Tuesday, September 27, 2016
Decent Comics: "Big Max" by Kirby and Royer
Whoooooo! Kirby two days in a row! Today we're gonna look back at another of the King's Losers masterpieces, "Big Max" from Our Fighting Forces #153 (November 1974). This one's pretty out there with Kirby's amazing precognitive abilities kinda/sorta "predicting" a situation eerily similar to his own involvement in the 1979 Iran Hostage Crisis (Argo). Oh, and wait'll you meet super-fan Rodney Rumpkin "Science Fiction Soldier" in this Mike Royer-inked WWII potboiler. Dig it!
Groovester you are making me nostalgic for kirby... Cut it out! I'm too busy to be digging out the long boxes!
ReplyDeleteCaptain Storm was the first DC Silver Age action hero to debut in his own self-titled comic book. (Sgt. Rock began as a feature in Our Army At War, and the superheroes, Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman, and the rest, all first had try-outs in Showcase or Brave & Bold. The Three Mouseketeers premiered in their own comic, but that was a "funny animal" feature, not a "serious" genre like superheroes or war.)
ReplyDeletePT boat officers were a hot topic in 1964 (when Capt. Storm #1 was published), thanks to our martyred President Kennedy (who had been officer-in-charge of Patrol Torpedo Boat #109 in WWII). That may account for DC's initial confidence in the character.
Storm ended up in Our Fighting Forces as a member of The Losers, along with other characters whose solo strips had been cancelled. The relegation of Storm, Johnny Cloud, and Gunner & Sarge to an ensemble strip may be a sign of a general decline in the popularity of war comics by the 1970's.