Hello, and welcome to the end.

 I am doubly saddened at the news of Rockem Sockem Comicsâ closure.

 First, this will be the last review column I will be writing for a while. Iâve really enjoyed the opportunity to share my opinions of comic books and the comic industry with the people who stopped by my site on a regular basis. This was my first paying gig as a writer, and I got to write about a hobby Iâve enjoyed since I was five. I hope I can continue this elsewhere, but Iâll always cherish the past two years even if I cannot.

 Second, Iâm not only the resident Rockem Sockem reviewer, Iâm also a client. Iâve been ordering comics from Rockem Sockem Comics for over 5 and a half years. The shipments have always been timely and the contents have been complete and intact. After two previous bad experiences with mail-ordering companies, I had finally found the best and most reliable service in the country. As I begin the impossible quest to find a replacement, I can guarantee I will be heard muttering, ãThatâs not the way Rockem Sockem did it,ä over and over again for the next few years.

 To properly wrap this up, I need to thank a few people.

 To the partners of Rockem Sockem Comics: Kirk and Arvid, I really appreciate the outstanding service you have provided for the last half-decade. Thank you for providing this forum and giving me the chance to write for you. Special thanks to Kirk for making my words look so damn good online.

 To my readers: Thank you for stopping by and browsing through my head for a few minutes each month.

 To the comic books and their creators: Iâve read over 25,000 comics for one simple reason: I love this medium. If any of my comments in this column have seemed harsh, itâs only because I want the comics industry to be the best it can be. Thank you for providing me with entertainment, memories, and a hobby that will last for a lifetime.

 To my wife: Adele, thank you for consistently making this column better through your editing efforts. For that and everything else youâve done for me, I love you and I thank you.

 So Rockem Sockem is closing its doors, and Iâm outta here. Look what youâll be missing . . .

 ÎBye now,
-Rod Brown
 

I've spotlighted the output of Marvel, DC, and Acclaim in past review columns. In the interest of equal time, here's a column devoted to a tiny little comics company that specializes in black and white reprints of obscure comic stories from the Sixties and Seventies. Without further ado, I present my dissection of Avalon Communications, publishing under the imprint of ACG: America's Comics Group.
 

SAIGON CHRONICLES #1 (Avalon Communications/ACG)
TALES OF BLUE AND GREY #1 (Avalon Communications/ACG)

When your company's only output is reprints, you'd think your first goal would be producing the highest quality reprint package possible. Well, if you have such thoughts, you are probably not an employee of Avalon Communications. The war anthologies SAIGON CHRONICLES and TALES OF BLUE AND GREY epitomize everything bad about Avalon's revival of the old ACG imprint and the exploitation of its inventory of comic book stories.

 Let's count the offenses, shall we?

 1) The printing quality is abysmal. Murky and blurred do not begin to describe the damage done to once crisp inks by comic stalwarts such as Sam Glanzman. Many pages do not come up to the quality even of a twenty year old photocopier that is low on toner.

 2) These black-and-white stories desperately need color. The art would look much better with the original color restored. There is no vibrancy on these pages to sustain the black-and-white treatment.

 3) The stories are lame. These tales do not have the snap endings of the classic EC Comics or the shock value of the short tales found in DC's various Vertigo anthologies. The story just lays there, flat and dead.

 4) The stories are printed without credits. Frankly, though, this may be a hidden benefit to most of the artists represented in these books. Who'd want their name attached to such low quality reproduction or such corny plots? Regardless of that, though, if I did come across a story or artwork that I like, how would I track down other work by the same creator? Or avoid his work if I dislike his contribution?

 5) The stories are presented without citations of their original appearance. Why drive comics historians batty trying to track down where this material first appeared? How difficult would it be to add some footnotes or endnotes giving original publication dates and titles? If you are making a living off work that others first created, edited and packaged, I think you owe them a nod in every issue, dammit!

 So what's good about these projects? Very little.

 1) These comics help keep the tradition of the war comic alive. It's a dying breed, y'know. Sure, I'd rather have something along the lines of THE 'NAM or VIETNAM JOURNAL or THE AMERICAN HERITAGE COLLECTION, but I'll take what I can get whenever I can get it in the current comics market.

 2) These comics have the potential to draw Civil War and Vietnam War buffs into the world of comics. The comics audience is shrinking as the focus of the comics industry is increasingly on superheroes only. To draw a general mass audience, you need books of interest to a general mass audience. As countless movies such as "Platoon" and "Dances With Wolves" and countless books such as "Born on the Fourth of July" and "Cold Mountain" show, there is a huge segment of America hungry for tales of these eras from our history.

 3) Some of this stuff, especially the art of Sam Glanzman, who drew countless war comics for DC Comics, is worth a second look. I only wish it didn't look so bad on these (barely) printed pages.

 At this point, you the reader may be thinking about giving up on the rest of Avalon's output and this column. But let me assure you, the cream of Avalon's ACG line awaits you below. It's not a thick and heavy cream, mind you, but it is worth checking out. Please read on as I dismiss these first two titles and Avalon's editorial and publishing team with a somewhat lenient grade . . .

_____

Grade: D

(Thankfully, no second issues have been offered for either SAIGON CHRONICLES or TALES OF BLUE AND GREY.)

Back to Index...

A COP CALLED TRACY #1-5 (Avalon Communications/ACG)
DICK TRACY: CRIMEBUSTER #1-4 (Avalon Communications/ACG)

As a franchise, DICK TRACY is well past its heyday. Probably, most comic book readers could not care less about the long-running police detective comic strip. Heck, most of today's readers probably don't even know that "dick" was once a slang term for "detective." Well, I care and I know. It may not be the greatest comic strip ever, but DICK TRACY delivers the thrills and humor I expect in an adventure strip. And its two reprint incarnations under Avalon Communications' ACG imprint are the best comic books produced by the company.

 First, we have Tracy at his prime in A COP CALLED TRACY. Reprinting adventures from the 1940s, this comic has the aura of my favorite hardboiled crime fiction. The first five issues forego Tracy's infamous gallery of rogues for some good old-fashioned murder, conjobs, and theft. And Tracy applies some tried-and-trued police procedures to bring in the bad guys (and gals). Mostly, though, Tracy relies on luck and his tough physique to bull his way through his cases. Fingerprinting and ballistics may put him on the trail of the scoundrel du jour, but stupid chance usually allows Tracy to break the case, though not before being captured, humiliated and tortured by the villain. Often left in death traps, Tracy is not the master escape artist Batman is. Rather, he is usually saved at the last second when someone overhears his panicked calls for help. How can you not love such an incompetent bumbler who is idolized by his superiors and peers for his great policework?

 Drawn and written by DICK TRACY creator Chester Gould, A COP CALLED TRACY is pretty raw and a bit ugly. The original newspaper comic strips are cut up and forced into a nine-panel grid on the comic book page. Gould's heavy inking becomes blotchy in ACG's typically mishandled reproduction. The Sunday strips are even blotchier since the color hasn't been fully bleached out for black-and-white presentation. The story is also handicapped by heavy repetition of the plot for catch up synopses in the Sunday and Monday strips. (History lesson: Y'see, kiddies, back in the days people actually followed comic strip serials, some folks only got the Sunday paper and some folks only got the weekday papers. The stories had to be structured in such a way that both audiences could follow the single adventure that wove through both continuities.)

 Criticism aside, the strip still holds up because of its high energy, fast-pace, and focus on crime. Each issue ends on a cliffhanger in the middle of the story. The next issue concludes the story from the previous issue and immediately jumps into a new adventure. The transition between the two storylines is actually fairly deft and gets the reader involved immediately. In issue five, for instance, Tracy is saved from a group of traitors who are selling plans for US secret weaponry to foreign agents. Tracy's life is endangered when the treasonous scum use him as a guinea pig to test the ability of the weapons to stand up to immersion in water and fire. After the state cops show up and shut the spies down, the narrative shifts to Tracy's adopted son, who has become involved in a bike-stealing racket outside his elementary school. What might be a trivial little filler story elsewhere becomes more serious here when Junior's life is placed in real jeopardy.

 The sister series to A COP CALLED TRACY, is DICK TRACY: CRIMEBUSTER. This comic focuses on the DICK TRACY comic strips produced by Max Allan Collins and Dick Locher during the 1980s. While pretty decent, the Collins-Locher Tracy does not hold up as well in the ACG reformatting as the Gould Tracy.

 Actually, to backtrack on my last statement, Locher's art looks much better than Gould's for two reasons. First, the art is reproduced much larger, with only 3-6 panels per page. Second, since Locher is drawing for an era when newspaper comic strips were much smaller than in Gould's day, he does not clutter his panels with too much detail and is more restrained with his inks. Locher's bold style was perfected for lousy newspaper reproduction and holds up well at the equally low-grade ACG printshop.

 The problem is that the pictures in DICK TRACY: CRIMEBUSTER are reproduced so big and the story pacing is so slow, it has taken four issues to get through a single continuity compared to four in A COP CALLED TRACY. Also, part of each issue is sacrificed to a silly story from the ACG inventory that has nothing to do with Dick Tracy. I say ditch the unnecessary back-up feature and throw in some extra pages of Dick and the gang. The story would be much more enjoyable if it could be read faster. Even so, writer Max Allan Collins turns in a pretty good yarn about Tracy confronting one of his more recognizable foes, Pruneface.

 I've sampled Gould's version of Tracy several times in the past two decades and the strips in A COP CALLED TRACY have been my favorite by far. DICK TRACY: CRIMEBUSTER features a less-robust Tracy but is still good reading. If you've never tried DICK TRACY, either of these series would be a good starting point.

_____	A COP CALLED TRACY	Grade: B+
_____	DICK TRACY: CRIMEBUSTER	Grade: B

(A COP CALLED TRACY #8 and DICK TRACY: CRIMEBUSTER #7 are solicited this month in PREVIEWS on page 197!)

Back to Index...

THE LONELY WAR OF WILLY SCHULTZ #1 (Avalon Communications/ACG)

Willy Schultz, the son of German immigrants, is a captain in the United States Army during World War II. One day he is framed for the murder of a general's son. Courtmartialed and sentenced to death, Schultz escapes into the only refuge left to him; Schultz must hide behind enemy lines in war-torn Europe. Finding a usable uniform on a dead German, Schultz uses his German background to take shelter in the army of his enemy. If the Germans find him out, he will be executed as an American spy. If his American countrymen don't kill him in combat and instead capture him as a prisoner of war, his identity is sure to be discovered, and he'll be executed for murder. A traitor to both sides, Willy Schultz is a man without a country, fighting one of the loneliest wars ever conceived.

 Pretty damn wild, huh?

 The out-of-this-world concept behind THE LONELY WAR OF WILLY SCHULTZ is the strongest part of this obscure little cult series from the ACG vaults. The art by veteran Sam Glanzman is solid, if a bit heavy on the ink. The scripts by Willie Franz struggle to live up to the amazing concept and mostly succeed. Franz heaps in plenty of action, leaving Schultz little time to dwell on his impossible situation, only time to react to its consequences.

 Like any undercover story, such as TV's "Wiseguy" or the movies' "Donnie Brasco," a recurring theme in THE LONELY WAR OF WILLY SCHULTZ is the blurring of loyalties experienced by a deep cover agent. Schultz loves America and his fellow troops. And yet, once he has hidden himself in the German army, he finds friends there as well. The faceless enemy he had been fighting as an American is now the comrade with pictures of a wife and child or the fellow soldier who has saved his life under fire. When Schultz finds himself in combat situations he is torn between protecting American lives, German lives, and his own life. Almost every decision he can make is the wrong one.

 This is gut-wrenching stuff, kiddies. And it's outrageous enough to make you believe it would be possible. Sure there are loads of unlikely coincidences and lucky (or unlucky) bits of timing, but the overall structure of the piece draws the reader's attention away from the weaker joints and seams. It helps that the production crew at Avalon seems to have taken a little more care in reproducing the artwork more clearly than usual.

 I have no idea where the creators could possibly go with this crazy scenario . . . and that's a good thing. I love it when creators defy expectations and go off into uncharted territory. I'll be in the ranks with Captain Schultz until his lonely, bizarre war is completed. Or until all the stories that exist have been reprinted anyhow.

_____

Grade: B-

(THE LONELY WAR OF WILLY SCHULTZ #2 is solicited this month in PREVIEWS on page 200!)

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WILDERNESS BOOK 1: THE BORDERLAND (4Winds Publishing Group)
WILDERNESS BOOK 2: BLOODY GROUND (4Winds Publishing Group)

I was a history major in college, and I still read the occasional history book for entertainment even now. So you'd think I'd be totally stoked whenever history and comics -- my major passion -- are combined. Unfortunately, it is rare that a successful balance of the two can be achieved. And while Timothy Truman's WILDERNESS comes close, it remains slightly disappointing.

 Originally published ten years ago, WILDERNESS ambitiously chose to tell the life story of a renegade white man, Simon Girty, who fought on and against all sides in the conflicts between the Americans, the French, the British and the Native Americans during the turbulent years before, during and after the American Revolution. Set in the territories that would become Western Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan it is a little known tale of the United States' earliest frontier.

 Simon Girty is taken captive and becomes a member of the Seneca tribe for four years while a teenager. He comes to live with the tribe as a full member, learning their ways. When returned to his own people, Girty uses his skills to become a renowned scout and frontiersman. He is forced into renegade status when he is betrayed and sees the repeated betrayals of the Native Americans by the various nationalities of white men. Girty has been reviled by historians as a traitorous and ruthless villain, but writer/artist Timothy Truman seeks to redeem Girty by portraying him as a complex man living in a world full of shades of gray.

 As with most biographies, WILDERNESS suffers from the episodic nature of human life. Interesting story threads have to be dropped because in real life there is rarely satisfying closure, and Truman is trying to hew as closely to the real history as possible. And while Truman is a master artist who produces sparse and chilling dialogue, his narration is ponderous. Rather than let word balloons and pictures tell the story, Truman falls victim to the need to explain every detail of Girty's life. Rather than make the graphic novel longer -- say four or five volumes, which I really would have loved -- Truman chokes it with captions, frantically cramming in history as densely and as dully as any high school text book.

 Buy WILDERNESS for the wonderful art. Flip through it quickly and admire the flow of the visual narration. Read the occasional word balloon and thrill to the lean, mean attitude of the frontiersmen. Finally, when you've a long day and feel like learning something, come back and read a fair but underwhelming history of a minor footnote in America's early years.

_____

Grade: C+

(TIM TRUMAN'S WILDERNESS is resolicited this month by ACG in PREVIEWS on page 200.)

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