Monday, November 11, 2013

WARFRONT "Tomorrow's War"

Ten-hut!
In honor of Veteran's Day, we present an unusual tale...
...which was created and produced during the Korean War, but published several years later, resulting in an interesting re-write...
Though the enemy sub and crew are described as "Japanese" (thus placing the tale during World War II), all the ships and aircraft are Korean War-era technology.
America had no military jet aircraft (except a couple of experimental prototypes) until after WWII.
The "angled deck" aircraft carrier with the deck angled to the port side creating a second "runway" wasn't developed and built until after WWII.
Helicopters weren't used on American carriers until the beginning of the Korean War.
(The few helicopters that did see action in WWII were too big to be practical on a carrier)
The jet fighters are shown attacking an enemy rocket base...but Japan had no such bases!
(Korea did!)
So, why were the changes made?
We can only therorize that when the story finally appeared in Harvey's Warfront #34 (1958), the Comics Code Authority ordered changes probably due to the use of the racist term "gook" in the original script, although simply calling them "commies" or somesuch would've done the same thing and kept it in the Korean War timeframe.
The art's by Bob Powell and his studio, but the writer (and rewriter/editor) are unknown.
Until next time...
Dis-missed!