FIREFIGHT ON THE ROOF

I want to believe that Kirby altered the pacing and construction of this story at the point where the Losers and the Nazi soldiers finally engaged in direct combat. Shifting briefly back to page 8, that's where the perfect logic of the layouts began to dissipate in the heat of the battle, in that central panel where Cloud and Sarge were obscured behind the glare of an explosion and a raft of sound effects and in the next panel, where the two are seen again but with no background in the panel, an absence of visual context to enable us to understand the sequencing. As already noted, there are weak spots on page 9 and definite breaches of logical object and body placement on page 11... Are these really weaknesses, or is it that Kirby changed his approach subtly as the storyline shifted from hide and seek to direct conflict, matching the shift by moving from logical layouts to ones dictated by emotion? It would seem to me to make sense that he did, and that the shift would be a demonstration of "realism" - in the speed and fury of real life conflict, a sense of logic and positioning is inevitably swamped by that rising, red mist though which only the very next action at hand can be discerned. So, I want to believe that Kirby built such a shift into this story - because if he didn't, the first two panels of page 12 just don't make sequential sense. At least, they don't in the terms of logical sequencing established in the first seven pages. In an emotional sense, however, they represent one of the issue's high points.

The first panel draws us into the group. Kirby has already used this device once in this story: in the third panel of page 5 he placed the POV in the centre of the group, as if to draw the reader into sharing the sense of the group's entrapment between the tanks behind and before them. Here, as the action moves faster, it is done more quickly: we see the group moving up the stairs towards a trap door opening onto the roof of the house, a sharp sequential cut from Cloud's verbal assertion that the roof is the only escape route, made in the last panel of the previous page. In page 12 panel 1 the POV is positioned looking up the stairs from within the group - Cloud is in the lead to the upper right of the panel, already halfway through the trap door; Sarge is behind him in the panel's centre; a fraction of Gunner's helmet is visible in the lower left corner (Storm is not seen -presumably still dazed from the impact of the grenade on the previous page and taking up the rear, he is glimpsed only twice on pages 12 and 13.) Although the logical sequencing has loosened, Kirby has not *abandoned* logic: in a narrative sense he is following it in keeping Storm out of the forefront of the action, andwithin the panel itself he neatly uses the slanting line formed by the Losers, the perspective lines marked in by the stair banister, the outline of the trap door and a chimney glimpsed through the open trap to keep the visual flow moving forwards. Meanwhile the reader, placed amidst the group is thus engaged in the verbal debate between Sarge and Cloud as to whether to storm the roof or move out slowly.

But the logic does not stretch between panels. In panel 1 Cloud is halfway through the trapdoor: in panel 2 the POV has jumped to a little way across the rooftop, looking down on just Cloud's head appearing through the trap door from a point just behind a Nazi soldier, whose helmet, right shoulder and flamethrower take up the left hand third of the panel. The sequence between panels doesn't make sense. But it doesn't matter, because the two words of dialogue in this panel are so powerful as to wipe out and concerns about illogicality. "VERDAMMT!", gasps the Nazi - "DAMN!", echoes Cloud. For the first and last time in this story a Nazi speaks, and he and Cloud share the same word, the same *thought*. The effect is absolutely shocking - the faceless, uncharacterised hunter is suddenly, briefly, made as human as the

Losers (and, since the previous panel drew the reader into the midst of the Losers, as human as the reader). In Laurence Olivier's1944 film of Shakespeare's "Henry The Fifth", there's a similar moment: during the Battle of Agincourt, a beautifully designed piece in which war is shown as a mechanised, impersonal inactivity in which fully armoured French knights (as completely dehumanised as the silent Nazis here or as the Imperial stormtroopers in "Star Wars") are slaughtered from a distance by the arrows fired by English bowmen. In the middle of the battle a one to one combat between King Henry and an armoured Frenchman reaches a climax when Henry suddenly drops his sword and strikes his opponent with his mailed fist. These two incidents are not the same, but their emotional impact within their context is, I think, very similar - there's an enormous visceral thrill set up by that sudden, brief moment of CONTACT!

And it is the brevity of that moment which guarantees its impact. In "Henry The Fifth" the camera sweeps back to the battle: here, Kirby breaks the contact by swiftly moving us into panel 3,closing up on Cloud's face, eliminating the Nazi from view, and opening the inevitable combat. The panel is split diagonally - in the upper left section the flare of Cloud's gun overlays the gout of flame from the Nazi's weapon, to the lower right Cloud's head is angled back, showing him screaming as the flame sears his face. The words and reactions in panel 2matched each other - here the reactions match again, but so as to remove the Nazi from our scope of interest and focus on Cloud's plight. The import of that moment of contact has repercussions which the reader is left to consider and savour: it is no longer germane to the story Kirby is telling. Instead, the blast from the Nazi's flamethrower launches us into a new version of "a small place in hell".

The rest of these two pages is like a sequential collage, or perhaps a series of snapshots in which Kirby maintains sequentiality on an overall scale but keeps it jumping, seemingly fragmented, from panel to panel, regrouping again at the close of page 13. Flames rage in each panel - the roof has clearly been set afire by the flame thrower, still activated although its user is seen crumpled and fallen in page 12 panel 4. Cloud, his face burned, lies temporarily out of action as the Losers struggle past him out of the trapdoor, exchanging fire with the irenemies. The POV leaps backwards and forwards nervously, even jumping into space to the side of the house in page 13 panel 1 to show a Nazi falling to the street. "Men scream! Men fall!", affirms that panel's caption: quite so. For a moment all is chaos: sequentiality begins to return in page 13 panel 2, a closeup on Gunner's face threatened by a knife. The close relationship of the group is reasserted here too: Gunner's call for aid is humourous - "this bird's pretty good..." and is answered by a rush from Sarge, kicking the knife-wielder out of the way as, like a drill instructor, he admonished his comrade not to "play with stick-specialists". The moment concludes the interaction between Cloud and the Nazi with a device which again reminds me of Olivier's film - Sarge's kick brings us back from the firefight to the realm of direct physical contact, even as the panel shows the Losers gathered together in a line, Cloud having recovered. And here, for the second and last time, a Nazi voice is heard, grunting "Uuh!" as Sarge's kick sends him flying. Kirby has not let us forget that the enemy does, after all, have a voice - but neither does he leave us in any doubt that the possibility of verbal communication between sides has been firmly rejected.

In a final pair of snapshots Kirby sets us up to move on. Page 13 panel 5 zooms in on Cloud's blistered face, his head surrounded by flames, as he yells at the Losers that it's time to blow the joint. Panel 6 takes the POV back to show the group formed in a line, edging back across the roof, firing into the flames as they retreat. For once the dialogue becomes merely a function of sequentiality - Cloud's assertion that they won't escape if the Nazis manage to outflank them substitutes for visuals instead of reinforcing them - but, once again, Kirby is compelling us to turn the page hastily, to find out what happens next.

ON THE RUN AGAIN

What happens next is that the firefight suddenly ends. The battle sequence wraps over into the first panel of page 14: an angled, overhead view centres on the group scrambling over the gabled end of the roof, still firing and being fired on, while a couple of Nazis can be seen in the lower right hand corner of the panel, backing up Cloud's previously unillustrated assertion that a flanking manoeuvre is being attempted. But this is very clearly a conclusion, or perhaps an ellipse: the POV has a distancing effect, pulling the reader out of the thick of the firefight into a more objective role. Moreover, things have quietened down: after the noisy, sound effect-laden chaos of the previous two pages, this panel is devoid of sound effects. The dialogue begins with Cloud reiterating the need to get out then moves to an exchange between Storm and... for once it isn't clear who. In the next panel Gunner is at the front of the group, suggesting that it maybe him... whoever, the dialogue concerns finding a means of descent from the roof. In just about every possible sense, Kirby is indicating that it's time to move on.

He does so very abruptly and economically: no need to show exactly how the Losers find a way off the roof, Gunner's assertion in panel 1 ("We'll make one!") being enough to assure the reader that that's what they've done. In panel 2 we see Gunner, followed by Sarge, followed by an unidentifiable pair of boots, shinning down a drainpipe to an alley beside the house. This is actually a small narrative break, and not just because we have cut from the rooftop scramble to a position part way down the wall of the building: the POV, slanted from above and down the side of the wall at an angle, is exaggeratedly vertiginous, seemingly designed to induce a sense of tension in the reader. By itself, the dialogue seems neutral, reverting from the edgy tone of the rooftop scenes to the terse, economical style - an unidentified voice off panel querying "NO trouble?", Gunner responding "Looks good! Looks good!" - but taken in the context of Kirby's drawing it also indicates a reversion to the state of tension which prevailed in the earlier stages of the story. The Losers are on the run again, from the known dangers of battle to the uncertain dangers of retreat.

The tense mood lingers. In panel 3 the group has reached street level. The POV places us in the alley, directly behind the group: Cloud is furthest away, about to reconnoitre the street, while the other three are grouped tightly behind him, the curves of their backs and shoulders indicating a wariness seen most clearly in Sarge's tense gaze over his shoulder, looking back out of the panel. The dialogue exchange crackles with tension: Sarge, ever the joker, comments "We're down... but NOT out.", to which Gunner grumbles "Funny man..." and Cloud barks at them to be quiet. For panel 4 the POV cuts to the front of the alley, in tight closeup on Cloud's blistered face as he looks out into the street, with Gunner's tense, drawn face visible over his shoulder. The situation has changed, an unknown factor affecting things: Cloud, in effect leaping ahead of the sequence by describing the next panel, observes that there's "a lot of chatter" going on. Gunner is both visibly and verbally unhappy with the situation, snapping "Whadda we do? Spend the war HERE? "Finally the POV pulls out to across the street from the alley, showing us what Cloud has described: a marvellously economical, soundless evocation of semi-controlled disorder. For the first time since page 2, the Losers are a side issue: the tiny figure of Cloud can be seen admonishing Gunner to "hold it", while peering from the alley on a scene which, from the reader's POV has no clear focal point. The street is angled across our line of view. To the left, on Cloud's side of the street, a group of Nazis clusters around an officer in a sidecar, frozen in an gesture suggesting that something is up off-panel to the right. The right foreground is framed by the head, shoulder and arm of a Nazi, face tilted back and mouth open as if he is shouting orders. In the background, in front of the alley, more soldiers are scurrying in opposite directions. Each figure drawing is cut off by the panel borders, which enhances the sense of hurried movement and seems to suggest that this glimpse of disorder is just part of a larger picture. In yet another of Kirby's audacious tricks, the whole scene seems louder and more disturbing for being entirely silent.

As, apart from the dialogue of the Losers, is the whole of page 14. For what is in practical terms a transitional page in the narrative, it does a quiet, unspectacular and very effective job of switching the mood of the story from blazing combat to nervous, edgy tension. It also sets up a splendid contrast for the next page, which is revealed only after two pages of adverts have been turned over. I may be mistaken in thinking that Kirby, as editor, would know where the adverts would be placed in each issue and would use their placement so as to maximise the effect of their interruptions in the narrative flow. But, as I recall, the placement of ad pages was pretty much fixed and regular in DC titles of the early 70s - so, although the ads themselves would obviously not have been Kirby's responsibility, he may well have been aware of where they would appear and thus able to take them into account.

SHELL SHOCK!

And so to page 15. Remember the first three panels of page 1? Those dogfaces awaiting the arrival of tanks so that they can go in and clear up the town? Kirby hadn't. Whether it was part of his design from the first or whether he went back and inserted those first panels retrospectively doesn't matter: I'm lost in admiration of such a simple, sensible justification of what would otherwise have been a "deus ex machina" brought in to give the Losers a way out. In page 15 the town is shelled. And that's about all that happens! The page breaks the five panel count which has been maintained throughout most of the issue, dividing into two page-width panels separated by a tier of two squares: the first shows the street scene of the previous panel, angled around slightly and blasted into chaos as indicated by a big sound effect which literally drops, complete with speed lines, into the centre of the panel. The second moves us back into the alley, showing the Losers huddling up, hands to faces and helmets, as another sound effect and visual blast can be seen behind them, back in the street. For the remainder, backgrounds and contexts are abandoned, wiped out by a barrage of sound effects which, absolutely literally, pummel the Losers into the ground.

A cheap trick? I don't think so. Rather than showing the effects of the shelling on the town, Kirby has chosen to show its effects on the Losers. And, although the slangy, naturalistic dialogue throughout this issue serves as a constant reminder that Kirby was writing from experience, it is this page which seems to say most clearly, KIRBY WAS THERE. The collapsing, huddled figures, dwarfed by enormous sound effects - these, I think, could only be the work of someone who had experienced, could never forget, the absolute shock and aural agony of being subjected to a barrage. I don't know this myself - I've never been there- but it seems to me that this page resounds with truthfulness. And with humanity - in opting to show the pain of the Losers rather than the destruction of the town, Kirby once more humanises the situation, conveying the horror of it all the more strongly by doing so. Panel 3 is, to me, one of the most memorable images in this book: the left third of it contains a close up on Cloud's face, eyes screwed shut, mouth open as if screaming, the whole *shape* of his head apparently dented in a Kurtzman-esque distortion by the three huge sound effects which fill the rest of the panel. The man's agony is palpable.

Characteristically, Kirby seems to have felt the need to leaven the stark horror of the scene with a little humour. The dialogue - Cloud's "Someone's chewing up the street!" followed by Sarge's "Someone's chewing up the TOWN!" - once more depicts the light spirit of camaraderie within the group. But I can't help feeling that it's mostly there for the reader, a small piece of word play to lighten the darkness...

AFTERMATH

Another reason why page 15 is so agonising lies in the fact that the Losers themselves don't have any idea what is going on: tense, wary, expecting to be caught in another firefight at any moment, they find themselves instead caught up in an inexplicable bombardment. Much of page 16 spins off their bewilderment - Kirby is maintaining the integrity of the story here, preserving the illusion of reality.

In panel 1 we see the Losers move out from the alley into the street, which is now smashed to pieces and strewn with rubble, corpses and machine parts. The POV is from above: the group is foreshortened, looking almost like insects as they prowl forward, guns at the ready, not knowing what to expect. The view shows us the length of the street, and the fact that at the far end(the top of the panel) it opens onto a wider area through which small arms fire is till ricocheting - this, finally, is to be the way out of the small place in hell. In panel 2 the strangely insectoid appearance is maintained in a close up of Cloud, bent and groping his way towards the end of the street, registering the "POKPOKPOK" effect of small arms fire and realising that it "sounds like OUR stuff"... he passes the corpse of a Nazi, leg twisted up from the rubble covering his body and enmeshed in hanging wires. Perhaps Kirby is implying here one of the effects of the awful barrage which the Losers have survived - that it has rendered them somehow less than human, more akin to the insects which will always be the last survivors...

Panel 3 opens up to full page width. At the left Cloud's head is seen, a tortured study filled with deep shadows and black, etched lines, utterly weary as he leans against the masonry at the street's end. Before his gaze and ours two US tanks crawl up the street, muzzles smoking: behind them wrecked houses frame the skyline, heaps of blazing rubble, the wreckage of the smaller street writ large. A US soldier, machine gun at the ready, prowls crouched, almost bent double, ahead of the tanks past craters in the roadway. It's a chilling scene, another vision of hell - not because of any deliberate distortion or calculated POV, but because of its plainness and honesty. Cloud's exhausted murmur of "Well, well..." correspondingly contains no sense of joy - one nightmare is over, Kirby seems to be saying, and now it's time to return to another one.

"You still alive, Cloud?" The off panel voice which opens panel 4 is a final reflection of the dazed, uncomprehending condition of the Losers - we shift round to a close up on Cloud's face as he beckons his partners forward, yet still the details of his features are averted from our gaze. In panel 5 the four move slowly out of the alley, shoulders hunched, heads drooping, guns finally slung over shoulders. Their utter exhaustion is written into their stances: Gunner's "They WON'T like this town... it's a lousy town." expresses their weariness. At no time on this page have we seen the faces of the Losers clearly - what has happened is that they have become as obscured and "faceless" as the Nazis earlier in the story. Is this just a reflection of their numbness? Or is Kirby suggesting that they are now the hunters and the Nazis the prey?

This is really where the narrative concludes. The Losers have survived, battered almost beyond humanity -nothing more *has* to be said. But as it stands this bleak vision would be too downbeat, too disturbing an ending. It needs a "release", something to wind the readers' emotion and involvement down to a bearable pitch. So Kirby fills another two pages with a coda of sorts, one which I think tells us much about what he was intending when he created this story.