Category Archives: War

This was the fourth of Kirby’s twelve issues of the series featuring the team of DC’s WWII characters who couldn’t support their separate features, The Losers. In this 18-page story, “Bushido”, he moves the action to the war against the Japanese in the Pacific islands (those Losers get around), as they infiltrate a Japanese base and capture a Colonel, leading to a chase through the jungles and quite a lot of action in very few pages, including escapes, booby-traps, prisoner exchanges and single combat until the Losers finally complete their mission.

Kirby’s stories of the war in the Pacific tend to be a bit more fanciful than those set in Europe, presumably because his first-hand experience was in Europe and for the other stories he has to rely on second-hand accounts. Still, there’s a lot of neat stuff, including a well-designed two-page splash with some carefully labeled heavy guns. D. Bruce Berry inks the whole thing, with somewhat uneven results. A few pages, including the splash, look really good, while others look rushed.

In addition to the story, there’s also a 2-page “Wheels ‘n Tracks” feature, looking at some of the armoured cars of the war, from the Germans, Italians and the British. The cover is also by Kirby and Berry.

Frantic little war cover from Kirby and Frank Giacoia, featuring the Howlers once again going against their Nazi counterparts, the Blitz Squad. The situations those boys get into…

Published 1965

Very attractive Kirby/Stone cover for this issue, really getting the concept of defeat across. Also, very nice job on the colouring, which gets the heat and dryness of the scene across.

Published 1965

This issue has a reprint of SGT. FURY #18 [1965], including the Kirby/Stone cover with Fury in action surrounded by headshots of the other characters. Not sure exactly how it came about, but Kirby also pencilled (uncredited) the first and last page of the story “Killed in Action”, with the last page having an emotional scene of Fury finding out, after he spends the issue planning to propose to her, that his girlfriend Pamela Hawley died during an air raid.

They’re both really good pages, but looking at the rest of the book I’d have to say that Ayers and Stone had the look that Kirby had established for the book in his issues down cold, so I’m not sure why Kirby would be brought in for two pages. Has the story behind that ever come out? Were these pages done as substitutes for pages already drawn, maybe with the decision to kill the character coming later?

Published 1974