"Night did not bring me sleep, for as I stared at my victory cups the darkness in my quarters was lit by each individual kill I had made."
- Baron Hans von Hammer, AKA The Hammer of Hell
Robert Kanigher was the writer and creator of Enemy Ace, who was based on WWI German pilot Baron Manfred von Richthofen. Art was penciled and inked by Joe Kubert. This is from Showcase No. 57, July/August 1965. Scans are from my own comic.
- Baron Hans von Hammer, AKA The Hammer of Hell
Robert Kanigher was the writer and creator of Enemy Ace, who was based on WWI German pilot Baron Manfred von Richthofen. Art was penciled and inked by Joe Kubert. This is from Showcase No. 57, July/August 1965. Scans are from my own comic.
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7 comments:
Terrifc aerial combat action depicted here and just look at the neat perspective on that opening splash page. Great stuff!
Mykal~ I especially love page 19~ the image with planes going down in flames behind each trophy won for the kill~! I was enjoying this tale 2 weeks ago via the new Showcase Presents series, in glorious black & white. Nice to see it in color, though~ as I am a big fan of both~!
Chuck: With this artistic team - always nothing but the best! In the introduction to the DC Archive Edition of Enemy Ace, Kubert describes how Kanigher came to him with the concept and asked him to draw it. Kubert immediately turned to his friend, Russ Heath, who had a huge photo archive of WWI planes (and obviously tons of experience drawing them). Kubert researched the planes right down to the materials used and cockpit interiors. His thinking was that he couldn't effectively depict crashes, air turns, etc. unless he knew the structure and materials of the planes - like an artist knowing the skeletal structure of a body to depict that body in action.
Lysdexicuss: I love the Showcase series - I have it as well as the Archive editions. I like to study the line work sometimes without the color. I love the color from the original comic far more than even the Archive reprints – although DC does about as good a job as can be done in this regard. Nothing matches that original four color process done on newsprint, though. –
Thanks, guys, for your great comments. -- Mykal
I was never "into" ENEMY ACE at the time but enjoyed it when I did happen to read an issue. Then I had the opportunity to read a long run a few years ago and was disappointed by the sheer repetitiveness of the plots and the writing. The art--whether by Kubert, Frank Thorne, Neal Adams or whomever, is uniformly (no pun intended) great though!
Booksteve: I had the same experience you did when reading the DC Archive editions and tried to align that experience with the thrilling experience I had with the title when reading it as a monthly or semi-monthly comic. At first I thought perhaps it was a question of the experiences of youth just not holding up in, ahem, middle age (okay – very late middle age).
But I don’t think that’s it. I think perhaps that Enemy Ace is a title that suffers terribly when read back to back in quick succession. That is the single drawback to the archive or collected editions. The hook of Enemy Ace - the noble, lone wolf killer, full of honor and guilt, can seem awful thin when a years' worth of issues are read in a few hours, back to back.
As you say, the art holds up under any circumstances! Thanks a lot for commenting! -- Mykal
It is nice to see these in color. I too have the showcase Presents book and it's one of my favorites. Kubert is amazing. His knack for capturing intense scenes were second to none.
Hex: I couldn't agree more. I do my best to recreate the color as it was in the original comic. I'm glad you appreciate it. Thanks for stopping by. – Mykal
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