliegen Kurtzmans gleichermaßen geeignet.Der Band beginnt zunächst mit einem redaktionellen Text zu Kurtzman und seiner Arbeit für EC. Es folgen 11 Storys die er getextet und gezeichnet hat. Ein weiterer Aufsatz leitet die anderen 13 Storys ein und erläutert Kurtzmans Arbeit als Redakteur und Texter, der den Zeichnern minutiöse Layouts nach denen sie zu arbeiten hatten vorlegte. Die Storys in diesem Band sind dabei von Zeichnern, die eher nicht zu seinen bevorzugten Künstlern gehörten, z.B. Alex Toth oder Joe Kubert. Verzeihlich, da diese Zeichner ebenso in den amerikanischen Klassiker Kanon gehören und wunderbare Arbeit abgeliefert haben. Die anderen, typischen EC Zeichner erhalten ja ihre eigen Bände in der EC Library Reihe.Es schließt sich dann ein Text zu Kurtzmans Arbeit als Cover Zeichner an. Diese insgesamt 23 Cover für die o.g. Heftreihen sind ganzseitig und in Farbdruck dargestellt! Ein wirklich schöner, aufschlussreicher Artikel zu deren Bedeutung.Ein Interview mit Kurtzman, eine kurze Biografie der Künstler dieses Bandes und eine dreiseitige Geschichte des EC Verlages runden den Band ab.Kurtzmans Zeichnungen zielen weniger auf Realismus als auf Ausdruck, den Emotionen seiner Figuren und der gezielten Wirkung auf den Leser. Die Darstellungen sind schwungvoll, abstrahierend mit kräftigen Strichen. Die Figuren stehen stets im Mittelpunkt, Hintergrund und andere Details sind nur minimal ausgearbeitet. Panelanordnung und Perspektiven sind wohldurchdacht. Die Arbeit der anderen Zeichner des Bandes zeigt eine große Bandbreite realistischer Zeichnungen. Vom minimalistisch, kontrastreichem Stil Alex Toth bis zum eher Abenteuer Comic typischen, dynamischen Joe Kubert Stil.Die Geschichten selbst, jeweils ca. 6 bis 8 Seiten lang, illustrieren bestimmte Aspekte des Kriegs und was er mit den Menschen anrichtet. Die Storys enden oft mit in einer überraschenden Wendung. Das ist für heutige Leser oft vorhersehbar, sind wir solche Erzählmuster inzwischen doch gewohnt. Damals dürfte dieser Stil aber für das adressierte Publikum von ca. 13 Jährigen aufwärts Neuigkeitswert gehabt haben. Zumal die unheroischen Geschichten bereits Novitäten waren.Unterm Strich ist der Band jeden Cent wert. Tolle Aufmachung, klasse redaktioneller Teil, prima Druckqualität und großartige, klassische Zeichner. An der Erzählweise der Storys hat der Zahn der Zeit etwas genagt, ihrer Intention und ihrem Status in der Geschichte des Comics tut das keinen Abbruch.

For too long war comics have been a steroid power fantasy, but not when Harvey Krutzman is telling the tale. He pulls no punches and tells war stories from a soldiers perspective, brutal, horrific and far from glorious. I doubt we will see the like again, buy this collection of master works before they are gone.

Great attention to detail and the portrait of the human side of the war makes this a must for any comic aficionado.