DC Comics were the undisputed mavens of the war comic in the 1960's. For all of Marvel's burgeoning success in the decade they only ever launched one really successful war comic -- Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos. Charlton Comics produced war books on a regular schedule with some fine material but they were always a second-class outfit. Harvey and Tower and others tried out the war comic market but DC led by its stable of artists like Joe Kubert, Jerry Grandenetti, Russ Heath, Irv Novick and others along with the mainstay war writer Robert Kanigher held sway. Star-Spangled War Stories featured war tales both sublime and bizarre and in that last category for certain was "The War that Time Forgot". Kanigher writes them all and almost all of them were drawn by the stellar team of Ross Andru and Mike Esposito.
It began in Star-Spangled War Stories (SSWS from this point on) #90 with the story "The Island of Armored Giants". Some American soldiers are dropped onto an island where seismic activity has been reported. They expect perhaps the Japanese army but they find dinosaurs, lots of dinosaurs. They have been released in hordes and the G.I.s are overwhelmed. But they manage to survive the attacks and get to their sub, but the story ain't over.
Turns out this is two-part story and couple of issues later we get the sequel. The sub is attacked buy underwater creatures and once again survival is about all the brave soldiers can hope for. Two soldiers are driven back to the island where they find enough explosives to stave off this "last battle of the Dinosaur Age". The story is over but when books sell really well, DC can generally be relied upon to jump on the bandwagon. They did just that and for the several years the war in the Pacific was dominated by dinosaurs, at least in the pages of this particular DC comic.
In the earliest stories the dinosaurs are largely the focus. Some few of the stories had a shred of memory but most were sui generis in that finding dinosaurs seems always to be a shock, though not a big enough one that the soldiers forgot their missions. And the dinosaurs themselves began to get stranger and stranger with Andru and Esposito creating monsters that never existed.
"The Flying Boots" were a three-brother circus act. These acrobats were in the same military unit and kept getting sent to dinosaur island. Usually they never remembered they'd been there the issue before. Why Kanigher though acrobats offered up anything different for dinosaurs is beyond me.
Some of my favorite stories are those starring the G.I. Robot who was always partnered with some chap who doubted his "Buddy" but who came to rely upon him in the end.
It's possible that they came up with the covers first and then tried to finagle a story that might explain it. That sure seems to be the case with this wonderful image of dinosaurs disembarking from military landing craft. A "Dinosaur D-Day" indeed!
Eventually a whole team called the "Suicide Squadron" seemed to get tapped to go on these dinosaur missions. They were different guys at first, often with some personal issue which explained why they were in such an extreme outfit to begin with.
A great white ape in the tradition of King Kong made a few appearances, always friendly and looking to help the humans survive the deadly dinosaurs.
The dinosaurs were not always limited to being on some mysterious island and would show up in snowy climates as well. Usually they were shown to have been defrosted for somel reason.
Perhaps the most disturbing team sent on missions to battle these dinosaurs was Morgan and Mace. They were a duo chained together by the tragic death of Morgan's brother who blamed Mace for his death. Mace is constantly accused of cowardice by Morgan who will often hold a forty-five automatic to his head in order to make him follow orders. Mace gives Morgan no reason to doubt him, but Morgan persists and comes across as quite insane.
"Baby Dino" is added to a few stories in which the little dinosaur imprints on Mace and comes to his rescue a few times. Later a cave boy will show up. It indicated that the premise of the series was getting strained.
The dinosaurs get weirder as the series rolls along and their motivations are inexplicable. Submarines are a regular target because I guess they offered a nice bit scale for the artists to use.
Russ Heath steps in to relive Andru and Esposito for a single issue. I'm a fan of Heath but he's not at his best drawing dinosaurs.
Gene Colan shows up to draw a few stories from time to time, though his are a bit shorter than the usual. It might be an indication that the series was losing steam as a cover feature.
The war master Joe Kubert stepped in to draw an issue and it's a delightful entry with lots of emotion and power. The dinosaur in this one might be a delusion, a nifty play on the regular story.
Kubert also drew the issue above, though it's not quite a powerful as the one before.
The regular art team is back for the last issue in this Showcase volume which has some stalwart divers face off against an enormous undersea dinosaur.
Alas there was never a second volume in this Showcase Presents series, but for your enjoyment and mine here are the covers of the remaining issues of SSWS which cover-featured the "The War the Time Forgot".
The series was replaced by the magnificent Enemy Ace. I'd be hard pressed to remember a more abrupt change of pace on a series. From the outlandish misadventures of startled soldiers confronting deadly dinosaurs to the highly cerebral character driven tales of the Enemy Ace. And Bob Kanigher wrote them both. Magnificent!
The War that Time Forgot was revived by writer Bruce Jones as a limited series in 2007. I well remember being attracted to this series at the time, lured in by the spectacular Neal Adams cover the debut issue, but I was ending my new comic book collecting for the most part back then and I let it go. But I always wanted to read it but alas it's only ever been collected in two rather slim volumes and the price is not necessarily nice. But thanks to online sources I got them somewhat cheaper than cover and gave them a read. Sadly as with most modern comics it didn't take all that long. The artwork for the first eight issues is by the team of Al Barrionuevo and Jimmy Palmiotti. The ninth is by Scott Kolins and the tenth and eleventh issues are by Graham Nolan and inker Dan Green. Barrionauevo returns for the finale with inks by Green. The art is solid but not spectacular.
The premise is at once simple and complex. Warriors from across time are gathered together on a volcanic island teeming with all sorts of dinosaurs for reasons unknown to them. Being military folk they arrange themselves by rank and we end up with two forces at odds with one another. One group of more recent people on one side and on the other more ancient warriors. Among the time-lost characters are Enemy Ace, Golden Gladiator, Viking Prince, Firehair, G.I. Robot, and Tomahawk. There are others such as our main character Lt. Carson a U.S. pilot from just before the attack on Pearl Harbor. There is also a dame in a silver suit who seems to be from the future who is an enigma for much of the story. Personally I'd have loved to see more with the more famous characters but Jones I guess realized he could do little to advance their story arcs, so Carson and Vietnam vet called Jarhead and his wife Trang, along with a U.S. Iraq war pilot and a Japanese WWII ear pilot get much attention. A Colonel Jape proves to be as close to a villain as the series presents. There are lots of twists and turns, but in the final analysis I cannot recommend this one due to its prohibitive price for just too little story.
There are some knockout covers as can be seen in the gallery below.
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| (Neal Adams) |
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| (Brian Bolland) |
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| (Mark Schultz) |
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| (Russ Heath) |
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| (Walt Simonson) |
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| (Mike Kaluta) |
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| (Kevin Nowlan) |
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| (Josh Middleton) |
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| (Jose Ladronn) |
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| (Justiniano) |
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| (Jeff Darrow) |
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| (Howard Porter) |
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