Saturday, June 28, 2014

The 100th Anniversary of the Beginning of World War I "Two Shots Heard 'Round the World"

One hundred years ago today, the globe was plunged into the planet's first world-spanning conflict!
To commemorate the date ("celebrate" seems too tacky), we're re-presenting a never-reprinted tale published on the war's 50th Anniversary that gives a lot of background information that even textbooks tend to leave out!
Dell Comics launched this series around the 50th Anniversary of the Great War in 1964, probably hoping to cover the major events of the entire conflict, but the series ended after only three issues.
Their primary military artist, Sam Glanzman illustrated all the stories in the first issue and most of the remaining issues,with Frank Springer filling in when Glanzman was unavailable.
The writers for all three issues are unknown.
In America, comics dedicated to WWI have a poor track record.
EC published Aces High, which cover-featured WWI dogfights, but also included the occasional WWII aviation story.
By their fifth and final issue, the cover was given to WWII-era aviators, but even that couldn't save the book.
DC Comics had the fairly successful Enemy Ace strip in Showcase and Star Spangled War Stories featuring a German aviator and the not as successful Steve Savage: Balloon Buster series in All-American Men at War with his American counterpart.
They dueled several times...always to a draw.
Bookmark this blog since we'll be re-presenting the complete HTF World War Stories series as well as other WWI tales from other books.