The Brief Return of War Comics

In December 1986, Marvel brought out two very unusual projects that turned out to have a great deal in common, at least initially.  Each of them centered on an idealistic, blond-haired, blue-eyed North American young man who has enlisted in the fight against a far-off enemy.  Each young man is an aspiring writer whose journal entries, combined with his newcomer status, make him a compelling viewpoint character.  One of these men, Private First Class Edward Marks, is fighting the Viet Cong in the 1960s.  The other, Harold Everson, has volunteered to gain superpowers that will kill him in less than a year so that he can help Earth beat back the extraterrestrial Horde that arrived in 2069.  Neither character would last much more than a year, though their series continued: The 'Nam would run for almost seven years, while its science fictional counterpart Strikeforce: Morituri and its sequel miniseries, Electric Undertow, continued for four. [1]

The 'Nam was commissioned by Marvel editor Larry Hama and created by fellow veteran Doug Murray with artist Michael Golden.  Running from 1986 to 1993, The 'Nam was a surprise success, garnering attention and praise from constituencies that typically did not overlap with mainstream comics (it beat Oliver Stone's Platoon  in a veteran's group's award category called "best media portrayal of the VIetnam War."). It suffered little interference from Marvel continuity, at least before a desperate attempt at publicity that included Frank Castle, the future Punisher (Issues 52-53, January-February 1991). Marvel even attempted to expand The 'Nam 's audience by reprinting the first twenty issues in a black-and-white magazine.  Though hampered by a Comics Code that sharply restricted the comic's vocabulary and violence, it still managed to convey both the daily tedium and intermittent terror of a war that was not yet a distant memory, including a cover that reproduced one of the war's most famous photos from a different angle (Issue 24, "Beginning of the End," with cover art by Andy Kubert).  Golden departed after the first year, but Murray stayed on to write most of the book's first 51 issues, before being replaced first by Chuck Dixon, then by Vietnam veteran Dan Lomax.

Possibly one of the grimmest, most disturbing mainstream comics covers of the 1980s

The relative success of The 'Nam was surprising, in that war comics as a genre had long since fallen out of fashion.  Not only that: everything about The 'Nam resisted the standard heroic narrative that comics readers could come to expect.  Though the Reagan Era saw attempts to turn the Vietnam War into a site of neglected heroism in the face of a lost cause (see under: Rambo), The 'Nam 's general feel was much more in keeping with the previous decade's conflicted and depressive portrayal of America's post-World War II foreign interventions.  Daily life in The 'Nam was anything but "morning in America," and the comic, with its adherence to a "real-time" frame (each comic took place a month after the previous issue), its rotating cast of characters, and its preference for single-issue, roughly standalone stories meant that it offered few of the pleasures usually found in a Marvel title. Though generally praised for breaking new ground, The 'Nam  has, for the most part, been neglected by comics historians and scholars.  It is as though we are not sure what to do with it. 

Nor, really, do I, at least as part of a larger study on the decade.  Though long-running, The 'Nam is to the 1980s what Dean Motter and Ken Steacy's The Sacred and the Profane was for the 1970s:  a stand-alone entry that barely fits its ostensible genre (in this case, the science fictional first contact narrative) that was recognized at the time for its strengths, but exerted virtually no influence on the comics that came after it. Like The 'Nam , The Sacred and the Profane, which is a beautiful meditation on faith, power, and confronting the Other, has rarely been reprinted. Both seem destined to remain on the margins of comics history.

Next: End of Life, with Benefits

Note

[1] Ed Marks goes back home in The'Nam 13, but the series checks in on him now and then over the years.